Woopsie. Hold on just a sec while I try to confirm this….
“Two years!!?? I can’t maintain a ‘summer body’ that long!!”
Pretty funny stuff.
Although I read blogs, I don’t watch ANY news on TV. Zero. Not recorded YouTubes either. Not even Tucker.
Maybe 2 or 3 times a year, I’ll be driving to a dental appt or something and I’ll catch 15 min of Rush on the radio. That’s about it. And I always wonder: what is the Lib objection to Rush? He’s partisan but he’s not extreme. He always comes across as pretty mild to me.
That guy is good and his daughter (it is his daughter?) is gorgeously cute. Funny stuff.
I don’t watch the news because what they present isn’t reliably true.
Tom – and here I thought I was the last person in America still playing my hundreds of cassette tapes.
I need one of those digitizers!
Let us know how it works out, and send the brand name.
And now, as Neo says, for something completely different.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been interested in human History, and one facet of that interest is an interest in how civilizations arose and developed in different parts of the world.
In looking at the standard archaeological narratives about how individual civilizations arose and developed, I’ve found some things that bothered me.
So, for instance, I’ve always been skeptical about the standard archaeological narrative and timeline about how ancient Egypt arose.
In particular, it seems to me that there was a gigantic leap—a great leap that was just justified with scant archaeological evidence–from a relatively primitive pot making culture to—just a couple of hundred years later–a rather sophisticated society, one which seemed to spring pretty much, fully-formed, into existence—a sophisticated, well-developed system of hieroglyphic writing, a sophisticated mythos and religion, what seemed to be a mature artistic style, great achievements in building–which were likely backed up with sophisticated measuring and calculating techniques–high level literary achievements, etc.
I just didn’t see the slow step-by-step development of these accomplishments—backed up by plenty of archaeological evidence–that I expected to see.
A lot of intermediate steps seemed to be missing.
Now, comes a recent archaeological discovery that looks like it will shatter the standard narrative timeline of primitive human’s development–ancient Gobekli Tepe in Southeast Anatolia, in Turkey.
Overlooked as being merely a Medieval site of no real interest by several prior archaeological surveys, in 1993-4 Gobekli Tepe was recognized as something special by archaeologist Klaus Schmidt and, indeed, it turns out that this site—at this point the entire extent of the complex site barely touched, with just three of an estimated 20 elaborate, decorated, sophisticatedly layed out stone circles uncovered—has been dated to around 8,000 B.C. or even, according to some reports, to as early as 12,500 to 15,000 B.C.
The problem here?
Well, even if one accepts the dating of this complex as being at the most recent date of 8,000 B.C., according to the standard archaeological narrative and developmental timeline, the people in this area were just hunter-gatherers i.e. small kinship groups of people, likely living on the precarious edge of survival, and always on the move–traveling around following game and the growing season for edible plants—thus, no settled agriculturalists and developing settlements, no sophisticated technology, no overall organization, and no surpluses of food there.
This is so far back in time that it is supposedly a time of the “Neolithic,” and a time so primitive that in this “pre-pottery era” pottery hadn’t even been invented yet, and neither had writing.
And, yet, and yet–there sits the eight to even fifteen thousand year old artificial hill of Gobekli Tepe in a currently desolate region of Turkey, with its 200 plus ten ton cut, assembled, and decorated perimeter pillars, with the often carved/decorated central pillars weighing 50 tons—and it’s enclosing walls of what I would say are sophisticated design, with the perimeter pillars embedded in them.
An entire complex whose construction would have very obviously required lots of technical skill, organization, surplus food, plus a lot of manpower working for many years—conceivably an effort spread over hundreds of years–to build it and, in that case, a gigantic building operation necessitating an organization, and continuity.
It looks to me like there would have had to have been a pretty sophisticated, probably long-developed civilization already existing in that area to have supplied the organization and know how to build Gobekli Tepe.
Thus, with the discovery of Gobekli Tepe, the whole timeline of human history will have to be reformulated, and extended much further backward in time.
P.S.–How do you plan, build, and construct such a complex of sites if you don’t have a written language, and neither do you presumably have a sophisticated number system, or system of measurements?
To add to the mystery, around a couple of thousand years after it was built, this whole complex–so far it looks like undamaged–was deliberately and apparently very carefully buried/covered over.
Snow on Pine: Agreed. I found the discovery of Gobleki Tepe electrifying.
I haven’t landed on what it means, exactly, but it’s a safe bet that our current knowledge is a work in progress.
I suspect we have underestimated earlier humans.
Snow on Pine:
Pottery is known to have started earlier than 7K years ago, even before the discovery of that site.
The first ceramic sculpture – the Venus of Dolni Vestonice, dating to about 25,000 BCE – was unearthed at a Stone Age settlement in the Czech Republic, but the first ceramic pots are the Xianrendong Cave Pottery (18,000 BCE), found in northeastern Jiangxi Province in southeast China. Up until the Jiangxi discovery, the earliest art of this type was the Yuchanyan Cave pottery (16,000 BCE) discovered in China’s Hunan province. In Europe, the oldest pottery was developed in the Czech Republic. Another very ancient example is Vela Spila Pottery (15,500 BCE) from Croatia and Amur River Basin Pottery dating to 14,300 BCE.
They’re not far off the truth of the situation. 🙂
I don’t watch news. Is this some kind of human problem?
Definitely.
