Archaeologists do it in holes: Tales from the stratigraphy

[Valmy]

I don't think many Turks were living in Anatolia prior to 1071 AD.

[Razgovory]

Wait, I thought we already knew this.

[viper37]

I don't think many Turks were living in Anatolia prior to 1071 AD.

you would be right
It was just a misplaced attempt at bad humour

[viper37]

Wait, I thought we already knew this.

Last I heard, they came from Spain/Balkans.  It ain't mutually exclusive.  Maybe the same group of people settled there first, another one pushed further north a few generations later.

Keep in mind there were multiple phases to Stonehenge, so maybe the first came from Turk.. err, Anatolia , but other, later builders came from somewhere else.

[viper37]

Ancient Carvings Show Evidence of a Comet Swarm Hitting Earth Around 13,000 Years Ago

Researchers have translated famous ancient symbols in a temple in Turkey, and they tell the story of a devastating comet impact more than 13,000 years ago.

Cross-checking the event with computer simulations of the Solar System around that time, researchers in 2017 suggested that the carvings could describe a comet impact that occurred around 10,950 BCE - about the same time a mini ice age started that changed civilisation forever.

This mini ice age, known as the Younger Dryas, lasted around 1,000 years, and it's considered a crucial period for humanity because it was around that time agriculture and the first Neolithic civilisations arose - potentially in response to the new colder climates. The period has also been linked to the extinction of the woolly mammoth.

But although the Younger Dryas has been thoroughly studied, it's not clear exactly what triggered the period. A comet strike is one of the leading hypotheses, but scientists haven't been able to find physical proof of comets from around that time.

The team from the University of Edinburgh in the UK say these carvings, found in what's believed to be the world's oldest known temple, Gobekli Tepe in southern Turkey, show further evidence that a comet triggered the Younger Dryas.

"I think this research, along with the recent finding of a widespread platinum anomaly across the North American continent virtually seal the case in favour of [a Younger Dryas comet impact]," lead researcher Martin Sweatman told Sarah Knapton from The Telegraph at the time.

"Our work serves to reinforce that physical evidence. What is happening here is the process of paradigm change."

The translation of the symbols also suggests that Gobekli Tepe wasn't just another temple, as long assumed - it might have also been an ancient observatory.

"It appears Gobekli Tepe was, among other things, an observatory for monitoring the night sky," Sweatman told the Press Association.

"One of its pillars seems to have served as a memorial to this devastating event – probably the worst day in history since the end of the Ice Age."

The Gobekli Tepe is thought to have been built around 9,000 BCE - roughly 6,000 years before Stonehenge - but the symbols on the pillar date the event to around 2,000 years before that.

The carvings were found on a pillar known as the Vulture Stone (pictured below) and show different animals in specific positions around the stone.
[...]

[Malthus]

Ancient Carvings Show Evidence of a Comet Swarm Hitting Earth Around 13,000 Years Ago

Researchers have translated famous ancient symbols in a temple in Turkey, and they tell the story of a devastating comet impact more than 13,000 years ago.

Cross-checking the event with computer simulations of the Solar System around that time, researchers in 2017 suggested that the carvings could describe a comet impact that occurred around 10,950 BCE - about the same time a mini ice age started that changed civilisation forever.

This mini ice age, known as the Younger Dryas, lasted around 1,000 years, and it's considered a crucial period for humanity because it was around that time agriculture and the first Neolithic civilisations arose - potentially in response to the new colder climates. The period has also been linked to the extinction of the woolly mammoth.

But although the Younger Dryas has been thoroughly studied, it's not clear exactly what triggered the period. A comet strike is one of the leading hypotheses, but scientists haven't been able to find physical proof of comets from around that time.

The team from the University of Edinburgh in the UK say these carvings, found in what's believed to be the world's oldest known temple, Gobekli Tepe in southern Turkey, show further evidence that a comet triggered the Younger Dryas.

"I think this research, along with the recent finding of a widespread platinum anomaly across the North American continent virtually seal the case in favour of [a Younger Dryas comet impact]," lead researcher Martin Sweatman told Sarah Knapton from The Telegraph at the time.

"Our work serves to reinforce that physical evidence. What is happening here is the process of paradigm change."

The translation of the symbols also suggests that Gobekli Tepe wasn't just another temple, as long assumed - it might have also been an ancient observatory.

"It appears Gobekli Tepe was, among other things, an observatory for monitoring the night sky," Sweatman told the Press Association.

