Thanks for the information. Until I read the piece linked above, I had never known that it was supposed to have been created by Abraham and Ishmael. Did you get any archeological dating of the structure, or discussion of that creation legend, in the program you watched?
Starting from that point we have to note that at least one Turkish conqueror probably rebuilt it or repaired and pointed up the mortar. He did that to everything including the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Actually invented what can only be called the modern tradition of archaeological research.
I have it on good authority he had the same thoughts about buried Torahs I had so he had the grounds around the Kaaba dug up and examined thoroughly. Mohammad used a cave. The Sultan had that dug up and examined. He had Medina dug up and examined.
There's absolutely nothing anywhere that's associated with Mohammad and the Koran that has not been disturbed.
So, if someone tells you the Kaaba has to have so and so age because of radio carbon dating, just remember, not after those digs and the visits by tens of millions of folks who circle it on the Haj.
Imagine the grounds around any NAASCAR racetrack TIMES a million!
Now, how do you date something like that? Well, let's look at the Bible. It mentions Ishmael, and ignorning that Jewish/Moslem dispute over who was getting sacrificed a moment, do we have any idea when Abraham lived?
Well, that's about 2001 BC following the internal Biblical timeline. Although there are no cooborating texts that we know of the Sumerians had already invented writing and had passed it on to the Far East and to Egypt. The practice of accountancy was known (remember the Abraham/Isaac/Jacob story involving Joseph where he put a gold cup in the grain, and yet it was detected as missing). So that could actually date some of the material in the accounting of Abraham's part of the world to about 5500 BC, or 7,500 years ago with the rise of the Ubaid culture in Iraq. That, BTW, is a really interesting time ~ the Sahara dried up and drove the people in the interior to the Nile Valley. Most Timelines date the arrival of settlers in the Nile valley at about 5,500 years ago, with the arrival of writing (hieroglyphics) at about 5,100 years ago. Better timelines of more recent vintage date the first settlements at 7,000 years ago ~ with even earlier settlements in the South in Western Sudan.
The Black Sea was formed from the previous Black Lake about 8,000 years back, so stories about events there provide the oldest data we should be able to find associated with Abraham, or any other source ~ even the Sumerian tablets.
We now know, however, that people were working with CUT STONE as far back as 12,500 years ago in Eastern Anatolia ~ which is part of the Mesopotamian cultural complex and quite possibly a place equally accessible from Egypt.
They were doing quite intricate carvings. At some time about 8500 years ago people stopped building at the Turkey site and simply buried their last temple complexes.
So, let's say somebody who knew how to cut stone to build things went to the Oasis at Mecca ~ or actually, not the Oasis but a lake out in the middle of a vast grassland ~ which would not turn into a desert land until about 5500 years ago (in tune with the Sahara.).
Odds are there was little stone construction undertaken in the Arabian peninsula until the Sahara, and Arabia, returned to savannah like conditions, so it is possible people from that Anatolian temple culture could have gone there. That would make the oldest possible date for a stone structure at Mecca about 10,000 years ago give or take a couple of thousand years, but certainly by 8500 years ago.
So, Abraham, if the Koran has a passably correct record, could have well built that building ~ or built an altar that's been there long enough to have fossilized. It is entirely conceivable that the Kaaba is simply the last working temple complex leftover from the culture we've now found active in Eastern Anatolia at the beginning of the Younger Dryas.
This leads everybody to some real problems ~ but fortunately, all you have to do is agree that Abraham built the Kaaba and you leap ahead several thousand years to a time when Saudi is a desolate wilderness where Mecca is a rare oasis with a grassland suitible for herdsmen.
I suspect that eventually somebody is going to get away with doing some more advanced dating tests on a stone or two in the Kaaba and come up with a remarkably earlier date ~ taking it right out of Abraham's time.
You'll never hear about it, of course, because that would dispute the Koran!