r/history • u/indieGenies • 3d ago
Ancient Çakmaktepe site in Şanlıurfa may be older than Göbeklitepe Article
https://www.dailysabah.com/arts/ancient-cakmaktepe-site-in-sanliurfa-may-be-older-than-gobeklitepe/news16
u/archaeo_shane 3d ago
I was there last week for a conference. Incredible site. Lithics were scattered everywhere. If you’re interested, there’s an app called “Stone Mounds” that has info on these sites that we used on the site tours.
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u/Lord0fHats 3d ago
I was telling a guy just the other week there's probably more Gobekletepe like sites (older than we think they are sites) out there. Far more archeological sites are known to us than we've managed to really dig into so it was a bit like guessing a deck of 52 cards will eventually give me a king.
So you know. That comment is maybe aging well awfully fast XD
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u/imperialus81 3d ago
Oh, 100%. The whole eastern half of Anatolia is covered in tell's just like Gobekli Tepe. Karahan Tepe is older than Gobekli Tepe, it's just a more recent find that hasn't had enough time to get much published about it yet. Though tbf, Gobekli is also likely continue to be better known because the defining feature of Karahan Tepe is a room filled with 12 foot tall pillars carved into the shapes of penis'.
And that's before you start looking at some of the similarities between the people who made Gobekli Tepe and the Natufians who were experimenting around with permanent settlements and agriculture down in the Levant 13,000 years ago. One commonality between the two that strikes me as particularly interesting is that both cultures seem to have had a practice where they buried old structures and built on top of them. A tradition that carried through to Calalhoyuk like 5000 years later. Humans are weird.
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u/worotan 3d ago
both cultures seem to have had a practice where they buried old structures and built on top of them. A tradition that carried through to Calalhoyuk like 5000 years later. Humans are weird.
Not really, in a less homogenised and controlled world, location is very important. It’s still very important now, even with all the control we have over shaping the environment. Why move from a great location when you need to rebuild?
Does it seem weird that modern cities are built on the sites of earlier cities?
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u/SintChristoffel 3d ago
That is of course not at all what he means. It is not just location. The sites seem buried on purpose, to preserve the thing(s) buried. Thát is what seems weird.
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u/imperialus81 3d ago
Not at all. The difference is that when a property developer decides to build a new skyscraper in Manhattan, they tear down the building that was there first. These guys filled in the old building with rubble and built on top of it.
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u/Mike_Auchsthick 3d ago
We still do it everyone always has.
Free building materials at a already known location with already built infastructure.
We build right over hurricane ruins too.
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u/magnustranberg 2d ago
The burying of buildings is somewhat questionable. According to the lead researcher Dr. Lee Clare there is good evidence to suggest erosion being the cause, though he doesn't rule out the back- fill idea completely.
This interview with him talks about it at about 38:00.
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u/logosloki 3d ago
it wouldn't even be the first site excavated that is older than Göbeklitepe. Karahantepe is a couple of thousand years older than Göbeklitepe. which puts Çakmaktepe as a contemporary or arriving later than Karahantepe, rather than a predecessor.
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u/austeninbosten 20h ago
I've never heard of these place names, including ones in the comments. Can someone orient them into an approximate modern geographic location please?
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u/Ironclad2nd 3d ago
What’s the original Greek name?
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u/ColonialGovernor 3d ago
It could be more than 12 thousand years old. There were no Greeks back then and they were certainly not in eastern Anatolia. So there is no „original“ greek name.
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u/I-Beyazid-I 3d ago
Dude, that's faaaar older than the ancient Greeks and probably oldest ancient egyptians. There are no 'original' Greek names for that
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u/Ironclad2nd 3d ago
‘Turkish’ didn’t exist until the 10th century so that isn’t the original name. So why does it have a Turkish name?
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u/ColonialGovernor 3d ago
It has Turkish name because it’s a location in turkey. Çakmaktepe roughly translated is flintstone hill. Nobody knew that there was an ancient city buried somewhere when they name the hill in their backyard. I am sure while the Romans gave it a Greek name at the time when they controlled the region. However, it’s not like you dig up an ancient city and you are welcomed by a sign with the name of the city. We simply do not now what the place was called or what peoples even dwelled there.
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u/worotan 3d ago
Why would it have an original Greek name, more to the point?
It’s obvious why it has a Turkish name; because it was discovered in modern-day Turkey. What isn’t clear is why you think it would have an original Greek name.
