More evidence for David Graeber and David Wengrow's reading of the site.<p>Between Göbekli Tepe, Poverty Point, Cahokia, and other sites we have pretty good evidence of complex urban societies that did not rely on agriculture. And even in these few sites we have abundant evidence of diversity of social structures from radically egalitarian to hierarchical<p>The linear narrative of the evolution of human societies is dead
Out of curiosity couldn’t this also mean that we are missing the agriculture? Or that the practices they used were very different from today.
At a large enough scale and a short enough time horizon, you're not going to miss it.<p>I don't think anyone is saying they <i>FOR SURE</i> didn't cultivate a couple flowers and magic mushrooms.<p>If they were an agricultural society resembling anything like the ones we see later, there are several things you'd <i>expect</i> to find.
"The Dawn of Everything"'s interpretation of this is that we only relied on (sedentary) agriculture when we were forced to because of climate change, overpopulation, or threat of violence from other local peoples, so there are several thousand years between evidence of capability and necessity.
> More evidence for David Graeber<p>What little I know of the disputes around Graeber suggest this is not going to end his isolation in the wider community of archeologists, economists, sociologists.
>The linear narrative of the evolution of human societies is dead<p>This is I guess one of the bigger problems with Graeber, like when he was attacking Silicon Valley he demonstrated he had absolutely no idea what he was arguing against.<p>Likewise, armchair reading of human social development has never appeared to be linear to me. Palace Economy > Crash > Temple Economy > Crash seems pretty damn standard. I was watching an old documentary on the socioeconomic development of Egypt and it looks like they discovered and rediscovered several important social and economic reforms, that were then lost and rediscovered by themselves and other societies over and over again.<p>The question is, was Graeber an idiot and just didn't know what he was talking about or was Graeber just another grifter like Hancock who relies on misrepresenting other peoples arguments for financial gain.
Some people were quick to jump on the gun and call it a human sacrifice site, I’m glad that they’re all proven wrong now.
The phrase is "jump the gun" or "jumped the gun" as in a fault start in a race started with a gun.
"I’m glad that they’re all proven wrong now."<p>Where exactly did you see that proof?<p>"The new study points to a different process for much of the assemblage." "The match offers an explanation for why the fragments appear so widely scattered."<p>This is the language in use here. We are talking about bones that were buried 12 000 years ago, got chewed partially by rodents, crushed by earth pressure and moved around with the soil. So no indication that there was human sacrifice, but also no definite proof otherwise.
I always thought that 'ceremonial room' looked more like a sauna than a sacrificial pit. It reminded me of the Roman ruins at Bath more than anything else.
Always assumed those scattered bones were just, well, scattered. It's cool how a new understanding of burial practices provides such a neat explanation.
Was subfloor burial common in Neolithic?
Seems like you'd quickly run out of floor and/or end up with a lot of bodies in one place. And are you chipping up your plaster floor every time someone dies? I'm pretty skeptical that this makes sense as a practice. Seems far more likely that a building was built over a forgotten grave.
Estimating "common" is quite difficult, but given that there are pre-colonial aboriginal australian burial sites, we can estimate that it either can be traced to Africa or is sufficiently common to not be surprising. There is even evidence (not proof) of neanderthal burial rituals, fwiw.
I can’t tell if this scientific article summary is bad AI writing or bad human writing.
That's a much less romantic explanation than the skull cult stuff
We tried penis cult but there were complaints
The point of naming it a "skull cult" is really just pointing out people found human remains to be important—something largely true today too, and hardly more romantic than our own understanding of burial.
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the scattered bones being explained by erosion is more interesting than assuming they all came from an unusual burial ritual.<p>i also like the distinction between ordinary burials and the cases of deliberate skull treatment. it shows how complicated the burial practices at Göbeklitepe may have been.
And how is this going to help a team of crack scientists at The Smithsonian solve a modern day murder while also navigating the difficulties of having an intimate social life as a professional in DC?