Was there a civilization that existed 13 000 years ago?

Rich wrote:



Thomas McDonald replied:
"Rich" wrote in message

snip


I think you have it the wrong way round myself. The above is from
dictionary.com and I think it's got it right.

TSM: Not for this discussion; unless you prefer imrecision and flames.

I assume you mean 'imprecision'. That would require that there exists some
exact definition of civilization. That does not seem to be the case as
far as I can tell, the word is not precicely defined, ergo we are
stuck with imprecision. As for flames, it goes with the territory,
I don't see any way to avoid em.

Rich,

Yup, it's embarrassing to be making a point about the value of
precision while making such a typo.

As for the variety of definitions available, I think it's important to
at least come to a workable definition for a particular discussion, or
people will talk past each other. If by "civilized" one means things
like treating others well and having some cultural elements more
sophisticated than "uncivilized" neighbors, then we are very unlikely to
be able to know anything about that from the late ice age. That's
because we can usually only see such a culture by what of it has lasted
for the ca. 10,000 + years since the purported "civilization" existed.
Therefore it makes more sense to me to define it in this discussion in
archaeological, operational terms. That's why I suggested hierarchy,
differentiation and specialization, public works, public space, evidence
of extractive activities at remote sites with finished manufacture at
more central sites, etc. That can all be seen in the archaeological record.


If you disagree point to a city that existed then.

Trivial (for prehistoric cities, a category you call a null set).

http://abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s768954.htm

Ruins of 4,300-year-old prehistoric city found in China

Chinese archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a prehistoric
city dating back an estimated 4,300 years in southwest Sichuan province,
state press said.

The find provided evidence that the region along the upper reaches of
the Yangtze River, with the Chengdu Plain at the core, played an
important role in the origin and development of Chinese civilization,
experts said.

TSM: So what? Jericho is much older, and has been mostly
continually lived
in.

I posted an example, there are many. Do you have a point?

Yup. My point is that evidence of cities (major civilization
markers)less than, say, 6,000 years ago in the mid-Holocene (early
Neolithic) is not evidence of cities or civilization in the late
Pleistocene.


-------------------------------------

http://www.telesterion.com/catal1.htm

CATAL HUYUK

The Temple City of Prehistoric Anatolia

[...]

The oldest layer of Catal Huyuk yet excavated (virgin soil has not
been
reached) is reliably carbon dated to 6,500 B.C,, and reveals a thriving,
completely developed and planned, city.

They existed, their remains exist today.

Rich

TSM: Nope. I've studied the literature on Catal Huyuk, seen many of
its
artifacts, and visited the Smithsonian's traveling exhibit on it. It
was
large for its time, but it was a village. While the houses were
built to a
general plan, they were each built by their owners, not by specialist
builders. There is no public space at all, and religious spaces are
found
in each house, not in any "temple". (The "Temple City" business is
wrong on
both points.)

http://ancientneareast.tripod.com/Catal_Hoyuk.html

Only one acre of the thirty-two acre mound has been systematically
excavated, recorded, and reported. This was Catal Huyuk, the ancestress
of all other cities, a unique Temple City that was the religious center
of the first great prehistoric civilization .....

I don't know, it seems a bit early to close the book on what is there and
what is not. This web page is dated April 2003 BTW.

I'm not closing the book. I'm talking about what we know at this
point. It's always possible that what I know will be superceded by
later work. However, I am not willing to go beyond the evidence to
postulate "a unique Temple City" on current evidence that does not
support that interpretation. If you are willing to go beyond the
evidence, we may not have lots to talk about.


There was no agriculture requiring public works or major communal
efforts.

http://archaeology.about.com/library...ms=Catal+Hoyuk


On the yellow plains of central Anatolia lie the remains of one of
the oldest civilizations on earth. Called ?atalh?y?k, the site ruins
represent a village of 300 mud brick and plaster residences, based on
a farming economy--in fact, the first farming community we've found to
date. The site was occupied from about 6300-5500 bc, and its most
striking and famous feature are the shrines, shrines dedicated to
what has been called the "Mother Goddess."

How can a farming economy not require "public works or major communal
efforts"?

Because it wasn't (at least in its earliest days) a farming community.
And your point is well taken. It is my point. No evidence of public
works or major communal efforts have been found yet there.

