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11,000-Year-Old Temple Found In Turkey
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Nov 13, 2008 12:28 AM
from the chicken-or-the-egg dept.
from the chicken-or-the-egg dept.
Ralph Spoilsport writes "In Southeast Turkey, the archaeologist Klaus Schmidt has discovered an 11,000-year-old temple. Established civilization theory suggests that agriculture created cities, and cities created monuments. This discovery suggests just the opposite — people got together to build a huge monument to their religion, and in order to sustain it, communities were formed and agriculture (already in development) quickly followed on to sustain the population. Truly a startling find with significant implications."
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I read that wrong, and I have to admit... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
fruitcake found in 11,000 yo temple (Score:5, Funny)
sounds more probable
both for reasons of its greater chance of being left alone and untouched, in regards to the original inhabitants and later tomb raiders, and also for its greater chance of surviving physically, intact and inert for millenia
Parent
Re:fruitcake found in 11,000 yo temple (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, I'm violating the unwritten rule of those who-know-how-to-make-it: Don't tell people - it's better they think all fruitcakes are shit. More for us.
Parent
nyt article on caribbean black cake (rum & fru (Score:3, Informative)
I read this article in the Times a year ago and it still makes me hungry to think of it: A Fruitcake Soaked in Tropical Sun [nytimes.com], covering the tradition of "black cake, a spicy, fragrant fruitcake steeped in dark rum and tradition that is a Christmas classic throughout the English-speaking Caribbean." I foresee a trip over to brooklyn sometime in my near future. ;)
Problem (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally can't stand religion messing with science, they are mutually exclusive fields IMHO. You're not gonna convince me that there is no 11,000 year old turkey because the bible says the earth is too young!!!
Parent
Re:Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing in the bible that says how long one of God's days are (in human years), so there's no definitive date for the age of the earth in the bible -- just the age of 'men'.
That having been said, I would argue that, you could still accept the 6000 year old 'birth' date of adam and reconcile that with a 11,000 year old temple, if you declare that pre-adam homo-sapiens simply weren't officially 'men' from the bible's perspective (Pre-release betas, so to speak)
OK: so it's science and blind faith in myths that are incompatible.
Parent
Re:Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
nah, it's rational thought and faith that are incompatible. myths aren't incompatible with science/rational thought as long as you recognize what they are. you can be a rational person and adhere to scientific principles while appreciating cultural myths, folklore, and legends.
i mean, you can be an atheist and still appreciate the beauty of Greek mythology. you don't have to actually believe in Hellenic polytheism to appreciate the literary value and rich cultural tapestry that's woven into Greek mythology. likewise, you can study and appreciate the myths of other ancient cultures without abandoning logic and reason.
but religion by definition requires blind faith, and that's why it's incompatible with rational thought.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course we'd have to go back to the original language, and also understand that language well enough to understand what a "day" was meant to be in all occurances. It could be pretty flexible, just like we have cultures that don't have much of a number system, and just use their version of "many" pretty early in discussing quantity.
If you go back to the original Hebrew, you find that it's not even that big of an issue because the word "day" doesn't even appear.
I believe the Hebrew word used in Genesis is "yem" (or something like that), which simply means "passage of time"--much like our modern-day "eon" except without the automatic connotation of a long time period (though not excluding long periods of time). In other words, essentially zero context as to how long was the period that was translated into the English word "day".
Parent
Re:Problem (Score:4, Informative)
The Hebrew word used in Genesis is "yom", or if you are hassidic "yoim". It means day. It means day in classical Hebrew and in everyday modern Hebrew.
Without an Earth, the concept of a solar day is completely inconsequential, but the Earth is created on Day 1, so that puts a hole in that theory. You can make some other apologist excuses about creation and time frames if you like, you'll always find someone to believe something.
Parent
Re:Problem (Score:5, Informative)
If you don't want to read the whole thing, think of it this way: The word "yom" was also used in Biblical Hebrew in such contexts of "The day [yom] of the Romans" or "The day [yom] of God's wrath", neither of which specifically refer to a 24 hour period.
