We thought civilization required agriculture until…

[Unseen]

Gobekli Tepe, a huge architectural and sculptural complex apparently made about 5000 years before the Sumerians by a pre-agricultural people.

[PopeBeanie]

Wow. First thought, they must have been able to find a lot of meat; second thought there must have been a lot more natural, edible plants back then. I confirmed with AI, and saw lots of other good info and research on this topic. While “only 5%” of this area has been dug up! And there are some similar sites not far away.

Anthropological history is being re-written. I’d suggest that these kinds of societies must have made agricultural expertise and implementation develop sooner, so we’ll graph an additional inflection point wrt sophistication of socialized projects.

[Unseen]

@PopeBeanie

Using LIDAR and other means, it’s been discovered that Gobekli Tepe, while being perhaps the most important complex, is far from the only one. I’m sure several dozen lesser sites have been found in the vicinity. Also, there are other recently discovered sites, notably Karahan Tepe and Mendik Tepe, which seem to be even older.

I caution, take his speculations with a grain of salt. A lot of the video documentation of these sites is done by crackpots and people in the business of collecting new visitors and subscriptions to their Youtube sites, book sales, invitations to discuss their theories, etc. (think Graham Hancock). On the other hand, discussions by actual archaeologists can be rather technical and dry (boring for people outside the field).

• This reply was modified 9 months, 3 weeks ago by Unseen.

[PopeBeanie]

I took a junior college level course four or five years ago in Cultural Anthropology. I don’t remember any sites in this topic mentioned in the text book, although (apparently) we started discovering these sites in the 1990s.

From ChatGPT, my query:
in what areas of the world are we finding new evidence of human, neolithic (or earlier) constructed sites?

ChatGPT said:
New evidence of Neolithic (or earlier) human-constructed sites continues to emerge across multiple regions of the world, often challenging or expanding our understanding of prehistoric human development, social structure, and symbolic behavior. Here’s a breakdown of the most significant regions where new discoveries are ongoing, with notable recent or ongoing research:

🔺 Middle East (Fertile Crescent)
Göbekli Tepe, Turkey: Though discovered in the 1990s, ongoing excavations continue to unearth more T-shaped megaliths and nearby sites like Karahan Tepe, suggesting a broader Neolithic ceremonial complex dating to around 9600 BCE.
Aşıklı Höyük and Çatalhöyük (Turkey): Show increasingly complex urbanized living in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period.
Saudi Arabia (Al-‘Ula region, Neom, etc.): Discoveries of mustatils (rectangular stone structures) and massive hunting traps (kites) date back as early as 8000 BCE. These reveal ritual and pastoral patterns long predating urban civilization.

🐘 Africa
Saharan Africa (Algeria, Libya, Chad):

Evidence of megalithic stone circles, ritual sites, and astronomical alignments (e.g., Nabta Playa in Egypt, ca. 7500 BCE) suggests early complex societies in what is now desert.
Ethiopia & Kenya Rift Valley:

Sites like Omo Kibish and Lake Turkana are revealing both early Homo sapiens fossils and tools/structures dating back >100,000 years.
In southern Africa, caves like Blombos (South Africa) yield symbolic ochre art, bone tools, and even possible early shelters (~75,000+ years ago).

🏹 Europe
British Isles:

New remote sensing around Stonehenge, Orkney, and Ireland reveals earlier layers of settlements, trackways, and ritual enclosures from the early Neolithic (4000 BCE).
Eastern Europe / Balkans:

Rich Neolithic settlements with fortifications, clay architecture, and advanced ceramics, like Lepenski Vir (Serbia) and Vinca culture (e.g. 5500–4500 BCE).
Ukraine and Moldova: Megasites such as Taljanki and Maidanetske indicate proto-urban settlements over 10,000 residents (4000 BCE).

🏜️ Central Asia
Kazakhstan & Siberia:

New LIDAR and drone surveys have revealed earthworks, ring fortifications, and burial mounds used from the Mesolithic through the Bronze Age.
The Altai Mountains show Denisovan-human hybrid sites and tools, and ritual objects from ~30,000–50,000 years ago.

🧊 Siberia & Arctic
Yakutia / Russian Far East:

Sites like Yana RHS (Russia) show early human habitation north of the Arctic Circle at ~30,000 years ago, with evidence of organized structures and tools.
Permafrost thaw is revealing organic materials (wood, bone, hide) never previously accessible.

🌋 East Asia
China:

Jiahu (Henan): Neolithic culture with proto-writing, early rice cultivation, and musical instruments (~7000 BCE).
Shimao (Shaanxi): Massive walled city with jade ritual objects and pyramidal structures (~2000 BCE), still yielding new surprises.
Tibet Plateau: Evidence of early permanent habitation (>30,000 years ago) including possible engineered rock shelters.

🐚 Southeast Asia & Oceania
Indonesia (Sulawesi, Borneo):

Cave art dated to 40,000–45,000 years ago with figurative depictions and hand stencils—among the oldest on Earth.
Ongoing finds suggest pre-agricultural monumentality, with possible intentional rock alignments and shell mounds.
New Guinea:

Terracing and irrigation dated to 7000+ years ago—some of the earliest known highland agriculture.
Australia:

Rock art in Kimberley and Arnhem Land and burnt postholes point to complex pre-contact structures up to 50,000 years old.