You've been using general websites, or websites with a drum to bang.
Here's the website of the current excavators of Catal Huyuk, led by Ian
Hodder of Stanford University. I assume you'd be interested in the
actual reports of people doing work there, and value them over others
who haven't had that experience?

http://catal.arch.cam.ac.uk/catal/catal.html


http://users.hol.gr/~dilos/prehis/prerm5.htm

The village of Chatal Huyuk is the largest Neolithic site in the Near
East covering 13 hectares. It was founded in c.7000 BC and the
settlement grew rapidly and became a prosperous and well-organized
community. The inhabitants of Chatal Huyuk grew mainly wheat, barley
and peas. They supplemented their diet by apples, hackberries, almonds
and acorns, which were collected locally. The principal meat source was
cattle although it seems that wild animals were also important, judging
from the wall paintings portraying the hunting of red deer, boar and
onagers.

Onagers? Oh well.

Notice that your reference calls Catal Huyuk a "village", not a city.
While CH-ians might have farmed later in their history, the early folks
gathered the abundant resources nearby. All the foods mentioned grow
wild in that neck of the woods, and the variety of terrain around the
village would have presented fine gathering potential before agriculture
was necessitated.


http://campus.northpark.edu/history/...ettledAgr.html

While it is often described as the "Agricultural Revolution," the
development of settled societies took several millennia after the first
discovery of agriculture. Moreover, this process occurred at different
times in different parts of the world based on the domestication of
different plants. If one is going to speak in term of revolution,
one might better speak in terms of "agricultural revolutions."

c. 10,000 BC: Beginnings of Settled Agriculture
o 10,000 BC: First agricultural villages
o 10,000 BC: Invention of the bow and arrow
o 10,000 BC: Dogs and reindeer are domesticated
o 10,000 BC: Beginnings of settled agriculture
o 10,000 BC: Earliest pottery (Japan)
c. 8,000 to 6,500 BC: Settled Agriculture in Mesopotamia
o c. 7,000: Beginning of Settled Agricultural Revolution
o c. 6,500-5,650 BC: Catal Hulyuk

I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but it seems clear that some large
scale agriculture was going on, you'd need it to feed 6,000 for a thousand
years.

No, that's the point. CH was in many ways unique, and one way was its
siting at the convergence of at least thee main environments, all of
them highly productive without agriculture.

I am not at all sure of some of the dates in that list, either. For
instance, the bow was present much earlier in some areas (e.g. Africa),
while it didn't make an appearance in North America until ca. 700 AD.


The village's location (at the meeting of
foothill/plains/river valley) was naturally rich enough in resources to
support a large (ca. 5000 souls) population without agriculture.

Odd then that so many sources claim it was agriculturally based. How do you
account for this?

As I noted, many of the plants used early on at CH were wild versions
of plants that were beginning to be domesticated elsewhere. But there
is no reason to get into agriculture (a high-risk, high-input effort)
when natural food supplies are abundant and near. I can't think of many
cases where, when faced with the choice, people voluntarily chose to
become agriculturalists. It's a lot more work that hunting and
gathering; it is precarious, since the failure of one crop can mean
starvation, while h-g's can generally just switch to another food
source; and it's not anything like as much fun as hunting and gathering.

There seems to be an idea abroad that once people discovered/invented
agriculture, it was such a wonderful idea that it took off right away.
Not so.


There was
trade, but there is no indication that there was specialize, centralized
manufacture of the trade items.

http://users.hol.gr/~dilos/prehis/prerm5.htm

Most raw materials had to be imported and the village became the
center of a trading complex, dealing in a wide range of items - timber,
obsidian, flint, copper, shells. The craftsmen produced mainly
arrowheads, daggers of flint and obsidian, stone maceheads, baked
clay and carved stone figurines, textiles, wooden vessels and pottery.
Trinkets such as copper heads and lead pendants were also produced,
and copper-smelting.

http://members.aol.com/wprehist/3250s09.htm

# Lots of craft production

* stone beads, figurines, and vessels
* grinding equipment
* greenstone axes and adzes
* native copper and lead beads
* ochres and other pigments
* exceptional flaked stonework that could only have been made
by skilled specialists
* ground obsidian mirrors
* woven wool textiles, maybe as complex as modern Turkish rugs,
if the wall paintings are representations of them
* wooden cups, platters, boxes
* seals made of pottery, possibly for applying paint to textiles,
or for body painting (not used on clay, like later seals)
* pottery was crude and rare early in the occupation; by 6725 BC
they were making plain cooking pots; minimal painted lines, no
plastic decoration
* i.e. clearly at least part-time craft specialists, probably some
degree of interdependence and exchange for products made by
others
o this is much more marked at ?atal H?y?k than at Jericho

( This is a very informative page, although only an outline)

There seems to be some disagreement about this as well.