From the outset, we note that at least some of the acrimony over the interpretation of the Genesis days arises from language differences. Turning biblical Hebrew into English prose and poetry presents some enormous difficulties. Whereas biblical Hebrew has a vocabulary of under 3,100 words (not including proper nouns), English words number over 4,000,000. The disparity is even greater for nouns. Therefore, we should not be surprised that Hebrew nouns have multiple literal definitions. The English word day most often refers either to the daylight hours or to a period of 24 hours. As in "the day of the Romans," it is also used for a longer time period. English speakers and writers, however, have many words for an extended period--age, era, epoch, and eon, just to name a few. The Hebrew word yom similarly refers to daylight hours, 24 hours, and a long (but finite) time period. Unlike English, however, biblical Hebrew has no word other than yom to denote a long timespan. The word yom appears repeatedly in the Hebrew Scriptures with reference to a period longer than 12 or 24 hours. The Hebrew terms yom (singular) and yamin (plural) often refer to an extended time frame. Perhaps the most familiar passages are those referring to God's "day of wrath." Before English translations were available, animosity over the length of the Genesis days did not exist, at least not as far as anyone can tell from the extant theological literature. Prior to the Nicene Council, the early Church fathers wrote two thousand pages of commentary on the Genesis creation days, yet did not devote a word to disparaging each other's viewpoints on the creation time scale. All these early scholars accepted that yom could mean "a long time period." The majority explicitly taught that the Genesis creation days were extended time periods (something like a thousand years per yom). Not one Ante-Nicene Father explicitly endorsed the 24-hour interpretation. Ambrose, who came the closest to doing so, apparently vacillated on the issue. We certainly cannot charge the Church fathers with "scientific bias" in their interpretations. They wrote long before astronomical, geological, and paleontological evidences for the antiquity of the universe, the earth, and life became available. Nor had biological evolution yet been proposed. Lamarck, Darwin, and Huxley came along some 1,400 years later."
(Ross H.N. and Archer G.L., "The Day-Age View," in Hagopian D.G., ed., The Genesis Debate: Three Views on the Days of Creation, Crux Press: Mission Viejo CA, 2001, pp. 125-126, as cited by Jones)
[I'd link to the online source where I found this, but it's been 403'd]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you actually read the first chapter of Genesis and actually apply some basic reading comprehension you will find that in the beginning God creates the heavens and earth, then at some point later he says let their be light, and then after that at some indeterminate period of time he separates the the light from the dark and there is day and night.
What that means is he could have spent 10 billion years creating the heavens and the earth if he wanted, we have no way whatsoever of knowing, as the bible has *
Re:Problem (Score:5, Funny)
in the beginning God creates the heavens and earth, then at some point later he says let their be light
That's why I find God to be so amazing. He made all this, IN THE DARK! I would have been, "Oh, sod this, let there be a small star or something, so I can see what I'm doing here."
Actually, that explains why some things are a bit fucked up. Wave/Particle duality? Yeah, look, God couldn't see exactly what He was doing there when that bit came together, so no wonder. Duck-billed mamallian egg-laying Platypuses? Vestigial tails on humans? Same deal. With Him working blind, consider yourself lucky you don't have an anus right next to your nose.
(Well, *some* people do sometimes, but that's a matter of lifestyle preference.)
Parent
Re:Problem (Score:4, Funny)
Wave/Particle duality isn't fucked up at all. It's kinda quite cosy.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You realize, of course, that he might not care about converting anyone?
Seriously most atheists don't care what you believe, they just want people to stop breaking stuff because their religion says it's wrong.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That applies only to religions that insist that their mythical stories be taken as fact. Not all religions do that. Try not to be so exclusive -- Christianity is not the only religion out there. Making sweeping generalizations like that makes you (and the others in this thread who did the same) look prejudiced.
Re:Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Both science and faith can exist in this gray area.