🌎 Americas
Amazon Basin:

LIDAR in Bolivia, Brazil, and Colombia has revealed geometric earthworks, ancient roads, and platforms previously hidden by forest canopy, dating to 4000+ years ago.
Peru (Andes):

Discoveries like Caral (~3000 BCE), one of the oldest known cities in the Americas, and circular sunken plazas, reveal early ceremonial construction.
Mexico:

Olmec ceremonial centers with pyramidal mounds predate the Maya by centuries.
LIDAR in the Yucatán and Chiapas is revealing vast Maya city networks with water systems and platforms.
North America (U.S.):

Sites like Poverty Point (Louisiana) and Watson Brake show mound-building traditions back to ~3500 BCE.
Cahokia mound complex (Illinois) continues to yield new insights.

🧠 Summary Table
Region
Key Finds & Periods
Example Sites
Middle East
Ritual megaliths, early cities (9600–7000 BCE)
Göbekli Tepe, Karahan Tepe
Africa
Megaliths, rock art, symbolic behavior
Nabta Playa, Blombos Cave
Europe
Megasettlements, ceremonial enclosures
Lepenski Vir, Orkney
Central Asia
Fortifications, burial mounds
Maidanetske, Altai sites
East Asia
Proto-cities, early writing
Jiahu, Shimao
Southeast Asia
Oldest figurative cave art
Sulawesi, Borneo
Oceania
Agriculture and early habitation
Papua New Guinea, Arnhem Land
Americas
Earthworks, mounds, pyramids
Amazonia, Cahokia, Caral
Arctic/Siberia
Cold-climate settlement structures
Yana RHS, Yakutia

[_Robert_]

When you consider that homo sapiens has been around for about 300 thousand years, this is not too, too surprising. Neanderthals apparently just didn’t have what it takes, but the genetic material they contributed to us may have played a part.

[Unseen]

Modern humans carry neanderthal DNA. 

And then, there’s this:

[Simon Paynton]

_Robert_ wrote:

When you consider that homo sapiens has been around for about 300 thousand years, this is not too, too surprising. Neanderthals apparently just didn’t have what it takes, but the genetic material they contributed to us may have played a part.

All the settled living seems to be in the past 10-15,000 years.  I understand that the climate settled down in that time:

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

[Unseen]

The tombs in your viddies, Reg, date back 4900-5200 years ago, which is ancient, but only about half as ancient as Gobekli Tepe, which isn’t even the oldest site in Turkey, though it’s the most sophisticated of the ones we know.

Still, the understanding of the seasons, the universe, and stars of the Irish and other ancients (Mayans, Indians, Chinese, Egyptians, and several others) beggars the understanding.

Many of these cultures, so far as we know, didn’t really have an effective way of documenting their knowledge and discoveries, so was astronomy carried on by an oral tradition? We may never know.

[Simon Paynton]

Unseen wrote:

Many of these cultures, so far as we know, didn’t really have an effective way of documenting their knowledge and discoveries, so was astronomy carried on by an oral tradition? We may never know.

Surely they had all sorts of diagrams, and they had Stonehenge, which among other things is aligned with the Sun’s solstices and equinoxes.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Please, nobody mention Graham Hancock or his Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse where he misrepresents archaeology and undermines Indigenous heritage.  He tends to creep into these conversations.

[Unseen]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Unseen wrote:

Many of these cultures, so far as we know, didn’t really have an effective way of documenting their knowledge and discoveries, so was astronomy carried on by an oral tradition? We may never know.

Surely they had all sorts of diagrams, and they had Stonehenge, which among other things is aligned with the Sun’s solstices and equinoxes.

If there were diagrams, we would be finding at least some of them. Your comment about Stonehenge seems to imply that it was used as a diagram of sorts… to pass along astronomical knowledge? If so, how did that designer (or designers) of Stonehenge gain the knowledge needed to do the alignment correctly, because certainly some knowledge of astronomy would be needed to even start the project intentionally.

[TheEncogitationer]

Simon,

Surely they had all sorts of diagrams, and they had Stonehenge, which among other things is aligned with the Sun’s solstices and equinoxes.

One thing they could have done without writing would be to make a model of what they wanted on the ground, put stakes in at various points on the model, then used strands of cordage of equal length to attach to the stakes, then extended the strands out in roughly straight lines to determine the placement of the stones. This would also have been how the Nazca drawings (the so-called “alien landing strips”) that are visible from the air would have been made.

As for movement and placement of the stones, engineers have demonstrated today how ropes, straps made of hide, log rollers, and enough muscle could have moved and set up 40 ton stones.

One thing that was a great motivator for the pyramids is that the builders were paid in beer 🍻 😁. Those structures were giant recordings of untold “Miller Times.”

All perfectly natural and makeable with technology conceived at the time.

• This reply was modified 9 months, 2 weeks ago by TheEncogitationer.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

It looks like we Homo sapiens may be much older species that previously understood to be.

[Author]

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