"One of its pillars seems to have served as a memorial to this devastating event – probably the worst day in history since the end of the Ice Age."

The Gobekli Tepe is thought to have been built around 9,000 BCE - roughly 6,000 years before Stonehenge - but the symbols on the pillar date the event to around 2,000 years before that.

The carvings were found on a pillar known as the Vulture Stone (pictured below) and show different animals in specific positions around the stone.
[...]

I'm gonna call nonsense on that. 

Carvings show a bunch of fierce animals. We have no idea what they stand for. Could be gods, could be tribal totems, could literally be anything.

Sure, could be astronomical signs. That just joins the line of various things they could stand for.

This sort of thing reminds me very much of the Motel of the Mysteries:

http://onlinecampus.fcps.edu/media2/Social_Studies/WHGII_2010/Era1Topic2/Resources/Motel_of_Mysteries.pdf

[Maladict]

I'm gonna call nonsense on that. 

Carvings show a bunch of fierce animals. We have no idea what they stand for. Could be gods, could be tribal totems, could literally be anything.

Sure, could be astronomical signs. That just joins the line of various things they could stand for.

This sort of thing reminds me very much of the Motel of the Mysteries:

http://onlinecampus.fcps.edu/media2/Social_Studies/WHGII_2010/Era1Topic2/Resources/Motel_of_Mysteries.pdf

Yeah, seriously.

The Gobekli Tepe is thought to have been built around 9,000 BCE - roughly 6,000 years before Stonehenge - but the symbols on the pillar date the event to around 2,000 years before that.

So if we made an image about an astronomical event that we think may have happened 2000 years ago, say a star guiding people somewhere, that would be enough proof for future generations. If they were morons.

[derspiess]

Yep.

An image of a headless man on the stone is also thought to symbolise human disaster and extensive loss of life following the impact.

Or it could just depict a headless man.

[Razgovory]

The people Gobekeli Tepe must have had phenomenal memories if they could remember the exact location of the stars two thousand years before.

[crazy canuck]

The interesting thing about that site is it was build before agricultural practices were established.  To further add to the puzzle as agriculture became established the sophistication and quality of the structures decreased.  ie skills regressed rather than the tradition view.

Lots of compelling plausible theories about the site, but this is not one of them.

[Malthus]

Another interesting aspect: the monuments at the site were repeatedly buried and re-built.

[Razgovory]

Spellus went there.  He noted that the animals depicted on the stele were all lived in forests and that in the surrounding area there were very few trees left.

[The Brain]

Spellus went there.  He noted that the animals depicted on the stele were all lived in forests and that in the surrounding area there were very few trees left.

Dammit Jim I'm a doctor not a woodcutter.

[jimmy olsen]

The people Gobekeli Tepe must have had phenomenal memories if they could remember the exact location of the stars two thousand years before.

People did have phenomenal memories before literacy.  The oral tales of Australian aboriginals are thought to be fantastically accurate.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-sea-rise-tale-told-accurately-for-10-000-years/

Ancient Sea Rise Tale Told Accurately for 10,000 Years
Aboriginal stories of lost islands match up with underwater finds in Australia

By John Upton, Climate Central on January 26, 2015

Melbourne, the southernmost state capital of the Australian mainland, was established by Europeans a couple hundred years ago at the juncture of a great river and a wind-whipped bay. Port Phillip Bay sprawls over 750 square miles, providing feeding grounds for whales and sheltering coastlines for brine-scented beach towns. But it's an exceptionally shallow waterway, less than 30 feet in most places. It's so shallow that 10,000 years ago, when ice sheets and glaciers held far more of the planet's water than is the case today, most of the bay floor was high and dry and grazed upon by kangaroos.

To most of us, the rush of the oceans that followed the last ice age seems like a prehistoric epoch. But the historic occasion was dutifully recorded—coast to coast—by the original inhabitants of the land Down Under.

Without using written languages, Australian tribes passed memories of life before, and during, post-glacial shoreline inundations through hundreds of generations as high-fidelity oral history. Some tribes can still point to islands that no longer exist—and provide their original names.

That's the conclusion of linguists and a geographer, who have together identified 18 Aboriginal stories—many of which were transcribed by early settlers before the tribes that told them succumbed to murderous and disease-spreading immigrants from afar—that they say accurately described geographical features that predated the last post-ice age rising of the seas.