Science generates incremental, provable (observable, repeatable) hypotheses. If these are generally believed (faith!), they are called a theory. There is no generally accepted absolute truth [wikipedia.org] available to a scientist.
I refer you to Albert Einstein's quote, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind," and so religion at least can co-exist with science. You certainly don't have to accept either one!
Faith in the scientific method and in the majority of your scientific peers is essential, unless you intend to resolve everything you believe in through exhaustive observations -- and then you would only have it down to a small probability that you are deceived. Scientists must consider their peers and teachers trustworthy, or our collected knowledge could not be accepted and those who found it out would die faster than those who could prove it to themselves.
Faith in absolute truths accepted by a large population at some point gets called a "religion." [wikipedia.org] Pascal's wager [wikipedia.org] -- since the majority of the humans alive today are religious, you are safer to accept the hypothesis that religion is not a hoax, than you are to accept the hypothesis that religion is a hoax -- implies that science provides support of faith.
So in other words, science (about faith) proves that faith is a reasonable assumption -- as much as science can prove anything. Faith (in science) is a necessary assumption to prevent the loss of scientific knowledge, and faith as a general quality allows scientists to work together.
Science often suffers from "groupthink." Faith often also gets lost in "myth." All in pursuit of truth, something that men can't ever really capture.
Good luck!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I refer you to Albert Einstein's quote, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind," and so religion at least can co-exist with science. You certainly don't have to accept either one!
Just because Albert Einstein said it, does not make it true. I find that many faithful people will often use the tactic of quote mining to make their points. They will point to the fact that Isaac Newton was a devout Christian and fail to mention that he also believed that transmutation of the elements
What's weak this week (Score:3, Funny)
So I ask you, why is science without religion lame?
Well because religion is, like, totally righteous - so as radical as science is, without religion it's just totally lame.
Re:Problem (Score:4, Interesting)
I refer you to Albert Einstein's quote, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind," and so religion at least can co-exist with science. You certainly don't have to accept either one!
You keep using those words, I do not think they mean what you think they mean. That was Einsteins summary of a talk he gave on the interplay between religion and science. Specifically, he said Religion aught to be concerned with how things should be, not with how they are.
More specifically, he said that Religion's job was to deal with issues relating to the emotions. He went on to say in the same speech:
"The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God,"
You also seem to have gotten Pascal's wager wrong. Pascal said assuming that there's a 50-50 chance that God exists and that if you do not believe in God you will go to hell for all eternity, it is safer to believe in God. Because if you're wrong to believe in God, you don't lose anything.
It doesn't look like you read the article you linked, particularly the section entitled criticisms of Pascal's wager. He doesn't account for the cost of believing in the wrong God. And his supposition is only to be applied in the case where you can not determine through reason whether a god exists or not.
Of course, if you can not determine that a God exists, you can not know how such a God would want you to live, so you can never actually follow through on the wager.
Parent
Any other fallacies you wish to share? (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, sad to say, what you do there isn't "science in support of faith", it's "bullshit fallacies in support of faith."
E.g.,
E.g., at some point the majority believed that the Earth is flat. It didn't make it so. It didn't even make it a safer bet. That belief is completely orthogonal to how reality actually is.
Plus, "the majority of humans alive today are religious" is mis-leading right there. Those people believe wildly different and mutually-incompatible religions. Which of those religions do you believe? Hinduism can't be true at the same time as Christianity, for example. So painting it all with a "they're religious" brush creates a false majority there.
Taking Christianity for example, it claims some 2 billion adherents worldwide, though that's got more to do with what you've been baptized to, than whether you're actually a devout christian. Well, that's less than a third of the world's population. A majority of the world isn't christian, so by your reasoning, it stands to reason that it's more likely that Christianity is false.
Parent
Actually, no. Not even close (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, no. Not even close.
1. Pascal's wager, the way Pascal used it, is basically this:
- if you believe and you're right, there's an infinite reward
- if you don't believe and are right, well, whatever rewards you can possibly get are finite.