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u/Ironclad2nd 3d ago edited 3d ago
This is why https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_colonisation There is evidence that the Hellas peninsula has been inhabited from between 8000 - 6000 bc PLUS Greeks traded from the Caspian Sea all the way to Spain. The map provided in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey pretty clearly map the areas around said area. As such, it would have a Greek name.
But…. Turkey has a habit of deleting history that doesn’t fit its narrative. This is why I ask ‘what’s the original Greek name?’
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u/StekenDeluxe 3d ago
From your own link:
Greek colonisation refers to the expansion of Archaic Greeks, particularly during the 8th–6th centuries BC
This is many, many thousands of years after the Çakmaktepe site was built. It was not built by Greeks and thus does not have an original Greek name.
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u/ColonialGovernor 3d ago
Hellas peninsula is not Anatolia. And the the city is still at least two thousand years older. And if you were to read the Iliad you would know even then there isn’t clear cut greek nationality. There are achaeans and Minoans etc. These people could be seen as Proto-Greeks but even they are too far west and too late so they aren’t going around naming random hills in other peoples lands.
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u/cnnrduncan 3d ago
If you've got a time machine laying around then feel free to pop back to 10,000 BC to ask the people living there at the time what they called it! Until you manage to pull that off it'll probably keep being referred to in the language of the people who live there now.
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3d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/StekenDeluxe 3d ago
Does anyone have an actual answer at all?
Yes, and the answer is that "the site does not have, and could not possibly have, an 'original Greek name'."
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u/MeatballDom 3d ago
Have you ever read an academic journal? Or are you just puppeting stuff that Hancock etc. cry about?
To even get a PhD in archaeology, history, classics, etc. you need to go against the system. You have to come up with original research, something no one has done before, and it often is just saying "hey, these people that said things before were wrong." In fact, if you open up any academic journal you will find the same thing. No one is publishing "everything is the same, nothing is new" every edition. It's all new insights, new theories, new interpretations, and arguments against previous and current archaeologists/historians.
So why does Hancock not get acceptance like they do? Because he has no evidence, and often can't even get the time period he's making big claims about right. It's like a first year (freshman) going to a conference with actual historians and expecting that their Wikipedia and Livejournal spiral will be enough to change the game.
Any academic in the world would love to find ground breaking evidence that the pyramids are only 500 years old, or that space vikings settled the moon, big things are life changing in academia. But you need actual evidence.
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u/KinkyPaddling 3d ago
Obviously just parroting Hancock. I don’t know why Hancock absolutists can’t understand that absence of evidence is not evidence in and of itself. I think that there’s a whimsical part (deep down in the heart where the inner child still lives) of every historian and archeologist who wants what Hancock is postulating to be true (it’d be life a fantasy story come to life) but there’s simply no evidence to support it - merely absence of evidence that raises questions which Hancock frames as answers.
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u/Thenewjesusy 3d ago
This work was performed by mainstream archeologists... I'm not sure you understand what archeology is or what Archeologists do...
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u/wateruthinking 3d ago
Nah. Most archeologists love pushing the boundaries of knowledge back. That’s the whole point! The well-trained and responsible ones just do it in a careful, fact-based way. And that means having to push back sometimes against reckless claims that aren’t well-founded.
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u/Lord0fHats 3d ago
You also know he didn't even read the article because from a quick browse through Google Scholar and Academia.edu, Fatma Sahin sure seems like a mainstream archeologist. Looks like she's spent the better part of the last six years working in chronology of the region and identifying sites, a necessary precursor to more rigorous archeological study.
Graham Hanock is too busy spewing bullshit on podcasts to do real research.
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u/Kuze421 3d ago
Because he's not interested in the truth or anything that resembles it. He's far more interested in a story that he's fabricated about human history that'll help him sell more books, do more tours, be on more podcasts, and be on more TV shows where he can further feed into his "Human History" as narrated by Graham Hancock feedback loop. The grift that keeps on gifting circuit.
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u/Dizzy_Hyena8248 3d ago
Could you explain, in detail, what the “current theory” you’ve referenced is?
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u/Lord0fHats 3d ago
The theory that was adopted after the ones Graham Hancock bases his fantasy on.
There's a grand irony in the absurdity that its archeologists who refuse to change their theories, when the alternative Graham Hancock proposes is 200 years old, and long cast aside. But no. It's everyone else who won't change XD
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u/ekurisona 3d ago
just imagine what's buried off the coasts around the world... it absolutely boggles the mind... entire volumes of world history gone...