Gobekli Tepe Essay

Göbekli Tepe is a very interesting archaeological site that is located at the top of the mountain limestone ridge in Southeastern Turkey near the Syrian border (Banning 620). It is known as the earliest monumental building, or temple, that mankind has ever created and it was built even before the stage of agriculture, which dates back to some 11,600 years ago (Mann 1st page). Göbekli Tepe belongs to the PPN (Pre-Pottery Neolithic) in terms of its chronological context in world prehistory (Banning 620). In fact, the site can be divided into three different stratigraphic levels that are level 3, level 2A, and level 2B (Banning 620). Level 3 is the oldest level which appears to date back to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) (Banning 621). Each of the buildings measured 15 m by 10 m and contained T-shaped monoliths surrounded by a wall made of stone and mortar (Banning 621). Two U-stone shaped entrances could by identified in two of the buildings (Banning 621). However, the most monumental aspect of the Göbekli Tepe can be attributed to the sophisticated carvings of wild animals, such as scorpions and boars, on the pillars which appears in the pillars of level 3 and level 2A (Banning 621). Moreover, Level 2A, which dates to Middle PPNB, has smaller and more rectangular buildings than Level 3 and it contains delicately implemented tiled floors and T pillars without any decorations (Banning 621). Level 2B dates to the time between level 3 and level 2A, however,

From the early prehistoric society until now, we often heard the word “adaptation”, which means the process of changing something or changing our behavior to deal with new situations. The ways people adjust their natural environment varies according to time, place, and tribe. Foraging is common way of adaptation that people uses for most of human history; however because of the population pressure, some people adopt agriculture to fulfill their need. This essay, will discuss the positive and negative aspects of life in hunting and gathering societies compared to the agricultural societies based on Martin Harris’ article “Murders in Eden” and Jared Diamond’s article “The Worst Mistake in the History of Human Race.”

Flannery and Marcus discuss in our textbook about the social renown that comes from agriculture. “It is also the case that for most parts of the world, Rousseau was right: not until people had begun to raise crops or animals do we see signs of emerging inequality” (Flannery and Marcus 2012:91). This is especially true for Cahokia. In Cahokia, food storage changed in the Mississippian period. Woods, in his article, points out the fact that there is archeological evidence for food storage as being a communal event at Cahokia and that Cahokian households typically lacked a storage place of their own, which gave rise to the need for a large, community-based facility (2004:149). This was not always the case. There was evidence back in the Late Woodland period, prior to the Mississippian Period that shows there were domestic storage features in households and little evidence for communal storage. The rise of communal storage also gives rise to social power of the elites. “… the institutionalization of social ranking, DeBoer contends that ‘There is no mystery to the absences of subterranean storage in such circumstances. It is expected’” (Woods 2004:154). This being said, the change from subterranean food storage to aboveground food storage changed once Cahokia elites were gaining more and more power and becoming redistributors. This is an exemplary indication of social inequality. The chiefs and elites control the food storage and how much gets redistributed and how much goes back in to replace what was used. The producers and consumers of the food do not get much say in the matter because it is not their

Political, economic, and social conditions have often led to turning points that have changed the course of history for nations and people. The Paleolithic Era and Neolithic Revolution was a turning point that changed the orbit of history for mankind. In Documents 1, 2, and 4, they explain life before the Neolithic Revolution and what changed during the period and provide an analysis of results of the revolution. They introduce food supply and settlement, and civilization and trade.

The author traces the history of the development of agriculture from China. The book reveals that food has been capable of doing more than sustain the population. In this regard, one surprising fact from the book is that food has acted as a primary tool of political organization, social transformation as well as geopolitical competition leading to shaping up the course of human progress. Also, it is surprising to note that food can be compared to some technology that has helped the humanity to structure and connect to other civilizations. In some cases, food has even been used as a military or an ideological weapon that has been used to decide the outcome of wars. Also, food can be connected to the process that culminates in the development of the economy as well as industrialization. Nowadays empires and industries have been built as a result of the importance of the food. Therefore following an archaeological perspective Tom Standage has effectively revealed how food has helped shape and transform the civilizations around the world. The transformation can be traced from the emergence of agricultural activities in China to the use of agricultural products such as corn and cane to develop ethanol among several other applications in the contemporary

In the 1930's, V. Gordon Childe proposed that the shift to food production was one of the two major events in human history that improved the condition of human societies. Childe described the origins of agriculture as a 哲eolithic Revolution.But the shift from hunting and gathering to food production was not as advantageous to humanity as Childe believed. Although there were benefits, there were also serious drawbacks, and humans paid a price for the advantages of agriculture.