Ditto for penalties when you're wrong, could be added.
So basically it says _nothing_ about which is more probable to be right, and it has _nothing_ to do with . It just says that infinite is bigger than anything else. Even if the probability for christianity to be rig
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I love 1980s propaganda, it kinda makes me feel like I'm watching Knight Rider or something (the original, not the new Ford commercial).
Another common mystery (Score:5, Interesting)
"Trying to pick out symbolism from prehistoric context is an exercise in futility."
We've known about the rings at Stonehenge for how long? What do we know about them? Not much.
The simple fact is that we are still discovering evidence of what man did before inventing writing of any sort. I'm continually amazed at the apparent opinion of many that what science knows now is all there is to know, or that it is not possible that it is not quite right.
Alluding to an earlier post, massive drastic evolutionary changes just don't make sense to me. There has to be more history in the dirt than we know about. Chances of us finding it... meh!
I don't think that the curve of knowledge acquisition of the last 500 years is a linear projection of the millions of years before them. I think this whole gain in knowledge is rather logarithmic in nature. Meaning that the first several thousand centuries passed without writing, without lasting evidence to show we had been there. Stonehenge, the Sphinx... how many others? They all stand there with no written account of who or why they were erected. We are still arguing about how the great pyramids at Giza were built. (they made them of concrete).
Point is, this should not be surprising. What should be is that it has taken this long to find it, never mind any other corroborating evidence of early man's efforts to create. What the temple could mean in terms of sociology or religion is pittance compared to what it means to evolution IMO. The technology and effort used to create it means a lot. Guesses about agriculture and social groupings are just that. I have a sneaking suspicion that socially, mankind evolved from pack/clan culture early on. There are so many similarities to that, but we just don't see it in modern society, or ignore it. sheeple anyone? They need a pack leader, right?
Anyway, I hope that further study/excavation shows us something more meaningful than what has been found. We, as a species, need it to fully recognize where we came from, for that is how you understand what direction to go. Just an opinion.
Re:Another common mystery (Score:5, Funny)
So you're saying that in ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, there lived an ancient race, the Druids. No-one knows who they were, or what they were doing, but their legacy remains, hewn into the living rock of Stonehenge.
Parent
Re:Another common mystery (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm continually amazed how often people claim this, I cannot think of one person I have met in my 50yrs that has held this idea but there are countless people who claim it is common.
What's more the assertion itself implies that somewhere "out there" is a correct answer that we can all accept with 100% unchanging certainty. That concept is the contrary to science both in philosophy and implementation, science simply provides the best answer (as demonstrated by centuries of usefull spin-off's). IMHO the pace of knowledge acquisition over the last 50yrs has exploded due mainly to more accessible education and a massive reduction of influence from religion. On the longer term mankinds colective body of knowledge goes up and down, but it does have a fairly consistent upward trend and is definitely related to events in society.
"Alluding to an earlier post, massive drastic evolutionary changes just don't make sense to me."
Then I suggest you argue with Dawkins or Gould.
"Anyway, I hope that further study/excavation shows us something more meaningful than what has been found."
I am glad to see you support the work even though you personally think it's meaningless, it implies a trust in science on your part that I admire. Having said that, it's only meaningless to those who don't understand what those "guesses" about the relationship between agriculture/religion/buildings are based on. Turkey (via many lines of evidence) is where both agriculture and buildings originated ~10,000yrs ago, an 11,000yo temple (anywhere in the world) is therefore meaningfull to people who are intrested in the origins and spread of civilization (not that nomadic tribes are uncivilised, just that they have an alterantive definition-re: modern day Mongolia). But yes, there is still a lot we don't know outside of Europe - perhaps Turkey wasn't the birthplace of civilization but right now at this point in time that idea is far more speculative than any of the ideas in TFA.
"We are still arguing about how the great pyramids at Giza were built. (they made them of concrete)."
