Intricate details of vultures & scorpions from 11,000 years ago
20 temples built on a 22-acre site from 9600-8200 BC suggest that it may be gathering for religion that spawned "civilization" as we imagine it today, not the Ice Age passing and the domestication of plants and animals. Researcher Klaus Schmidt has been excavating the temple site for 17 years, and believes what he is uncovering is a whole new paradigm shift for understanding our human tendency to gather into groups. It may due to the religious spectacle that was created at Gobekli Tepe that brought hunters & gathers together in large groups. Some are saying that the temple site may be the Neolithic version of Disneyland. "Discovering that hunter-gathers had constructed Gobekli Tepe was like finding that someone had built a 747 in a basement with an X-acto knife." It was not the settling into groups due to domestication that spawned the need for religion to dictate civil harmony as previously conjectured. "Twenty years ago everyone believed civilization was driven by ecological forces," Schmidt says. "I think what we are learning is that civilization is a product of the human mind."
(Info Source: National Geographic June 2011 issue, pp 34-59, photo source red ice creations.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment