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Comment by waserwill | Hacker News Reader

The assumption, as seen in the first set of bullet points, has been: agriculture -> sedentary lifestyle -> large monuments. The discovery of Gobekli Tepe suggests that (in at least some cases), large monuments came first. This is unexpected because there was assumed to be (1) no reason for such monuments before sedentary life (anthropological, i.e. the formation of organised religions was supposed to coincide with the organisation of hierarchies in sedentary life), and (2) not enough manpower to construct such architecture (i.e. nomads wouldn't come together for months to build permanent structures).

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Gobekli Tepe may be comparable to Stone Hench in time. That was not a permanent settlement. I think this was not, as well. Seclusion and secrecy is part of religion, so it wouldn't be reasonable to build amidst a sprawling cohort anyway. If it was started as a central hub, the need was maybe not originally religious but it would have been in a good position to be cultivated religiously once the need became obvious.

Indeed, it is not a permanent settlement. Suggestions as to its usage generally agree that is was used for several months a year for centuries or millenia, with gatherings of several groups. The monuments of Stonehenge were built by pre-Celtic agriculturalists in Great Britain, not by per-agricultural peoples. Questions remain: why would people aggregate where they did; how would they sustain themselves in a semi-permanent settlement (months at a time) without agricultural products? (Livestock had recently been domesticated by this point, but need to be moved regularly to graze.)

The assumption of its being religious is simple: it isn't shelter, and it has imagery resembling later depictions of religious figures in the region. Religion here is a more general term to encompass the intersection of culture and spirituality. Was it originally non-religious? If so, why aggregate for months to build a structure, before trade was valuable or very necessary?

Isn't the concept of trade not being valuable sort of contradictory? Even without the concept of individual ownership, the precondition would seem to merely be that something is valued. Trade is not (remotely) unique to humans, and I don't think it's possible that human society would ever have been without it.

I mean trade as an institution, not just sporadic interpersonal bartering and sharing; more like merchants, trade routes, and the like. Exchange is not unique to man; trade, as such, is.

Trade becomes more worthwhile when communities begin to specialise. When people are nomadic, they cross many lands, and can simply find what they want on the way (obsidian from the mountains, shells by the sea, berries, roots, and game in forests). When people begin to stay in one place, long distance travel for trade becomes more valuable. As soon as agriculture develops, we discover that obsidian shards from deposits in the Caucasus are found thousands of miles away in central Europe. You begin to have towns focusing on a specific resource, or serving a trade route as goods and people criss-cross the land (Jericho, among the earliest known cities, for example, was possibly involved in the trade of salt; few things can grow in the soil near it).

Forgive me; I'm not really seeing what fundamental distinction you're trying to draw between these two categories of activity.

You cannot see the difference between two acquaintances exchanging goods and a merchant loading his pack, traveling long distances to make profit from trade?

It is the same as between a spat and a war; gathering in a forest and farming. It is in scale and in character, a different beast.

A difference in degree, not in kind.

I've been learning a bunch about the early/mid bronze age recently, and my understanding is that they co-developed. In a lot of ways the temples were repositories of information infrastructure to handle large groups of people. Writing for instance developed in the temples in order to keep track of agricultural stockpiles and essentially to run their economies.

That depends a lot on which bronze age you're referring to! Different civilisations developed a little differently, particularly where writing is concerned. While in Egypt, writing developed out of central records, it likely developed (slightly earlier) in Mesopotamia as an expansion of a token system, used to ensure counts of livestock, etc.

It should also be noted that Gobekli Tepe was built several millenia before the beginning of the near-eastern Bronze Age. The reason it IS so fascinating is its having been built millenia before agriculture. The systems of religion, administration, and agriculture, did co-develop, but could only do so after the agricultural revolution.

would be interesting to see this assumption contrasted against the monuments of more modern nomadic peoples such as the mongols. Nomads still need gathering points to trade etc.

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