The sculpture is very 3-dimensional. I don't get how it made a good paving stone, or how being used as a paving stone didn't end up conflicting with the "well preserved" part more.
Besides which, ever been to/seen the streets of Pompeii? Flat, level surfaces for road construction only seemed important to the Romans as a side quest. They would fill the gaps with stone and mortar - perhaps that is the case here.
So maybe it was about one of those parts and the lower one looks like it could be a decent paving stone.
Didn’t the country rename / rebrand to Türkiye?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Turkey#Presidential_ci...
Türkiye has expressed the desire that their exonym be uniform. The United Nations has complied in their policies and materials. The United States switched for diplomatic contexts, but in terms of mapping and geography, decided to retain the traditional English spelling.
They don't have authority over a language, however, so English-speakers continue to spell it as they see fit.
Uncivilized does not mean stupid or brutes.
Yet the presence of gathering places certainly does suggest civility! A warlord could command the cooperation necessary perhaps, but would have little reason to build that structure rather than walls and towers
any examples of women warlords ? I'm interested because both gendering and not gendering that sentence would upset feminists and I can't tell if this is trolling or whether more thought went into why gendering felt like the safe bet here.
Standout for me: Ching Shih (China, 1775–1844), Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba (Angola, c. 1583–1663), Zenobia (Palmyrene Empire, 3rd century CE), Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhị (Vietnam, 1st century CE), Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians (England, c. 870–918).
Some honorable mentions: Boudica, Khutulun, Rani Lakshmibai, Grace O’Malley.
The classic checklist definition is: cities, writing, centralized state, agriculture, social stratification with rulers.
I would rate Narwala Gabarnmang as one of the earliest sites of civilization, personally.
Anyway, until the work has been done, it is of course speculation - but I do personally believe that the civilization which occupied and cultivated the Australian continent for 80,000 years deserves at least a bit of interest from European guardians of civilization…
Anthropologically those human populations are generally considered “cultures” unless they have the milestones of civilizations.
But this line of research has been thwarted by the closure of Gobekli Tepe and a discontinuation of the work to make the link.
I would hope the Chinese or Indians would pick up this line of research - however, I feel its pretty obvious that admitting to Narwala Gabarnmangs’ role in human development would require a humility even the Chinese are incapable of, let alone Europeans. Narwala Gabarnmang and the Tepe sites are both older than all of us. The link between the two is highly fascinating but postulating the connection does require a cultural hygiene which, in the modern zeitgeist, is distinctly difficult to maintain...
Well, "civilisation" is a Western European word for a Western European concept.
It is is a rock shelter with a ceiling held up by pillars that appear to have been deliberately shaped and arranged by removing supporting columns to create usable space.
It has one of the longest continuous occupation records anywhere (charcoal dates back over 45,000 years, with art possibly around 28,000 years old), and it produced the world’s oldest known ground-edge stone axe fragment, dated to roughly 35,000–65,000 years ago, predating similar technology elsewhere by tens of thousands of years.
However: no writing, no cities, no centralized state, made by mobile hunter-gatherer groups rather than settled agriculturalists.
For 10’s of thousands of years.
The pillars were engineered to make the shelter more viable over time, and some of the pillars are constructed of stacks of layered rock which contain paintings. Like a stack of books in a library, if you will ..
The paintings record animal husbandry traditions, mythology, and tribal history, also.
> settled agriculturalists.
Australias original caretakers were a level of advanced agriculturalist not seen much elsewhere around the world, and there is emerging evidence that what they learned to do on that continent was transmitted around the world, perhaps as the first widespread distribution of agricultural knowledge - see the link to Gobekli Tepe, also, which - alas - is being minimized, with some speculation that for socio-political reasons it is being suppressed as a line of research…
The T-shaped pillars, it is speculated in some archeological and anthropological circles, refer to the pillars of the school of agriculture and animal husbandry that is, Narwala Gabarnmang and which was then manifest in the Tepe cultures. There are common symbols in both the Tepe site and at Narwala Gabarnmang - which we may not recognize as ‘words’, but which may well represent an encoded language not yet fully understood by those studying them.
The research continues, this is speculation and it is of course controversial to consider that Narwala Gabarnmang is the original school of agriculture, from which knowledge was transmitted to the other Tepe cultures, but please don’t let the authoritative canonicalization of the birthplace of human civilization ceiling hit you in the head .. after all, a lot of things can happen in the span of 80,000 years of human history.
I consider it one of the holiest places in all of human history, personally, but I do have a distinct desire to not propagate the other ‘holy land’ tropes that Europeans have propagated in the rush to eradicate cultures they’ve deemed inferior over the past few hundred years.
That’s pretty clear. That it has not been academically demonstrated is of course relevant - but then, the research at Gobekli Tepe came to a screeching halt around the same time this idea was first proposed, so perhaps it is important to do more than just scratch the surface of the subject ..
Also, it is spelled Göbekli Tepe.
If Gobekli Tepe is derived from Narwala Gabarnmang, that is civilization at its absolute finest - the transmission of agricultural knowledge from one region of the world, and the replication of one site of knowledge to another site, represents actual civil-ization.
> I imagine we can agree that some societies are more complex than others but that societal complexity is orthogonal to inherent cultural value.
Well, like I said at the top of the thread, I don’t think orthogonality nor complexity should be the basis of an understanding of the nature of civilization, whatsoever. From both of these abstract notions a hierarchy is defined - whereas I see, personally, a distinct expansion of human civilization occurring, if indeed the model institution of Narwala Gabarnmang was replicated in the Tepe cultures. This would be a very distinct basis of civilization, were it found to be accurate.
I acknowledge it is speculation, but it is very tantalizing - and in my opinion, entirely feasible speculation.
>Also, it is spelled Göbekli Tepe.
Öh, ǎlrīght. Ǐ’vẽ sêẽn īt spéllẽd ìn Ēnglìsh ǎnd īn Türkísh. Sørry, Í mêänt Tûrkïyē’îsh.
It’s true, I should’ve allowed for and been more respectful of that particular transmission of T-shaped knowledge…
Ok, now we're just making up stuff.
You do know that pretty much all science and technology begins with a tiny pinch of speculation, right? We wouldn’t even have civilization without someone making stuff up.
And both Göbekli Tepe and Narwala Gabarnmang sites are distinct examples of humans, making stuff up.
Really, how boring can you be.
Indeed.
> Really, how boring can you be.
Some people speculate that humans were seeded by aliens. That's even more interesting than your story.
Granted you can also argue the same about Incans and to some extent Mesoamericans, so it’s kind of debatable.
This entire discussion stems from the fact that the word "civilization" is essentially defined to fit the societies people already consider civilizations. There are technologically, politically, and socially complex societies that aren't "civilizations". My recommendation is to avoid the word entirely. Trying to use it scientifically leads to confusion.
Requirement for a writing system is an arbitrary condition. A lot of civilizations, especially in that region, have strong oral traditions.
Also would a knotted thread record keeping system count as writing?