Jared Diamond is a professor of Geography at UCLA and a world traveler. He believes that in the past 13,000 years of human history, agriculture has lead humans to conquer, develop and prosper and therefore cause the rise of civilizations. In 1972 he was in New Guinea when he met a local named Yali who asked him a simple question that took years for Diamond to answer. Yali said “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo [goods] and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own”. [Work cited 7] Diamond was profoundly puzzled and couldn’t answer right away. In fact it took him many years to come up with what he thinks is the right answer. ‘Yali’s question’ plays a central role in Professor Diamond’s enquiry into ‘a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years’, leading him into a wide-ranging discussion of the history of human evolution and diversity through a study of migration, socio-economic and cultural adaptation to environmental conditions, and technological diffusion. (Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, p. 22-23)

The ancient kingdom of Kush was a civilization of vast and advanced cultures and governments that lasted for approximately 1500 years. Throughout those years, the ancient Kush has developed and maintained various distinct features in order to control and adapt to its way of life. But to set ancient Kush’s records straight, we need to closely observe how they developed as an independent kingdom and their main features.

“The discovery of agriculture was the first big step toward a civilized life.” (Arthur Keith)

In Gorgias we have a conversation between Socrates, Gorgias, and Polus, Gorgias' young assistant. They speak on the matters of rhetoric, knowledge, and whether injustice and suffering is better to do or have done onto you. While conventional wisdom tells us that it is better to inflict suffering than to receive it, Socrates argues that it is completely the opposite. Part of Socrates view is that moral goodness is connected with knowledge, and that morally it is better to receive suffering than inflict it.

One of the greatest revolutions in the history of homo sapiens was the adoption of agriculture, which changed the face of communities at every level of class. Though this change was built upon new ideas and allowed us to provide more food for more people, was it in fact a positive change at the time? Today in 2017, we can all look around and see where the agricultural revolution has gotten us in the long run, but authors such as Yuval Noah Harari (2011) claim that during the infancy of the agricultural revolution, life for the average citizen was often a worse one than that of the common forager. A change in food production created many other changes, such as permanent human settlement, biologically unconventional labor, and a larger population density. This paper explores the pros and cons of the agricultural society and the hunter-gatherer society

In this essay I will be considering only but one of the many questions that archaeologists analyse when researching the human past. As the title suggests, did civilization, or, a term preferably used by scholars; social complexity, arise from a conflicted band of nomadic people or from a mutual consensus among them? As well as my own thought’s, I will be discussing the ideologies of a number of professionals, both in archaeology and social anthropology, focusing mainly on the early development of the archaic Mesopotamian and Mesoamerican civilisations.

Archaeologists and historians are yet to determine what it was used/built for, however there are multiple interpretations. Some of these interpretations include but are not limited too:

Gor is the name of John Norman’s long running series of science fiction novels; it is also the name of the parallel universe Counter-Earth, the setting within which Norman’s story plays out.

The emergence of agriculture was a major stepping stone in human history. During this birth of agriculture, also known as the Neolithic revolution, humans began inhabiting permanent settlements, grow their own crops, and domesticate both plants and animals for food (Weisdorf, 2005). Considering humans have been hunter-gatherers for the majority of their approximately 7 million years of existence, the emergence of agriculture in the Old World only occurring 10,000-5,000 years ago, marks a significant transformation in food sustenance techniques (Weisdorf, 2005). However, this turning point in history is associated with both positive and negative implications. There is much controversy over whether or not the introduction of