In the Göbekli Tepe series opener, I noted that several claims have been made about this 11,000 year old archaeological site:
It was built by nomadic hunter-gatherers rather than sedentary or village agriculturalists.
It was a religious or ritual pilgrimage center that attracted people from far and wide.
The massive stone pillars or megaliths were “temples” or “shrines.”
Göbekli [...]
Tags:Anna Belfer-Cohen·complex hunter-gatherers·Edward Banning·Gobekli Tepe·houses·Klaus Schmidt·Levant·megaliths·monoliths·Neolithicization·Neolithization·Nigel Goring-Morris·shrines·So Fair a House·temples
The 11,000 year old archaeological site of Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey is undoubtedly one of the most important in the world. German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt began the ongoing excavations at Göbekli in 1994. Besides being a huge undertaking (less than 5% of the site has been uncovered), the finds — and claims associated with [...]
Tags:agriculture·earliest religion·Edward Banning·farming·foraging·Garden of Eden·Gobekli Tepe·Klaus Schmidt·megalithic·Neolithic Revolution·Neolithic transition·oldest church·pilgrimage center·ritual site·So Fair a House·temples·Turkey
As you can see from Texas A&M’s anthropology aggregating site (which is one of my favorite places on the net), at least a dozen stories have appeared in the past week about new archaeological finds near Stonehenge. Using ground penetrating radar and other non-invasive technology, archaeologists have discovered another henge — which was wooden, approximately [...]
Tags:Aztecs·Babylon·barrows·burial grounds·chieftains·city-states·cosmology·Druids·Egypt·elites·empires·ground penetrating radar·materialism·Mayans·megalithic·megalithic architecture·megalithic structures·pagan·pyramids·royal family·Stonehenge·Sumeria·symbolism·temples·unilineal evolution·Woodhenge·ziggurats
In a previous post, Religious Wars and Nationalism, I discussed two factors that play a major role in group cohesion. The first factor, which played a dominant role for the majority of human evolution, was extended and fictive kinship. This is what primarily held groups together during the Paleolithic. After the Neolithic Revolution, another factor [...]
Tags:Benedict Anderson·Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Revisiting Civil Religion·Carolyn Marvin·Civil Religion·David Ingle·Durkheim·group cohesion·group identity·group level selection·guardians of faith·high priests·hymnals·Imagined Communities·kinship·liturgy·nationalism·Neolithic Revolution·Paleolithic·patriotism·patriots·religion·religiosity·religious violence·ritual leaders·ritual objects·Robert Bellah·sacred places·sacred texts·saints·temples·totemism·totems
It was with great sadness that I read a recent article in the New York Times documenting the pillaging and destruction of Mesopotamian archaeological sites in Iraq. Although these Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian sites — and previous excavations — receive scant attention outside small groups of antiquities scholars, they are of critical importance to our [...]
Tags:Akkad·Akkadian·anthropomorphic deities·anthropomorphism·Babylon·Babylonian·Christianity·city-states·cosmology·earliest religion·Enlil·heavenly order·Iraq·Islam·Judaic·Judaism·Mesopotamia·Mesopotamian·monotheism·Muslim·polytheism·Samuel Noah Kramer·Sumer·Sumerian·Sumerian pantheon·temples·The Sumerians·Ubaid·Ubaidian·Ur·ziggurats