Again simply because we don't know everything does not mean we know nothing. Some people actually know quite a bit about the various methods (note the plural) used to build pyramids. Normally they were made from limestone and/or granite blocks, some were given a coating of lime to make the sides smooth and white. Over the millenia most (if not all) the lime coating has been scavanged to cover the walls of nearby towns/cities.
As for "concrete blocks", it's an interesting idea backed up by a couple of material analysists and (to me anyway) the limestone covering demonstrates they knew about "concrete" but these guys are still very far from providing the evidence needed to ADD it to accepted idea's, let alone the "extrodinary evidence" that would be needed to show ALL pyramids were built with the concrete method.
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Re:Another common mystery (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with you! I basically write code for a living right now, and every day I learn something new. It's invigorating. I cannot imagine that learning new things about the as yet unknown or our past is not invigorating for mankind. I look back at old code I have written and think... wow, I know a lot more now.
Interestingly, I don't believe this kind of thinking is new. 1000 years before the library at Alexandria there must have been people who thought the same thoughts. It follows that 10,000 years before that people had the same thoughts. All the way back past learning how to use fire or the wheel. Where we might be in 50, 100, or 500 years is an incredible thought. The people who built this temple must have done it with the latest technology and skills available... meaning that there were many skills and technologies prior that were not as good. From their perspective, it would seem no different than an architect working on a new building today.
Our knowledge and skill really took off flying when we created ways to store knowledge and share it easily. The easier it is to share knowledge, the greater mankind becomes. My vote for invention of the last 1000 year? The internet, for all the reasons stated. Now, you as a 'scientist' can share your ideas with all of us, and we with you. One thought in the bathtub can lead to great moments in science. (unless you are in the porn industry... but that is another matter).
When I was in school, the paper encyclopedia was all there was, or a library. Now I can consult libraries all over the world... and never leave my house. Awesome. I hope that this discovery being blasted across the planet spurs on ideas and knowledge linking that was not possible before it's publication. Sort of the butterfly effect of knowledge acquisition.
I wish to know more about our past and origins and will patiently wait for those good folks who do such things to discover clues. I wait feeling assured that my wait is not in vain, that there will be answers, and that no one will find the garden of Eden. Discoveries like this can only light the way toward that enlightenment. I want to know about all the mysteries as though they were birthday gifts to me. Why are the Nasca lines there? Why did the migration of early man leave us separated? (I secretly doubt this is true) I want to know the true origins of mankind. I would also like to meet an alien. If not in person, by some communication method. I'm not afraid of what can be, or was. I just want to know. Simply knowing all these things and more is reason enough to have lived.
Enough blathering, on with the discoveries :-)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I don't. While the printing press is good, very good, it pales miserably compared to the speed and efficacy of the Internet at spreading information.
From our favorite site (wikipedia):
It should be noted that new research may indicate that standardised moveable type was a more complex evolutionary process spread over multiple locations.[2]
The use of movable type was a marked improvement on the handwritten manuscript, which was the existing method of book production in Europe, and upon woodblock printing, and revolutionized European book-making. Gutenberg's printing technology spread rapidly throughout Europe and is considered a key factor in the European Renaissance.
Books were not invented by Gutenberg, only a way of making them faster. The Internet has done serious damage to his contributions. Magazines and newspapers are struggling to stay in business in opposition to the Internet. Citizen reporting and writing has replaced what took weeks, months, and years with a process that tak
That's a leap (Score:3, Interesting)
How do you jump from finding one very old temple to deciding that the motivation for all civilization starting and people getting together being religion?
Sounds to me like someone with religion is trying to justify their bad habit.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"With my last expedition, I revolutionized our thought about religion. What will I do next time? With a modest grant and my immeasurable innate skill, its only a matter of time before my brilliance is further pored out to the undeserving human wretches. That my greatest gift to humanity is to nourish the those worthy of drinking of my genius, and drowning those unworthy. Thank you for your support."
Wikipedia entry (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
We'll just see about that! I bet you also weren't aware that the number of 11,000 year old Temples found in Turkey have tripled in the last six months!
