Thread

12,000-year-old Göbeklitepe burials explain scattered bones

172 points · 55 comments · yusufaytas

culi · 1790642109 · focus · HN ↗
More evidence for David Graeber and David Wengrow's reading of the site.
Between Göbekli Tepe, Poverty Point, Cahokia, and other sites we have pretty good evidence of complex urban societies that did not rely on agriculture. And even in these few sites we have abundant evidence of diversity of social structures from radically egalitarian to hierarchical
The linear narrative of the evolution of human societies is dead
1. protocolture · 1790652755 · focus · HN ↗
  >The linear narrative of the evolution of human societies is dead
  This is I guess one of the bigger problems with Graeber, like when he was attacking Silicon Valley he demonstrated he had absolutely no idea what he was arguing against.
  Likewise, armchair reading of human social development has never appeared to be linear to me. Palace Economy > Crash > Temple Economy > Crash seems pretty damn standard. I was watching an old documentary on the socioeconomic development of Egypt and it looks like they discovered and rediscovered several important social and economic reforms, that were then lost and rediscovered by themselves and other societies over and over again.
  The question is, was Graeber an idiot and just didn't know what he was talking about or was Graeber just another grifter like Hancock who relies on misrepresenting other peoples arguments for financial gain.
  1. 6P58r3MXJSLi · 1790675086 · focus · HN ↗
    "linear" here means that the usual narrative is
    hunter-gatherers → agriculture → permanent settlements → cities → states → civilization
    the usual reasoning is
    agriculture → surplus → settlement → religion/monumental architecture
    it's not at all about civilizations and/or empires collapsing and being reborn in different shapes or social and economic reforms being rediscovered, that already implies some highly sofisticated form of society, while places like Göbekli Tepe predates the pyramids by 5.000 years
    protocolture · 1790719805 · focus · HN ↗
    Again I don't see the comparison being made?
    Like we known hunter gatherers had social hierarchy, settlements and crafts.
    <a href="https://www.heritagedaily.com/2023/01/preserved-10500-year-old-stone-age-hunter-gatherer-settlement-discovered/145983" rel="nofollow">https://www.heritagedaily.com/2023/01/preserved-10500-year-o...
    “These aren’t people that were struggling to survive. They were people confident in their understanding of this landscape, and of the behaviours and habitats of different animal species that lived there,” added Gray.
    <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020ArchP..27..329T/abstract" rel="nofollow">https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020ArchP..27..329T/abstra...
    "Their social organization was complex and can even be compared with that of the Levantine Early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) farming society."
    It seems like Graeber was fighting a strawman?
    applicative · 1790728315 · focus · HN ↗
    The book is Wengrow and Graeber. Your references post date their work - Graeber has been dead for years. Much of the material under discussion is in this 2015 essay.[^1] In fact of course settled hunter gatherers, so to call them, have been known for decades, e.g. Jomon Japan; this isn't the issue anywhere.
    Some of the spectacular phenomena and constructions they attempt to explain depend on non-settlement for much of the year. But in temperate regions even in the eurasian ice age we find seasonal congregation of huge populations in conditions of temporary abundance e.g. salmon runs, seasonal migration of game through narrow alpine chasms, etc. A leading motif is that in these congregations surprising phenomena can emerge e.g. insane stone works, temporary political structure, etc. Thus also the discussion of ice-age burials like that in Sunghir Russia 30,000 years ago a couple boys buried with "10,000 hand-carved mammoth ivory beads, fox teeth pendants, and finely crafted mammoth ivory spears"
    [^1]: <a href="https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/62756/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRARY_Secondary_libfile_shared_repository_Content_Graeber%2C%20D_Farewell%20to%20childhood_Graeber_Farewell%20to%20childhood_2015.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/62756/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRAR...
    protocolture · 1790735480 · focus · HN ↗
    >Graeber has been dead for years.
    Yeah I have been trying to "was" him as much as possible.
    >Your references post date their work
    Yep but theres no conspiracy to hide these facts that only the brave Graeber can explain through the medium of book sales.
    >Jomon Japan
    Yeah I am faintly remembering something about their giant burial cairns or something.

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