At least they aren't saying the science is settled.

It would appear that the archaeologists are using Google Earth. Type "Gobekli Tepi Turkey" into the "Fly To" box.

Regards,
Ric

I was living in Turkey in the 1960s, when these ruins were first discovered. Nobody knew what to make of them, so the mainline archeologists just seemed to pretend that they didn't exist. It took the work of a compelled individual to try to make sense of the ruins.

The 'book' should never be closed on science or history. We're discovering new things almost daily. That includes the fact that not everybody in the Middle Ages was dumb!

We were lucky those ruins weren't destroyed, or under threat of destruction, as jahiliyya, like the Bamiyan Buddhas or Persepolis.

I've always thought it was odd that we were basically a step above animals for such a long damn time. Think about it, tens of thousands of years with the only tool use being bashing two rocks together and maybe lashing that to a piece of wood.
People are evil and mean and selfish and all manner of other bad things, but we're pretty smart, clever and lazy. Being a barbarian sucks, every day is a pain in the butt. You never know when you won't find food or a bigger tribe will decide they need slaves or land.

We probably had cycles approaching civilization over and over before the fertile crescent, Egypt, Greece and Rome perfected writing and record keeping which allowed people to keep going higher and higher.
Each time they'd rise and then the barbarians came or the drought or any of a billion disasters that would befall people whose use of energy to control their environment was probably restricted to half-wild aurochs or something and people.

Wash, rinse, rape, pillage, eat the survivors, repeat.

Probably writing was the difference because people could save knowledge, it didn't disappear when the learned men were eaten.

Another important thing was probably breeding good, useful, domestic animals.

Pigs, sheep, goats, cows, chickens, horses, dogs, everything had to be bred into the useful breeds we have today, in fits and starts and probably not at all systematically over long periods of time, into the useful animals we have today.
Wild animals just aren't as useful to use for work, they need almost as much watching and prodding as the people would use to do the work. People power isn't the best thing for maintaining civilization. If for nothing else, you need animals to bring wood for burning as you cut down all the trees near your city.

Cats, of course, have been breeding us for thousands of years. They have us nearly perfect, too bad they can't breed out that horrible like of dogs.

Another site is churning up the dust of history, although it is under water.
If man made it is around 10,000 years old.
Off the coast of the Japan Islands.

I read (and blogged) Knox's book almost a year ago, and found it quite interesting... but it was like two books patched together.

His factual telling of the archeology is combined with some really fantastical connection with Kurdish religion in ways that were quite a stretch at times.

The idea of man having to resort to agriculture makes the story of Cain and Abel slightly more understandable. Sorta. In a way.

Having learned to be skeptical of the claims of angels--I mean scientists, my first query would be: are you sure of you dating, and why?

We laugh at the middle ages, yet pretend there was a 'renaissance' that followed. Even though nothing was 'reborn' that hadn't already been created or re-established in those oh so laughable middle ages.

If anything it was the middle ages that represents a true step beyond the achievements of the classical age.