My point was not that there were no specialists. It was that there
didn't seem to be a centralized economic base in CH. Certainly
individuals, and maybe families, did specialize in some things; but
there seems to have been no central political or economic authority
controlling them. Again, over such a long time, there might have been
variation, and later things might have been more organized that
formerly; but the archaeological evidence does not seem to support the
idea that CH ever was the center of an organized political, economic or
religious empire/confederation/etc. As would be required to consider it
a civilization.


It was probably very influential, and it
lasted for perhaps over a thousand years; but it never was a city,
and it
was never the center of a 'civilization', sensu strictu.

http://users.hol.gr/~dilos/prehis/prerm5.htm

Many features of Chatal Huyuk are puzzling. However, although we do
not know much of this neolithic village's political and social
development, it serves as a vivid illustration of the huge new
potential offered by the adoption of agriculture in the Ancient
Near East. {Source: Past Worlds, The Times Atlas of Archaeology
(N. York: Crescent Books, 1995), pp. 82-83.

Seems to me that it would be difficult to make such an assesment based
upon artifacts alone, and for prehistoric cultures this is all we have.

Read some of the site reports from CH on the site I gave a link to.
You might be surprised what archaeology can tell us.


http://members.aol.com/wprehist/3250s09.htm

# Population estimates vary from 1,650 to 10,000

* Unknown whether excavated area is representative of whole site
* Unknown what portion of the whole mound was occupied at any given
time
* Unknown what amount of space might have been open, for gathering or
ceremonial space, market, animals, etc.
* Unknown what fraction of rooms might have been abandoned and
accumulating garbage at any give time
* Shrines were probably not living spaces (Mellaart includes them in
his population estimate of 10,000)
* The recent project at ?atal H?y?k estimates around 5,000
o based on estimates of density of houses across the site, made
by scraping the surface to find walls
o and a guess of 4 people per house
* I would guess that is still a little high, since it assumes all the
rooms were fully occupied at the same time

Basically a lot of the things you claim seem rather less than solidly
agreed
upon. Further, whether it was a city or a village seems just as open a
question. I think that 6,000-10,000 a bit large for a village however.

Of course there is room for interpretation. But as evidence comes in,
some things will be more strongly supported than others. Mellaart did
very good work, but Hodder inherited his evidence and has built on it
with his own work. I think it's better to rely on the current work more
than on older work, and certainly more than on non-specialist summaries
on the web.

Hodder's work seems to show that the shrines were located in living
areas; there haven't been (to my knowledge) any shrines in areas
separated from individual houses, and none in what are likely to be
public 'temples'. That's why I resist the "City of Temples" idea. It'd
be like calling a largely Roman Catholic town a "Town of Churches"
because every house had a statue of the Virgin and a picture of The
Sacred Heart of Jesus with votive candles. (Except the RC town would
likely actually have churches, which CH seems to lack.)

One also has to be a bit careful about using population to
differentiate cities from villages. In some third-world countries,
there are villages with tens of thousands of inhabitants. But they have
few services, and rely on central towns and central cities for the whole
range of services and control needed by a civilization.


Rich (this is quite interesting)


Tom McDonald

In sci.astro DrPostman wrote:
On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 22:41:28 -0400, "Paul R. Mays"
wrote:

But just to clarify.. I make no claims.. I state that
some people of note have given specific evidence that
supports the view of a larger civilization than what the
present historical record indicate..

None of those you pointed to hold degrees in archeology,
anthropology, geology, etc.... Why do you take the
word of amateurs with questionable backgrounds over
thousands of well studied field workers who really know
their stuff, and are aware of interdisciplinary collaborations?

Dr.Postman USPS, MBMC, BsD; "Disgruntled, But Unarmed"
Member,Board of Directors of afa-b, SKEP-TI-CULT member #15-51506-253.

You ask why? So I'll tell you why. "Offical" science
today tends to be a religion more than science. Spokesmen
are required (as by you above) to be OF the priesthood
before they are said to have any credibility. The scam
being that you have to be one of us before you are allowed
to criticize us, knowing full well that once you've
gone through the indocrination, you won't dare to raise
a voice in opposition. And if you do, expect to loose
your job, funding, credibility etc. Facts are facts.
One doesn't have to be a priest to report them!

