[Bob Ireland]

Why 11,000 year old Göbekli Tepe was not a civilization:

It is established that Göbekli Tepe was built by hunter gatherers over about a 2,000 year span. So you can see why primitive savages could not be classified a civilization. To be a civilization - like Egypt - they would have had to have a written language to write down what the project of Göbekli Tepe was intended to be, how to go about planning it and how to design and build it - and pass it on from generation to generation.

As hunter gatherers almost all of their time would have been spent just staying alive and safe so they had no time for the arts or writing down things for 2,000 years to remind them of what they were supposed to do. Since their life spans would have been perhaps about 30 to 35 years they simply had no time to learn stone masonry, stone carving nor building large megalithic structures. Consequently all of this complex structural and art work is simply happenstance because they were too primitive to develop high civilization.

Imagine what they might have done had they been civilized!

[SunkenCiv]

Civilization is, plain and simple, living in cities. Nothing at all to do with writing.

[PIF]

It is established that Göbekli Tepe was built by hunter gatherers over about a 2,000 year span ...

It is established theorized that Göbekli Tepe was built by hunter gatherers over about a 2,000 year span. And more theorizing after that - no one knows what it was for, especially since only a fraction of the site has been opened.

[nomorelurker]

“Since their life spans would have been perhaps about 30 to 35 years they simply had no time to learn stone masonry, stone carving nor building large megalithic structures.”

Huh, that is right in the range for Mayans, Incas, Aztec (maybe shorter for them). They built complex large stone structures, carving, etc. etc.