Response from Gobekli Tepe dig and back at you from Edinburg
Ok, I’ve finally found a little time to provide some commentary after posting the Gobekli Tepe YD Comet paper last week. I have more substantive comments underway (believe it or not) but first I thought I would rail a bit about the press.
The treatment of this particular story by the American press, and its larger context, the Younger Dryas Boundary Impact Hypothesis, continues to be despicable. The Brits led the way again on this subject and carried most of the planet in their wake. This fascinating little paper is being picked up all over the globe with dozens of re-writes by hundreds of publications — but very nearly zero from the US.
It would seem the US science desks and editors could find some common interest in this subject with our closest intellectual cousin, global warming certainly dominates coverage in both countries. But no. Just like the Widespread Platinum paper in Nature Reports last month, crickets in the US and reported in the UK. It seems we have our own science news, and they have theirs. How’s that for legitimacy of science?
The always depressing fact is that the U.S. science press has become so overtly politicized that it has no ink for anything that does not extend the narrative. There is no room for a serious, mitigable and global “science” threat that does not involve polluters and conservatives as the bad guys. Space rocks are hard to blame – and distracting.
Imagine if a media kid dares take this seriously, and (gasp) does some ‘enterprise reporting’ on the magnitude and quality of the research? They may reveal to themselves a threat on a par with CO2. Who would embark on a writing project that might result in THAT? For the rest of their career they would be intellectually compelled to write the next global warming story with an acknowledgement that the subject is our #2 global problem. That makes it hard to get up in the morning to cover the March for Science.
So why the Brits? I think catastrophism, as a philosophy and a way to see world history, is still a faint cultural recollection for them. And therefore of more interest to their readers and their writers. Like so many non-US cultures, in the United Kingdom they are still surrounded by their dragons — and most have had to consider, at least once, whether their ancestors really saw flying fire lizards, were full of shit, or maybe, just maybe, they saw flaming bolides with snake-like smoke tails — just like they record today with their iPhones.
Moreover, a hardy band of UK researchers has been making precisely these same claims in peer-reviewed publications for decades — approximately 40 decades. From Newton and Whiston, to Clube and Napier, it is hard to put a Brit down who knows he has been right for millennia. There is clearly some thread of understanding in the UK Fourth Estate that this is an area of legitimate intellectual inquiry with a long and distinguished history. Our press, on the other hand, only honors fashions that were born after they were.
So that’s that on the press coverage. As I say, more is coming, on our newest British friend, Dr. Martin Sweatman, author of the paper that inspired this deviation.
[wonderplugin_pdf src=”https://cosmictusk.com/wp-content/uploads/Sweatman-and-Tsikritsis-gobekli-tepe-comet.pdf” save=”1″]
Comments open and encouraged!
Hahaha – The Daulton Gang will tell the world that the carvings are actually insect poop, I bet.
‘— I think the summary of coherent catastrophism is QUITE excellent – both thorough and concise at the same time. Well presented!
— I would note that in the Geology section the authors point out that the ‘proposed mechanism’ (the comet fragments) “primarily affected northern latitudes, especially the Laurentide glacial ice sheet that covered Canada at the time, and Northern Europe” – while the Gobekli Tepe site is outside either region and FAR from the main proposed impact zone.
—— This site being so distal from the NA impact region, this point has ramifications. It is one thing to experience whatever cataclysmic effects occurred due to the impact. It is quite another thing to have SEEN and recorded the comet’s fragments approaching earth – and then connected the impacts with the effects.
— Yes, to the multiple impacts, too.
— “…archaeological evidence from that period or before is very rare, and it is also generally thought that any form of writing, even proto-writing, did not appear until around 7000 BC in central Europe, far too late.” . . . I am still reading the paper, and may be jumping the gun a bit, in positing that the REASON for burying the site was to preserve it for a time when the astronomical depictions could be read and comprehended in the vein in which the carvings were created. It seems possible that the caretakers at about 10,000 years ago became concerned that the deterioration of the site was proceeding more rapidly than human development toward a sufficient level of astronomy. (Certainly somebody at that later time was overseeing the site, if they took it upon themselves to bury it.) If its preservation was primary, burying it saved it for us to find in our current scientific period and not before. (This, if true, would imply that all the other enclosures and pillars – including ones in the un-excavated portions of the site – have MUCH to convey to us.)
— Let us express an appreciation for the authors’ suggestion that astronomy even EXISTED at 11,530 ya. At the same time, if true, it would vindicate Posnansky, who argued that the archaeoastronomy of Tiahuanaco shows THAT site to be 12,000 years old. If this holds up (as it may well do), we would have TWO sites with quite advanced astronomy, on opposite sides of the globe. There are ramifications to that realization.
I want to leave off there for the moment. Back later….
An interesting paper web published in the last ten years gives a different understanding of the date for tiahuanaco. Look up ‘the Dodwell Manuscript’ and have a look at real science right up the alley of impact effects and Earth Changing results.
Popeyesmotto
>>it would vindicate Posnansky, who argued that the archaeoastronomy of Tiahuanaco shows THAT site to be 12,000 years old.
I missed that somewhere.
Links?
Well, I seem to have remembered it a bit wrong. The number 12,000 has been in my head for 40 years. You can start with Wiki:
“In 1945, Arthur Posnansky[6][page needed] estimated that Tiwanaku dated to 15,000 BC, based on his archaeoastronomical techniques. In the 21st century, experts concluded Posnansky’s dates were invalid and a “sorry example of misused archaeoastronomical evidence.”[7]”
I googled “posnansky date tiahuanaco”.
