Gobekli Tepe has been known since the '60s. It isn't taught for reasons David Graeber wrote a book about: there isn't as much evidence for "hunting-gathering, then agriculture, then religion, then money, then capitalism" as the prevailing narrative would like so the prevailing narrative cherry-picks to the point of negligence.
Everyone knows Stonehenge; nobody knows that the culture that built Stonehenge dabbled in agriculture without ever doing more than corner gardens. Everyone knows the Potlach cultures of the Pacific Northwest, nobody knows that most of the agriculture performed on the West Coast of North America was mostly ritual plants. Everyone knows Squanto gave the Pilgrims corn and beans, nobody knows that corn and beans were a "sometimes food" and that the ruin of American civilization can be blamed as much on European powers forcing natives to eat corn as much as it can be blamed on anything else.
Graeber lays out a whole bunch of examples of societies that are "civilized" sometimes and hunter-gatherers the rest of the time. Tribal cultures where one set of people run things nine months of the year, then another set runs things during the festival season. Cultures that are hunter-gatherer during the hunting season, town and city dwellers during the winter. Cultures with a great deal of code-switching as far as their societal structures and institutions that have been entirely bypassed by anthropologists because anthropologists have an ur-theory that really only fits Mesopotamia, and it doesn't even fit Mesopotamia that well.
- As he put it, ‘Gobekli Tepe upends our view of human history. We always thought that agriculture came first, then civilisation: farming, pottery, social hierarchies. But here it is reversed, it seems the ritual centre came first, then when enough hunter gathering people collected to worship – or so I believe – they realised they had to feed people. Which means farming.’ He waved at the surrounding hills, ‘It is no coincidence that in these same hills in the Fertile Crescent men and women first domesticated the local wild einkorn grass, becoming wheat, and they also first domesticated pigs, cows and sheep. This is the place where Homo sapiens went from plucking the fruit from the tree, to toiling and sowing the ground.’
Graeber probably spends half the book pointing out that the typical arc of "civilization", if you base it on the historical record rather than pet archaeological theories, is
1) tribes gather at regular intervals to party, trade, fuck, dance, settle feuds and otherwise maintain the stability of individual tribes within a larger network of tribal culture
2) Tribal gatherings grow unwieldy enough that they require management and support year-round
3) year-round management and support requires agriculture and taxes
4) year-round managers grow pointy hair, lord themselves over the hunter-gatherers
5) Hunter-gatherers decide they're sick of the pointy-haired managers, call off civilization, convene next year's party somewhere else
...and that really, the "great civilizations" we're all aware of are basically the process gone malignant. If you look at the archaeological record in such a way that "architectural structures" and "agriculture" are independent variables, rather than stacks of foundation stone, our whole model collapses and we turn into a bunch of privileged white men thinking everything is a nail because all we have is a hammer.
- – they realised they had to feed people. Which means farming.’
I mean, the arrogance. "Huh - here we all are, standing in the middle of the desert, hungry. I guess we better plant some rice or some shit and hope it grows before we starve to death."
- 1) tribes gather at regular intervals to party, trade, fuck, dance, settle feuds and otherwise maintain the stability of individual tribes within a larger network of tribal culture
2) Tribal gatherings grow unwieldy enough that they require management and support year-round
3) year-round management and support requires agriculture and taxes
4) year-round managers grow pointy hair, lord themselves over the hunter-gatherers
5) Hunter-gatherers decide they're sick of the pointy-haired managers, call off civilization, convene next year's party somewhere else
Burning Man.
Literally. Or Saturnalia. Or Mayday. The tradition of "the lord of misrule" has archeological evidence going back seven thousand years or something.
Paul Kriwaczek wrote a great book about the Babylonians/Sumerians /Akkadians and opens it by pointing out that pre-biblical culture lasted, uninterrupted, longer than civilization has lasted since its fall. He also points out at length that if we were to draw any comparisons to modern cultures, the parallel would be the Soviets.
I'm not sure why the title is posed as a question. The article only supports an answer of "yes". At what point does an archaeological hypothesis reach five sigma?
Dick-centric to the point of absurdity. Gotta wonder if the sixth "finger" on each hand represents one's spiritual, metaphorical handdick or something. Maybe they buried these monuments after a matriarchal revolution? More likely they were conquered.
Looking forward to learning more about this in the years to come.