Rewriting the dawn of civilization ( Was Göbekli Tepe the cradle of civilization? )

JoNova ^ | January 2nd, 2012 | Joanne

[anglian]

Beginning with a structural examination of the pillars, Banning suggests they are placed and buttressed in a manner that would have supported overhead wooden beams, which in turn would have been thatched. There are several hints (ranging from grooves and notches to wood) that this may in fact have been the case, and Banning has sketched one possible layout:
http://genealogyreligion.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Gobekli-draw-better.jpg Göbekli’s T-shaped pillars are arranged in the round and may seem completely unique (which they are in terms of size alone), yet it turns out that similar pillars and arrangements are found at other Neolithic sites in the area, and in several cases these structures are residential.

[Boogieman]

I’m with you about your skepticism on how some of these sites were constructed, but I don’t think there is any reason to think that aliens had anything to do with it. I think we simply underestimate the technology that was available at certain points in the ancient world.

Archaelogists seem to assume that people were as primitive as possible, until they find artifacts or documents that prove otherwise. I’m of the opinion that ancient man was just as intelligent and inventive as we are, though he had a smaller base of knowledge to draw on, and less opportunity to transmit new knowledge to others. So, I think a lot of these “anamolies” might be explained by local technologies that were either kept secret or just never had the opportunity to be transmitted and adopted on a wider scale.

For example, they’ve recently found evidence that ancients were using large, water-wheel powered band saws to cut stone blocks with precision in one location. It’s possible that this was more widespread and the mills just didn’t survive or haven’t been recognized as such since the archaeologists aren’t looking for them. Who knows what other technology the ancients had that was lost in the countless wars, razings of cities, and burnings of libraries that happened in the ancient world?

If we don’t need alien technology to make impressive stone monuments, then I figure there’s no reason to assume the ancients did either.

[wildbill]

I don’t see any water source for a mill/bandsaw anywhere near most of these sites located on hills or barren plateaus.

Have you seen the pics of the ruins of Puma Punku in Bolivia? Of all ancient ruins, Puma Punku is the most mystifying to me. Check out this story and accompanying pics.

http://daveearley.hubpages.com/hub/Ancient-Mysteries-Puma-Punku-in-Tiahuanaco

Note in the story that the stones are either granite or diorite which are extremely hard to cut and probably would need diamond cutting tools.

I don’t believe that you could develop the tools and the sophisticated technical knowledge of engineering without writing and a way to transmit the knowledge so you lose me there with the argument that somehow our same species was able to do all this and then completely lost the knowledge—on a worldwide basis. How and why?

I’m willing to be persuaded that civilizations 12,000 years ago had this technology and somehow we are left with only the ruins and not their tools—but I haven’t been persuaded yet. Remember that we haven’t found much of human existence on this planet back beyond 10-12,000 years.

I’m still looking for answers but I’m not sure why a visit from space by other worlders is more fantastic than the idea that Earth had insanely technological human societies that appeared full blown and then degenerated into primititive human societies.

[Boogieman]

“I don’t see any water source for a mill/bandsaw anywhere near most of these sites located on hills or barren plateaus.”

Yes, but the power source isn’t the essential element, you could just as easily power it by a team of oxen or donkeys pushing a wheel around. The essential thing is that some ancients at least were able to construct machine tools that were not too far from what we use today.

I haven’t heard of that site, thanks I will check it out. Regarding the granite/diorite, it’s very hard yes, but diamonds aren’t required to cut it, just to cut it more effectively. You could just do it with sand and water but it would take much longer. That’s why the “ancient aliens” hypothesis doesn’t pass Occam’s razor, as far as I’m concerned. All these structures are explicable by means that are less far-fetched than aliens flying all this way just to teach us how to build big buildings.

In some cases, we do have both the monuments and the tools, and there isn’t that much mystery as to how they were constructed. The Giza pyramids, for example, we have tools and toolmarks and half-quarried blocks that let us know with a certainty that humans milled these stones. We may not know the exact method they used to stack them up, but we know humans cut the rocks out, so there’s no reason to assume the rest wasn’t done by humans as well.

I think you are probably underestimating the odds of alien contact, while overestimating the technology needed to build these monuments. They are impressive, but at the same time, it doesn’t take a lot of advanced knowledge to figure out how to cut and move stones, just some simple machines, a little ingenuity, and a lot of manpower.

I also don’t think we lost the knowledge or technology to do these things. We never forgot how to build pulleys, ramps, saws, wedges, etc. We may have lost specific know how about building techniques, but that isn’t a big mystery. Someone in modern day France might have a hell of a time trying to build a Gothic Cathedral nowadays, even though we know they were built by man. We just don’t use the same techniques as those builders, because we came up with easier or more effective techniques. Once humans figured out how to cast concrete and fire mass amounts of brick effectively, we probably had no need to use those old stone building techniques anymore, and they died out with the masons who knew them.

[Boogieman]

Oh another thing that you said in an earlier post that I wanted to address... the ancient bronze tools comment. There is a lot of misconception about ancient tools. Most people still think bronze tools were inferior, because everyone knows the Bronze Age came before the Iron Age. Actually, bronze is harder, lighter, easier to shape, and less brittle than iron, so it is in all ways a better metal for tools and weapons than iron was. It was not until steel tools became prevalent that we had better hand tools than bronze ones.

The reason the Iron Age follows the Bronze Age is not because the tools became better, just more widely available. Bronze was hard to come by because tin is quite a rare metal, where iron can be found nearly anywhere. Once people figured out how to refine iron into a halfway decent substitute for bronze, its use exploded, even though the tools were actually inferior. Perhaps that is one reason that these monuments fell out of favor as well. The new tools just might not have gotten the job done.

[SunkenCiv]