The Oldest Religious Structures & Ancient Aliens?

Marduk said:
I remember reading that the climatology of the area affected the levels of game, the region, once lush dried out, the temple eventually abandoned completely, that has paralells with pyramids, up to a point they got more impressive, but then they went into decline as their value diminished in light of new religious practices. In this case, what effect would dwindling natural resources have on the skill shown in a religious construction built by a hunter gatherer culture ?

"bugger this" said the last priest of Gobekli Tepe "I'm moving with the times and am gonna try out this new fangled agriculture thing I keep hearing so much about"

;)
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Yeah thats a fair point - there must have been a healthy surplus of resources and population to able to divert people away from simply surviving. As the area continued to dry - well people needed to spend more time living and less on the business of artwork
 
Decline in level of craftsmanship over time has historical precedence in other areas, as well -- for example in representational art in the Middle Ages. Hellenistic and Roman statuary from say 200 BCE - 200 CE is remarkably lifelike, proportionally accurate, sensitive to subtle fluctuations in human musculature, skin texture, etc.

By the Byzantine era, however, that characteristic lifelike quality had begun to decline, until by the Middle Ages the art of representational sculpture (and painting) had seemingly been lost... even though many examples remained, available and accessible for study.

By the Gothic era, prior to the Renaissance, painting and sculpture had become flat, symbolic, decidedly un-lifelike. The level of sophistication and technical skill had simply declined over the centuries, just as it appears to have happened at Gobekli Tepe with regard to the monumental pillars.
 
Vortigern99 said:
I've just read the above-linked article at Nat Geo. ... Truly, deeply, fascinating stuff about the very origins of civilization.
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Agreed.

Once one understands that at the very least, wild grain and wild game were available to people of the area, and that permanent settlements are a known and moderately well-understood facet of late hunter-gatherer groups, there is no need to appeal to alien intervention to explain how such a complex structure (or series of structures) as Gobekli Tepe came to be engineered.
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Agreed again. :D Once food and shelter were taken care of, the people had nothing else to do but study and learn. I visited Machu Picchu once and there were these flat discs on the ground with raised edges like a frying pan. The guide said that archaeologists had been trying to figure out what they were, and it turns out the Incas would fill them with water and use them as mirrors to observe the stars and planets without having to crane their necks. And :tinfoil people think aliens influenced South and Meso-American cultures with astronomy??? What the hell else were they going to do when the sun went down?
 
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TimCallahan said:
Edge: There are, repeatedly, claims of the following sort:

1) Some ancient city or religious monument is far older than conventional archaeology says it should be.

No, actually, it's only some individual whack-jobs who assert this to be true.

2) There are ancient structures that could not have been erected except by modern technology.

This smacks of modern hubris: Those ignorant primitives couldn't possibly have done this. Actually, modern experiments have been done showing how monuments such as Stonehenge, for example, can be built using simple technology.

3) The scientists are trying to suppress this new evidence.

4) Sumerian civilization appeared suddenly, with no indication of anything transitional from the neolithic.

This seemed to be true until excavations in the 1980s revealed a whole series
of archaeological strata showing a continuum of increasingly complex cultures from a typical neolithic stratum all the way up to the beginnings of Sumerian civilization proper.

Just because something is listed as "unexplained" doesn't mean there isn't any possible explanation for it, and we must instantly jump to either space aliens or God. It simply means that all answers don't immediately present
themselves. Like all sciences, archaeology is not static. New data is always coming in.
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Extremely good post. Destined to be ignored, or at least not to be properly answered, by Edge.
 
edge said:
I have always said the timelines are off.
I find it pretty interesting.
If you take what they remembered and science the only evidence for a flood event of any proportions had to occur about 12,000- years ago.
I think the timelines that science relies on are slightly off too; if you add these two issues into consideration then we have what we have here at these sites.
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Fancy that, instead of coming to the conclusion that the timeline is "utterly false and never happened", you conclude that the timeline is "off" and mention science. I will await eagerly your "science" mention of a world wide flood (there was never a flood of any proportion as described in the bible, as at most a very subset of a middle east region might have flooded, and that's not even a jewish story, that's a sumerian one IIRC).
 
This whole thread reminds me of Red Dwarf:
Red Dwarf said:
Lister: Your explanation for anything slightly peculiar is aliens, isn't it? You lose your keys, it's aliens. A picture falls off the wall, it's aliens. That time we used up a whole bog roll in a day, you thought that was aliens as well.
Rimmer: Well we didn't use it all, Lister. Who did?
Lister: Rimmer, ALIENS used our bog roll?
Rimmer: Just cause they're aliens doesn't mean to say they don't have to visit the little boys' room. Only they probably do something weird and alien-esque, like it comes out of the top of their heads or something.
Lister: Well I wouldn't like to be stuck behind one in a cinema.
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TimCallahan said:
Edge: There are, repeatedly, claims of the following sort:

1) Some ancient city or religious monument is far older than conventional archaeology says it should be.