But thank the powers that bee for our paper of record.
For example, “NASA Flushes Budget Down the Toilet”:
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/watch-live-nasa-launch-worlds-most-expensive-toilet-iss-use
Woopsie. Hold on just a sec while I try to confirm this….
“Two years!!?? I can’t maintain a ‘summer body’ that long!!”
Pretty funny stuff.
Although I read blogs, I don’t watch ANY news on TV. Zero. Not recorded YouTubes either. Not even Tucker.
Maybe 2 or 3 times a year, I’ll be driving to a dental appt or something and I’ll catch 15 min of Rush on the radio. That’s about it. And I always wonder: what is the Lib objection to Rush? He’s partisan but he’s not extreme. He always comes across as pretty mild to me.
That guy is good and his daughter (it is his daughter?) is gorgeously cute. Funny stuff.
I don’t watch the news because what they present isn’t reliably true.
I thought that looked like the same guy as last week.
Adorable kids, and a very funny dad.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/09/26/what-babies-are-really-saying/
We all need more,
what’s that word?
Meditape.
So passĂ© – but I just got a new tape player to digitize my hundreds of cassette tapes.
Tom – and here I thought I was the last person in America still playing my hundreds of cassette tapes.
I need one of those digitizers!
Let us know how it works out, and send the brand name.
And now, as Neo says, for something completely different.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been interested in human History, and one facet of that interest is an interest in how civilizations arose and developed in different parts of the world.
In looking at the standard archaeological narratives about how individual civilizations arose and developed, I’ve found some things that bothered me.
So, for instance, I’ve always been skeptical about the standard archaeological narrative and timeline about how ancient Egypt arose.
In particular, it seems to me that there was a gigantic leap—a great leap that was just justified with scant archaeological evidence–from a relatively primitive pot making culture to—just a couple of hundred years later–a rather sophisticated society, one which seemed to spring pretty much, fully-formed, into existence—a sophisticated, well-developed system of hieroglyphic writing, a sophisticated mythos and religion, what seemed to be a mature artistic style, great achievements in building–which were likely backed up with sophisticated measuring and calculating techniques–high level literary achievements, etc.
I just didn’t see the slow step-by-step development of these accomplishments—backed up by plenty of archaeological evidence–that I expected to see.
A lot of intermediate steps seemed to be missing.
Now, comes a recent archaeological discovery that looks like it will shatter the standard narrative timeline of primitive human’s development–ancient Gobekli Tepe in Southeast Anatolia, in Turkey.
Overlooked as being merely a Medieval site of no real interest by several prior archaeological surveys, in 1993-4 Gobekli Tepe was recognized as something special by archaeologist Klaus Schmidt and, indeed, it turns out that this site—at this point the entire extent of the complex site barely touched, with just three of an estimated 20 elaborate, decorated, sophisticatedly layed out stone circles uncovered—has been dated to around 8,000 B.C. or even, according to some reports, to as early as 12,500 to 15,000 B.C.
The problem here?
Well, even if one accepts the dating of this complex as being at the most recent date of 8,000 B.C., according to the standard archaeological narrative and developmental timeline, the people in this area were just hunter-gatherers i.e. small kinship groups of people, likely living on the precarious edge of survival, and always on the move–traveling around following game and the growing season for edible plants—thus, no settled agriculturalists and developing settlements, no sophisticated technology, no overall organization, and no surpluses of food there.
This is so far back in time that it is supposedly a time of the “Neolithic,” and a time so primitive that in this “pre-pottery era” pottery hadn’t even been invented yet, and neither had writing.
And, yet, and yet–there sits the eight to even fifteen thousand year old artificial hill of Gobekli Tepe in a currently desolate region of Turkey, with its 200 plus ten ton cut, assembled, and decorated perimeter pillars, with the often carved/decorated central pillars weighing 50 tons—and it’s enclosing walls of what I would say are sophisticated design, with the perimeter pillars embedded in them.
An entire complex whose construction would have very obviously required lots of technical skill, organization, surplus food, plus a lot of manpower working for many years—conceivably an effort spread over hundreds of years–to build it and, in that case, a gigantic building operation necessitating an organization, and continuity.
It looks to me like there would have had to have been a pretty sophisticated, probably long-developed civilization already existing in that area to have supplied the organization and know how to build Gobekli Tepe.
Thus, with the discovery of Gobekli Tepe, the whole timeline of human history will have to be reformulated, and extended much further backward in time.
See http://gobeklitepe.info/
See also this reconstruction at https://staticr1.blastingcdn.com/media/photogallery/2017/4/28/660×290/b_1200x630/building-gobekli-tepe-gallery-national-geographic-nationalgeographiccom_1298319.jpg
P.S.–How do you plan, build, and construct such a complex of sites if you don’t have a written language, and neither do you presumably have a sophisticated number system, or system of measurements?
To add to the mystery, around a couple of thousand years after it was built, this whole complex–so far it looks like undamaged–was deliberately and apparently very carefully buried/covered over.
Snow on Pine: Agreed. I found the discovery of Gobleki Tepe electrifying.
I haven’t landed on what it means, exactly, but it’s a safe bet that our current knowledge is a work in progress.
I suspect we have underestimated earlier humans.
Snow on Pine:
Pottery is known to have started earlier than 7K years ago, even before the discovery of that site.
Neo–re Pre-pottery, what about this?:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Pottery_Neolithic_A