At best it's not science it's dogma and at worst it's whore-
science. You find it everywhere. And SOP is when any "outsider"
dares to point out that the emperor has no clothes, that
person is mercilessly attacked and ridiculed, not by
supplying any refuting facts, but by merely reciting standard
dogam over and over and launching an ad hominem attack on
the offender as a "kook", as a "nut", as "uneducated", as
"ignorant", as "stupid", and so on. And I might add that while
it is not out of the question that such charges *might*
be true, NO supporting facts of these allegations are
ever forthcoming!

So when orthodox scientists quickly learn that your funding
and jobs greatly depend on your NOT looking into certain
problem areas (such as UFOs, Atlantis, ESP, etc.) it is little
wonder that few peer-reviewed papers appear on these subjects.
And then the favorite trick is to turn that fact upside down
and opine that the subject is clearly "nonsense" and as
"proved" by the dearth of official work on the subject!

What a major HOAX! What a scientific scandal! A hoax and
scandal which you DrPostman are seeking to perpetuate!

You ask for archeological facts. They are there. Explain
dear boy, Cyclopean walls? One cannot credibly explain
stone structures that cannot be built with even today's
technolgy by simply mumbling "slaves". Why are there
pyramids on BOTH sides of the atlantic. Something in the
human brain that drives them to build pyramids perhaps?
Then why aren't WE building them now? Or just might it
relate to a previous pyramid building culture that sat
IN the atlantic, but now is gone? Even more interesting
is that these monster structures seem to date from times
when people were supposedly digging seed holes with
sticks.

You simply refuse to even CONSIDER these things. Your
half-assed attitude is totally UNSCIENTIFIC! Your line
is "when orthodox science accepts these things then I
will believe and promote it!" Of course you will.
Because you have no interest in scientific thought, only
in the parroting of the party line.

It's true I haven't really proved anything, but I at
least say that such facts are worthy of scientific
thought.

YOU sir, on the other hand, seem to be one of the things
wrong with my profession today!

bjacoby
(who doesn't work for USPS, but is heavily armed)

--
Due to SPAM innundation above address is turned off!

replied:

[...]

So when orthodox scientists quickly learn that your funding
and jobs greatly depend on your NOT looking into certain
problem areas (such as UFOs, Atlantis, ESP, etc.)

Maybe it's just me, but I don't see the problems here.

If ESP exists, why the need to research it? And does not
Atlantis fall under the umbrella of history or mythology
rather than science?

As for UFOs, what, exactly is the problem? Other than some
rather neat hoax videos and some unexplained but oft made
connection with crop circles, what is there to investigate?

Do you believe that ET is trying to communicate with us by
abducting and raping women, by the anal coring of cows, by
anally probing abductees and by making crop circles?

Rich

bjacoby
(who doesn't work for USPS, but is heavily armed)

wrote in message ...

You ask why? So I'll tell you why. "Offical" science
today tends to be a religion more than science. Spokesmen
are required (as by you above) to be OF the priesthood
before they are said to have any credibility. The scam
being that you have to be one of us before you are allowed
to criticize us, knowing full well that once you've
gone through the indocrination, you won't dare to raise
a voice in opposition. And if you do, expect to loose
your job, funding, credibility etc. Facts are facts.
One doesn't have to be a priest to report them!

so in other words, you would accept the word of someone quoting scripture, that
had never read scripture?

In sci.astro Rich wrote:

replied:

[...]

So when orthodox scientists quickly learn that your funding
and jobs greatly depend on your NOT looking into certain
problem areas (such as UFOs, Atlantis, ESP, etc.)

Maybe it's just me, but I don't see the problems here.

Honey, it's you!

If ESP exists, why the need to research it?

If electricity exists, why the need to research it?

And does not
Atlantis fall under the umbrella of history or mythology
rather than science?

Archeology is myth. Right?

As for UFOs, what, exactly is the problem? Other than some
rather neat hoax videos and some unexplained but oft made
connection with crop circles, what is there to investigate?

I hate to tell you this, but when you get groceries ask for
"paper" rather than "Plastic". The paper bag over your head
work SO much better at keeping things to investigate from
coming to your attention.

Do you believe that ET is trying to communicate with us by
abducting and raping women, by the anal coring of cows, by
anally probing abductees and by making crop circles?

Do YOU believe that there has been no anal coring and
other mutilations of cattle and farm animals? Do you believe
that there is nothing about crop circles that can't be
"explained" by a bunch of kids stomping in a wheat field?

Sounds like the bag is working!