"It's quite gobsmacking to think that a story could be told for 10,000 years," Nicholas Reid, a linguist at Australia's University of New England specializing in Aboriginal Australian languages, said. "It's almost unimaginable that people would transmit stories about things like islands that are currently underwater accurately across 400 generations."

How could such tales survive hundreds of generations without being written down?

"There are aspects of storytelling in Australia that involved kin-based responsibilities to tell the stories accurately," Reid said. That rigor provided "cross-generational scaffolding" that "can keep a story true."

Reid and a fellow linguist teamed up with Patrick Nunn, a geography professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast. They combed through documented Aboriginal Australian stories for tales describing times when sea levels were lower than today. The team analyzed the contours of the land where the stories were told and used scientific reconstructions of prehistoric sea levels to date the origins of each of the stories—back to times when fewer than 10 million people were thought to have inhabited the planet.

Nunn has drafted a paper describing sea level rise history in the 18 identified Aboriginal Australian stories, which he plans to publish in a peer-reviewed journal. He's also scouring the globe for similar examples of stories that describe ancient environmental change.

"There's a comparably old tradition among the Klamath of Oregon that must be at least 7,700 years old—it refers to the last eruption of Mount Mazama, which formed Crater Lake," Nunn said. "I'm also working on ancient inundation stories and myths from India, and I've been trying to stimulate some interest among Asian scholars."

The highlights of the results of the trio's preliminary analysis of six of the ancient Australian tales was presented during an indigenous language conference in Japan. The stories describe permanent coastal flooding. In some cases, they describe times when dry land occupied space now submerged by water. In others, they tell of wading out to islands that can now only be reached by boat.

"This paper makes the case that endangered Indigenous languages can be repositories for factual knowledge across time depths far greater than previously imagined," the researchers wrote in their paper, "forcing a rethink of the ways in which such traditions have been dismissed."

Port Phillip Bay
Numerous tribes described a time when the bay was mostly dry land. An 1859 report produced for the state government described tribal descendants recalling when the bay "was a kangaroo ground." The author of that report wrote that the descendents would tell him, "Plenty catch kangaroo and plenty catch opossum there." The researchers determined that these stories recount a time when seas were about 30 feet higher than today, suggesting that the stories are 7,800 to 9,350 years old.

Kangaroo Island
The Ngarrindjeri people tell stories of Ngurunderi, an ancestral character steeped in mythology. In one of their stories, Ngurunderi chased his wives until they sought refuge by fleeing to Kangaroo Island—which they could do mostly by foot. Ngurunderi angrily rose the seas, turning the women into rocks that now jut out of the water between the island and the mainland. Assuming this dark tale is based on true geographical changes, it originated at a time when seas were about 100 feet lower than they are today, which would date the story at 9,800 to 10,650 years ago.

Tiwi Islands
A story told by the Tiwi people describes the mythological creation of Bathurst and Melville islands off Australia's northern coastline, where they live. An old woman is said to have crawled between the islands, followed by a flow of water. The story is interpreted as the settling of what now are islands, followed by subsequent flooding around them, which the researchers calculate would have occurred 8,200 to 9,650 years ago.

Rottnest, Carnac and Garden Islands
An early European settler described Aboriginal stories telling how these islands, which can still be viewed from the shores of Perth or Fremantle, "once formed part of the mainland, and that the intervening ground was thickly covered with trees." According to at least one story, the trees caught fire, burning "with such intensity that the ground split asunder with a great noise, and the sea rushed in between, cutting off these islands from the mainland." Based on the region's bathymetry, the researchers dated the story back 7,500 to 8,900 years ago.

Fitzroy Island
Stories by the original residents of Australia's northeastern coastline tell of a time when the shoreline stretched so far out that it abbuted the Great Barrier Reef. The stories tell of a river that entered the sea at what is now Fitzroy Island. The great gulf between today's shoreline and the reef suggests that the stories tell of a time when seas were more than 200 feet lower than they are today, placing the story's roots at as many as 12,600 years ago.

Spencer Gulf
Spencer Gulf was once a floodplain lined with freshwater lagoons, according to the stories told by the Narrangga people. Depending on which parts of the large inlet near Adelaide that are referred to by the stories, they could be between 9,550 and 12,450 years old.

This article is reproduced with permission from Climate Central. The article was first published on January 25, 2015.

[The Brain]

So they remember that sea levels were once lower. Doesn't seem unreasonable. But how do the researchers know what the original names for the islands were?