13,000 BC – perhaps I remembered it as 12,000 BC.
I argue that GT must have a significant history of astronomy and architecture (as well as art) preceding it, because such an architecturally complex site could not come directly out of any hunter-gatherers like the pre-Natufians. I’ve guesstimated the preceding developments at at least 1500 years if not 3000. If not MORE. That gives Posnansky’s date. In terms of archaeoastronomy, Posnansky was using it so early in modern research. The current paper uses a cheat sheet software package. He had to do it in a time of LOGARITHMS. If you’ve EVER done trigonometry with logarithms (I have and LOTS), you’ve got to appreciate his efforts.
I would argue that the architecture is at the level of engineering, PER SE, as opposed to simple house builders or temple builders. Those T-columns are not your everyday post-and-lintel construction.
That high-relief sculpture of the animals is FAR in advance of many of our “normal” ancient civilizations’ artifacts. Those are eye-openers.
So has anyone tried Posnansky’s dating with modern software?
To my knowledge, no. One would think that GT would have made someone consider it.
There is both a good science project and possible an opportunity depending on the results.
The issue of “Date Stamp” for the TYD Hypothesis hits the “steady state” crowd right in their secular religious beliefs.
That is, catastrophic events undeniably recorded in human history and validated by independent geological scientific evidence.
“Denial” will be more than a river in Egypt for them.
Two passages from that article stood out regards the Göbekli Tepe Ancients.
This one regards astronomical knowledge —
“To reach this level of understanding, and to
have sufficient confidence in it to encode it in
a large megalithic structure, which undoubt-
edly requires considerable effort and organi-
sation, observations of precession had very
likely been made for many centuries, and
quite likely many millennia, before the con-
struction of enclosure D. The general orienta-
tion of the structures towards the pole stars of
earlier millennia reinforces this view, and
suggests observations possibly as far back as
12,000 BC, or perhaps even earlier.”
And this one regards how long a time had to have passed between TYD and it’s recording at the Göbekli Tepe site —
“Pillar 43 is embedded in the rough stone wall
of enclosure D, which has been dated to
around 9,530 BC to within 220 years. Yet the
date stamp of pillar 43 corresponds to around
10,950 BC (to within 250 years). It is therefore
very likely that Pillar 43 was constructed be-
tween these two dates, possibly just before the
rough stone wall. Moreover, other demonstra-
tions by this culture of their specialised
knowledge of stone-working and astronomy
might have existed between these dates in the
YD period. Given the considerable lead-time
in developing this knowledge, we should not
rule out even earlier demonstrations of these
specialisms before the YD period.”
The Göbekli Tepe was minimally in full scale operation twice the time the United State of America has been a nation-state!
A culture that can do anything on the scale of Göbekli Tepe for at least 500 years at the -presumed- level of technlogy credited to them is completely outside the frame of reference of modern archeology.
If for nothing else that the Göbekli Tepe building culture had to have a level of social stability to produce the surpluses necessary to maintain it for that period that is unmatched in recorded human history.
Sadly this —
“The alway depressing fact is that the U.S. science press has become so
overtly politicized that it has no ink for anything that does not extend
the narrative. There is no room for any serious, mitigable and global
“science” threat that does not involve polluters and conservatives as
the bad guys.”
Covers the true state of US Science journalism.
The UK Daily Mail has the best english language general audience science page, period.
Trent – this interface here today won’t let me reply to your next comment, so I am replying here. Sorry if it is out of sequence now. If it allows me to move this reply down to there later, I will try to remember to do that.
My anti-OE comments are not meant to argue against the long history of GT. The state of the architecture AND art totally imply a VERY long developed science and art. Our science is only 350 years old, really. (Aristotle was mostly unquantified pap – thinking off the top of his head and recording his thoughts.) Sweatman and Schmidt are asking us to accept a site with an active history of at least 1500 years – roughly equal to the time from the sacking of Rome till now. I don’t doubt that one iota.
Humans then had brains as big as ours, and we developed from Roman trebuches and aqueducts in about 2,000 years up to modern electronics and jetliners and space stations. So it is NOT out of the question to accept that they developed considerably, too, in those 1500 or more years.
I don’t see that level of architecture developing in less than 1500 years BEFORE its erection. Architecture is MUCH more complicated and complex than non-technical people can usually appreciate. It is not just throwing up lean-tos or skin tipis. Stonework itself is a technical development that GT’s level could not have come up to within less than 1500 years of sustained development.
(This line of thinking argues that Peru and Egypt with their VERY FINE stonework had to have had at least as much pre-development, as well. This shits all over any normal dating for Peruvian stone work; it would have had to have been begun before 0 AD to have reached its observed level by 1200 AD.)
But look at that time range. It is IN THE YOUNGER DRYAS ICE PERIOD – from start to finish.
What does that tell us? That AT the YDB, there was a society that had some serious and probably somewhat systematic architecture, AND that that society made it through the YD ice period.
I agree with the last sentence in that second quote you pasted in. The moment I first saw one of the GT pillars I knew the society for a LONG time before that construction had technology.
Screw the American arkies. It took them nearly 70 years of lying to the world about Clovis and its barrier. So WTF do they know? Jack squat. They are ALLOWED to know only certain things. What a serious handicap to the process of science and our history. IMVHO, 100 years from now 50% or more of what they currently insist is true will be shown to be in error – but it won’t stop them THEN from erecting NEW barriers to scientific inquiry.