Talk:Göbekli Tepe

Neolithic

The term "Neolithic" thus does not refer to a specific chronological period, but rather to a suite of behavioural and cultural characteristics including the use of (both wild and domestic) crops and the use of domesticated animals. (Wik on Neol.) How, then, does GT "formally belong" to the neolithic? Either the >Neolithic article should be re-written to include monumental architecture (and maybe ceramics and sical hierarchies), or the GT article needs to be re-worded. Kdammers 22:34, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree, this needs to be fixed. Also, this article also says it's before the Neolithic Revolution. Maybe we should remove the "formally Neolithic" part, unless someone can cite it. 128.194.34.211 (talk) 21:27, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

BP is not BC

There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the dates both here and in the popular press reports. The dates are BP (i.e. before Present or more accurately 1950) which means 9000 BP = 7000 BC. This is consistent with the finds - some Epipalaeolithic overlain by PPN-A and around the start of agriculture. (Emperor 14:37, 2 January 2007 (UTC))

You are right that one shouldn't confuse BP and BC, but what makes you think that this happened here? The site of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (the guys who are doing the excavations) states that the oldest building phase ends around 9000 BC (that would be 11,000 BP). [1]. Chl 23:19, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I was working by the radiocarbon dates as presented here. However, I have got my hands on the original numbers and will update with the calibrated dates. (Emperor 23:42, 2 January 2007 (UTC))

major re-edit

I have changed the page a good bit, by incorporating a translation of the German page and merging the organisation and onformation from the previous English page and the German one, so as not to loose any information. Feel free to change it around, if necessary. athinaios 14:04, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Traduzione delle steli ad opera del centro ricerche onfalos geodetici preistorici:

http://archeoastronomia-geodetica.blogspot.com/  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.32.6.140 (talk) 16:18, 26 March 2008 (UTC) 

Nature of Gobekli Tepe

How do we know this was a temple/shrine, and not a folly or some monument put up in the middle of nowhere for the heck of it? 204.52.215.107 (talk) 22:44, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

And, as for deliberate burial of the monument/temple/whatever, I suspect the reason was the deliberate preservation of the site for posterity. If the whole area was changing, the locals might've feared invaders and other changes, and they might have also reasoned that burying something would keep something around a long time if nobody were to discover it right away (after all, the site was already thousands of years old at the time of abandonment, so some parts might've been uncovered after burial). Well, if that was the purpose, then those folks succeeded, obviously. That being said, a certain couple of five-thousand-year time capsules in Queens, NY are in the wrong location and ought to be relocated to, say, a desert area and preferably on an old mountain somewheres. Where they are, it's practically landfill and bound to get swamped at some point in time. 204.52.215.107 (talk) 22:52, 16 April 2008 (UTC) (edited to be more inclusive 204.52.215.107 (talk) 16:39, 19 April 2008 (UTC))

The place is totally insane, check it out on Google Earth! It is where three prominent ridges of hills join, and the approximate location must be visible for dozens of miles (except from NW, where a large flat mesa is some 6 miles away). It would be nice if we could get a photo of the belly-hill from some distance, to give readers an impression how the people who used it could find it, with no maps and only fairly crude celestial navigation. It was dead simple - walk in the general direction of the tepe until you see two or three ranges of hills meeting with a hill in the center, and then simply go there. Given some erosion, it must have been even more prominent back then though arguably the vegetation might have been somewhat lusher too, think southern slope of the Alps today maybe (the desert belt was a bit further south back then IIRC).

The landforms in the region appear to be such that the belly-hill is the most "natural" place to put a site where such an amount of effort was put into. It is the exact opposite of "middle of nowhere".

The deliberate burial thing is very odd indeed. It is not a behavior often seen. Given the scant information available about these people's social and economic status, it is almost beyond belief that they were capable of such a decision; certainly much more technologically advanced civilizations cared little about preserving their abandoned sites. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 09:44, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

This article talks about the "temple" hypothesis. 192.103.194.6 (talk) 20:58, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

readings first

before excavations begin on any of these ancient structures, there should be complete photographs made and esp also if possible, a reading as these sites contain usually "imprints" of the results of the rites practiced there and those "imprints" can explain the site entirely ... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.162.178.52 (talk) 07:51, 25 April 2008 (UTC)