Do you Gobekli Tepe?

[whollygoats]

No, it's not the latest dance rage from Kazakhstan, it's an archeological find in Anatolia. Southeastern Turkey, very near the Syrian border.

"The tell includes two phases of use believed to be of a social or ritual nature dating back to the 10th–8th millennium BCE. During the first phase, belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars were erected – the world's oldest known megaliths.[4] More than 200 pillars in about 20 circles are currently known through geophysical surveys. Each pillar has a height of up to 6 m (20 ft) and weighs up to 20 tons. They are fitted into sockets that were hewn out of the bedrock.[5] In the second phase, belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB), the erected pillars are smaller and stood in rectangular rooms with floors of polished lime. The site was abandoned after the PPNB. Younger structures date to classical times."

So...Ten thousand years before the Common Era. (10,000 BCE)

That sure does indicate a sizable community with significant social cohesion and dedication to large communal projects.

This is reputedly before the Neolithic revolution which initiated settled agriculture. These were reputedly pastoral peoples.

 

[4321lynx]

Site not only abandoned, but intentionally covered up, buried, with soil/stones, thus making up the Tepe. (=hill) That is what preserved it.

 

[whollygoats]

Site not only abandoned, but intentionally covered up, buried, with soil/stones, thus making up the Tepe. (=hill) That is what preserved it.

As was the ritual site at the Ness of Brodgar, in the Orkneys, several thousand years later. (4th - 3rd millenium BCE)

 

[whollygoats]

Also, as a stretch in the other geographical direction, the site which intrigues me is the Gunung Padang site, on Java, in Indonesia.

My reading is that there is a shipload of controversy still surrounding this site and it sounds like it is unlikely to be adequately settled to allow for any comprehensive assessment of the entire site to be undertaken in my lifetime. Still, I suspect that it is another HUGE project of a nature which indicates levels of population and social organization not thought possible for the estimated timeline of the built structure.

I have not yet determined how to sort the bullshit from the actual reliable suppositions on Gunung Padang.

 

[whollygoats]

Interesting match up to the end of the Younger Dryas period.

Göbekli Tepe is regarded by some as an archaeological discovery of the greatest importance since it could profoundly change the understanding of a crucial stage in the development of human society. Ian Hodder of Stanford University said, "Göbekli Tepe changes everything".[2][43] If indeed the site was built by hunter-gatherers as some researchers believe then it would mean that the ability to erect monumental complexes was within the capacities of these sorts of groups which would overturn previous assumptions. Some researchers believe that the construction of Göbekli Tepe may have contributed to the later development of urban civilization. As excavator Klaus Schmidt put it: "First came the temple, then the city."[44]

...

At present Göbekli Tepe raises more questions for archaeology and prehistory than it answers. It remains unknown how a force large enough to construct, augment, and maintain such a substantial complex was mobilized and compensated or fed in the conditions of pre-sedentary society. Scholars cannot interpret the pictograms, and do not know for certain what meaning the animal reliefs had for visitors to the site; the variety of fauna depicted, from lions and boars to birds and insects, makes any single explanation problematic. As there is little or no evidence of habitation, and the animals pictured are mainly predators, the stones may have been intended to stave off evils through some form of magic representation. Alternatively, they could have served as totems.[50] The assumption that the site was strictly cultic in purpose and not inhabited has also been challenged by the suggestion that the structures served as large communal houses, "similar in some ways to the large plank houses of the Northwest Coast of North America with their impressive house posts and totem poles."[51] It is not known why every few decades the existing pillars were buried to be replaced by new stones as part of a smaller, concentric ring inside the older one.[52] Human burial may have occurred at the site. The reason the complex was carefully backfilled remains unexplained. Until more evidence is gathered, it is difficult to deduce anything certain about the originating culture or the site's significance.

Only a tiny portion of the huge site has been excavated.

 

[WAB]

It was aliens.

 

[whollygoats]

Is that your final answer?

 

[WAB]

Is that your final answer?

/humor

 

[whollygoats]

Is that your final answer?

/humor

/likewise

 

[whollygoats]

Maybe you Gunung Padang instead?