And why in the world would ET wish to communicate with
the violent, savage, primitive creatures on this planet?

Oh, yeah, I forgot to include "superstitious".

--
Due to SPAM innundation above address is turned off!

In sci.astro Tedd wrote:

so in other words, you would accept the word of someone
quoting scripture, that had never read scripture?

No. Science is not religion. It doesn't accept the word
of anyone. It accepts observations. Even those observations
are checked by repeating them according to careful discriptions
of the methodology used by the first reporters. One doesn't
"trust" in science even if the reporter has a massive reputation.
If the observer hasn't described his/her methodology to the
point where I can go duplicate the experiment and check the
observations for myself, then it isn't science. "Because
I said so, and everyone knows I'm right" is not science.
And it makes zero difference how much "scripture" the person
making such a statement has read.

This is not to say that speculation has no place in science.
It does. Even scripture (of all kinds) makes a wonderful
source for speculation and theory building. But any
theory eventually must come face to face with reality.
If observations don't in ALL ways fit the theory then
the theory is some how flawed and wrong. It's that
simple. Sweeping stray facts that don't fit "accepted"
science theories under the rug, isn't science. It flys
in the face of true science. Theories fall on the few
facts that somehow don't fit, rather than fly on the
millions of facts that do.

--
Due to SPAM innundation above address is turned off!

wrote in message ...
In sci.astro Tedd wrote:
so in other words, you would accept the word of someone
quoting scripture, that had never read scripture?

No. Science is not religion. It doesn't accept the word
of anyone. It accepts observations. Even those observations
are checked by repeating them according to careful discriptions
of the methodology used by the first reporters. One doesn't
"trust" in science even if the reporter has a massive reputation.
If the observer hasn't described his/her methodology to the
point where I can go duplicate the experiment and check the
observations for myself, then it isn't science. "Because
I said so, and everyone knows I'm right" is not science.
And it makes zero difference how much "scripture" the person
making such a statement has read.

This is not to say that speculation has no place in science.
It does. Even scripture (of all kinds) makes a wonderful
source for speculation and theory building. But any
theory eventually must come face to face with reality.
If observations don't in ALL ways fit the theory then
the theory is some how flawed and wrong. It's that
simple. Sweeping stray facts that don't fit "accepted"
science theories under the rug, isn't science. It flys
in the face of true science. Theories fall on the few
facts that somehow don't fit, rather than fly on the
millions of facts that do.


this is quite the different tune than you were singing in your previous post.

so to rephrase my earlier question a bit:

you would accept the word of someone quoting "science", that had never read
"science"?

Ed Conrad wrote in message . ..
On Sat, 04 Oct 2003 14:00:21 +0100, Doug Weller
wrote in response
to the question:

====================================

WAS THERE A CIVILIZATION
THAT EXISTED 13,000 YEARS AGO?




Tiahuanaco.



Double-A

In article ,
(Double-A) wrote:
Ed Conrad wrote in message
. ..
On Sat, 04 Oct 2003 14:00:21 +0100, Doug Weller
wrote in response
to the question:

====================================

WAS THERE A CIVILIZATION
THAT EXISTED 13,000 YEARS AGO?




Tiahuanaco.

There's also evidence (I think the dating was 13K years
or so) in Alaska. There are the rocks that have pictures
on them on the shores (I can't recall the name of the town).
The guide said that nobody knows why those pictures were made.
My immediate reaction was that it was a grocery store and
the pictures were the signs we see in ours, e.g., produce,
seafood, meat, etc.


/BAH

Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.

On 16 Oct 2003 04:47:24 -0700, (Double-A) wrote:

Ed Conrad wrote in message . ..
On Sat, 04 Oct 2003 14:00:21 +0100, Doug Weller
wrote in response
to the question:

====================================

WAS THERE A CIVILIZATION
THAT EXISTED 13,000 YEARS AGO?




Tiahuanaco.


Which archaeologists date to this era, not even B.C.E.





--
Dr.Postman USPS, MBMC, BsD; "Disgruntled, But Unarmed"
Member,Board of Directors of afa-b, SKEP-TI-CULT® member #15-51506-253.
You can email me at: eckles(at)midsouth.rr.com

"The services provided by Sylvia Browne Corporation are highly
speculative in nature and we do not guarantee that the results
of our work will be satisfactory to a client."
-Sylvia's Refund Policy

"No, the next step, Doktor, is that you start diagnosing illegally and
stupidly online, and get your license revoked."
-viveshwar