>>13956468Whoever built Gobekli Tepe predated Sumer by around 6,500 years. No known writing, but at least they were building with stone and carving symbols and images into it that appear to have meaning beyond what the image specifically is. So Sumer is the oldest one we know a lot about because they are the oldest civilization with writing we have thus far found. But Gobekli Tepe is TWICE AS OLD. And that civilization was clearly sophisticated, organized, and employing stone-cutting technology in addition to farming and organized religion. So I'd argue that at least the Gobekli Tepe civilization is the oldest we know if, dating back right up to the Ice Age at AT LEAST 11,500 years old. Since Gobekli Tepe looks like a mountain temple and a place of pilgrimage, obviously this civilization had other sites, likely larger and more advanced. It looks like this civilization farmed to some extent and gathered their harvests, bringing some to Gobekli Tepe, possibly (though it's speculative) as an offering of some sort.
This civilization clearly was advanced (by the standards of the natural hunter-gatherer state of our species), sophisticated, and organized. They moved stone, worked it, and cut it. They farmed and engaged in animal husbandry. And they did all this 6,500 years before Sumer. So that brings up some questions. Was this civilization the "first"? If not, were there others like it scattered throughout the region? The world? If most civilizations were concentrated on coastlines and near river mouths or along major waterways (like all of the earliest known ones were), were they mostly wiped out when sea levels rose 400 feet at the end of the Ice Age? If so, most of the evidence is underwater off coastlines or buried under seas that were once rivers.
I think we are missing many chapters in the history of our species. No schizoid shit needed. These places and these civilizations are just lost to time.