No, actually, it's only some individual whack-jobs who assert this to be true.

2) There are ancient structures that could not have been erected except by modern technology.

This smacks of modern hubris: Those ignorant primitives couldn't possibly have done this. Actually, modern experiments have been done showing how monuments such as Stonehenge, for example, can be built using simple technology.
3) The scientists are trying to suppress this new evidence.

4) Sumerian civilization appeared suddenly, with no indication of anything transitional from the neolithic.

This seemed to be true until excavations in the 1980s revealed a whole series of archaeological strata showing a continuum of increasingly complex cultures from a typical neolithic stratum all the way up to the beginnings of Sumerian civilization proper.

Just because something is listed as "unexplained" doesn't mean there isn't any possible explanation for it, and we must instantly jump to either space aliens or God. It simply means that all answers don't immediately present themselves. Like all sciences, archaeology is not static. New data is always coming in.
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lionking said:
Extremely good post. Destined to be ignored, or at least not to be properly answered, by Edge.
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I second your opinion, lionking.
Marduk, what, no Lemuria?:(

Am I right in thinking edge is angling for a Fludd dated around 12,000 bce?
I'll be interested to see how that fits in with the bibical geneologies.
Will we get evidence of dinos co-habiting with humans, too?
 
edge said:
Dude wake up that explains nothing and is the old way of keeping history the same.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, people are changing their minds and many say that history is wrong and will have to be re-written.


I'll leave it here for now and will have to ready another post, have at it.
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Um really, that is your evidence?

Not the actual stuff but your CT ?
 
MG1962 said:
Okay I have read the whole thread - One question. This gear they have in Turkey...11,000 years old - What do trained experts in the field say? Cause if it is really that old - thats some funky stuff to consider
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Um, there is some evidence for early agriculture in north africa even earlier than that, but the dating of the structures would be key, my guess is that they used radio-dowsing of some sort or perhaps spirit tomography.
 
MG1962 said:
Reading that Nat Geo article, I cant help wonder what is out there still to be discovered. People dont just start building structures like that without a little practice or experimentation.

Once we find those, then we can really fill in the gaps
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Um, stone stays, wood and bone do not except in very rare circunstances.

So preswervation windows lead to all sort of strange things.

Like the magdalenian revolution, the 'sudden' rise of small portable art and advanced wood, bone and string technologiesm supposedly showing the superiority of the europeans over every one else.

All a preservation artifact.
 
how's about this for old
75,000 years ago early humans built a stone calendar that predates all other man-made structures found to date. This ‘African Stonehenge’ has for the first time created a link to the countless other stone ruins in southern Africa and suggests that these ruins are much older than we thought. The complex that links Waterval Boven, Machadodorp, Carolina and Dullstroom, covers an area larger then modern-day Johannesburg.
http://thecrit.com/2009/01/22/discovering-the-oldest-man-made-structures-on-earth/
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Dancing David said:
Um, there is some evidence for early agriculture in north africa even earlier than that, but the dating of the structures would be key, my guess is that they used radio-dowsing of some sort or perhaps spirit tomography.
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Dave I am not disputing the age or out ability to date the site - But with stories like this, the internet is notorious for finding reliable information.

Being this has been the first I have heard of this site, and the information is well outside what we thought we knew of that period of time, my skeptic radar is going to be active. Fortunately linking a National Geo article gives the findings the sort of authority I was looking for
 
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edge said:
The Yonaguni Monument is a massive underwater rock formation off the coast of Yonaguni, the southernmost of the Ryukyu Islands, in Japan. There is a debate as to whether the site is completely natural, a natural site that has been modified, or a manmade artifact.[/quote\
from your link.
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I think that only woos would debate that.
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edge said:
The Yonaguni Monument is a massive underwater rock formation off the coast of Yonaguni, the southernmost of the Ryukyu Islands, in Japan. There is a debate as to whether the site is completely natural, a natural site that has been modified, or a manmade artifact.
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from your link.
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What information do you have about it's religious significance?
 
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MG1962 said:
Dave I am not disputing the age or out ability to date the site - But with stories like this, the internet is notorious for finding reliable information.

Being this has been the first I have heard of this site, and the information is well outside what we thought we knew of that period of time, my skeptic radar is going to be active. Fortunately linking a National Geo article gives the findings the sort of authority I was looking for
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I searched google to help find more on the site, but found very little.
My searching did uncover other things, though.
About the people who discovered it.
Michael Tellinger also wrote a book named: Slave Species of God - The Story of Humankind from the Cradle of Humankind
Here is one review of the book: http://www.forteantimes.com/reviews/books/70/slave_species_of_god.html
 
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