I doubt that very f**ing much. (Score:5, Insightful)
Asserting that it did work that way (as the OP does), is like asserting that gasoline was developed to fuel all those gasoline engines that were already lying around.
Re:I doubt that very f**ing much. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the OP was trying to argue that the growth of cities and monuments drove the development of agriculture, rather than simply being a nifty aftereffect.
Parent
It still doesn't compute (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, if you think about it, it doesn't even f-ing make any sense:
1. You can't have a city _before_ you have a stable source of food that doesn't move around.
2. Agriculture depended on a mutation in a species of grass, that made it have bigger grains. It first started with wild Rye, actually, but the mutation of emmer wheat was what really kicked things into gear. It's a tetraploid plant, meaning that at some point it acquired _two_ sets of chromosomes, and that mutation survived.
You can't cause a mutat
Well, if you aim that low... (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Well, if you aim that low with "city" and "temple", then it really doesn't say much.
There are hunter-gatherer tribes with more members than that, and they do have some huts/tents/etc somewhere. It doesn't really make it a city, but ok. They all have some totem pole, or sacred heap o' rocks, or some sacred tree or grove somewhere. You can probably find such tribal villages all the way to the first homo sapiens, 200,000 years ago, and the Neanderthals before built them too.
Humans were _never_ lone individu
well yeah (Score:5, Funny)
when i play the aztecs, i can usually get my obelisk built before my starting worker even finishes his first few roads, nevermind that i haven't even discovered agriculture yet. of course, this is because the aztecs have mysticism as a starting tech, and assumes i'm not cranking out warriors to combat barbarian threats so...
wait, we're talking reality?
sorry
Obligatory joke (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You jest, but primitive peoples - at least in Oceana and Polynesia - have been using wireless communication for aeons.
People didn't build that temple (Score:4, Funny)
Apparently... (Score:3, Funny)
you've been to my grandma's house at thanksgiving...
Why always a temple? (Score:5, Funny)
So this is how it all started (Score:5, Funny)
So some silver-tongued geezer persuades a bunch of nubile young lovelies that they'll suffer eternal damnation unless they polish his wood. After he finally croaks in the middle of his ninth threesome of the week, a bunch of less-talented pick-up artists find that no amount of funeral preparation can wipe the grin off the old goat's face. They assume this is proof that he's still getting his wand waxed in the afterlife, and build a monument to a god they now regard as eminently worthy of worship.
And it all goes from there. I gotta write me a prayer book.
Re:dont be silly (Score:5, Informative)
Pretty much all of today's theories are wrong, in the sense that they are inaccurate and incomplete. General relativity fails us at the beginning of the Universe and at the centre of a black hole. Quantum mechanics gives us no description at all of gravitational effects. In cases where we need to use both theories together we end up with infinities and singularities and contradictions all over the place.
A new theory will dramatically change our description of these exotic systems. But in order to work, such a theory must agree with the current theories in domains where those theories are known to be valid. General relativity replaced Newtonian gravity, but it could only do so because it made nearly the same predictions in conditions where Newtonian gravity worked. Newton's theory is still used for interplanetary navigation, because the calculations are so much simpler and the error is small - but if you had to do a gravitational slingshot round a neutron star you'd go to Einstein.
I'd just add that no scientific theory is ever proved. You want proof, the mathematics department is next door. You want certainty, there's a church down the road. In science we accumulate evidence, and the more evidence agrees with our predictions, the more confident in the theory we become - but you can never test every possible case.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Does anyone has recommendations of better science news forums? Where you know, people actually focus on Science?
Academic journals.
I'm very much afraid that other than in costly peer-reviewed forums like those, the discourse doesn't get a great deal better than Slashdot. Even in academic journals the discourse is often poorly focussed and off-topic. Even discipline-specific mailing lists aren't noticeably better: I'm not even subscribed to the most important one for my field because it's just full of US-centric political rants.
(I speak as someone who studies ancient cultures professionally, and who is keenly aware tha