Dear Kathleen,

These findings are really amazing. From other parts of the world also some more findings may be added. I agree with you that the history of human civilization needs to be redrawn with new findings and knowledge !!

Regards/Aditya

The new finds from Jordan are not themselves sufficient to challenge what you describe the "old tradition" since, at least as I was taught in Britain, they would be classified as part of it since my understanding of the 'old tradition' is that it's not Egypt and Mesopotamia but the 'Fertile Crescent' of which Egypt and Mesopotamia are the two horns of the crescent with the Levant forming the central portion.

Although it tends to be ignored in popularist literature academics have long been aware of the contributions of the central region.  Kathleen Kenyon's work at Jericho, published in a multi volume work, that revealed impressive and ancient fortifications, Russ Adams' work on the PPN site at Tel Fidan both spring to mind, especially as I worked on Russ' project mapping the surrounding irrigation features for him.  Indeed Boguki (1999, The Origins of Human Civilisation, figure 5.2, pp. 164-5) shows several early sites in this region and notes that this area may be the cradle of Near Eastern Agriculture, a view that has been around since the 1930s.

wrt Egypt, the influence of the Levantine culture on the formative years of the Egyptian state has also been acknowledged for some time, Toby Wilkinson's Early Dynastic Egypt contains some good introductory material here.

It appears that the timeline has already been redrawn, it just has not filtered through to non specialists yet, I would probably be unaware of it myself if I had retained my university specialisations in Classical and Medieval archaeology instead of branching out to work in Levantine archaeology.

A more interesting question may be has this gone far enough, in that the 'new' timelines are still very dependent on the 'Lands of the Bible' and may be ignoring, or at least downplaying, contributions from further afield.  I was very impressed by this suggestion made by Kenneth Harl in his lecture series Empires of the Steppes regarding the cultural and technological influence of steppe nomad cultures on 'civilised' areas.  Given your own interest in Roman military matters you will have seen this yourself with scholars only relatively recently acknowledging how much of what is considered quintessentially Roman was actually borrowed from 'barbarian' peoples.

Dear all

Does the timeline of human 'civilisation' need to be redrawn?

My personal perception, civilization is not clear and definite borderline which can describe whole human’s developing. Following discovery of archaeology especially during resent 30 years, archaeology needs more explicit measure way to describe human developing.

Whether human’s intelligent have been developing? Or just the aware things, ways and means of detecting world have been increasing (knowledge increase)?

I have published some tools with special shaping way. Because the shaping way has not been discovered before, some archaeologists do not accept the truth.

I attach a picture for your studying.

We will find older and older ruins of past civilisation. After a certain period (many thousand years) ruins of  today civilisation will be explored by someone.

Dear all

What is civilization? What is the timeline of human civilization?

Thanks to all for your responses and I hope to see many more.

The question was, I'll admit, intentionally provocative.  I'm well aware of that the settlement of Jericho goes back a long way, Timothy,  though I've not read much on the work being done there in quite a while.  I'd also like to see the discussion move beyond the fertile crescent, to include places like the Indus valley civilisation, Dilmun and China.

As to what is civilisation, Chun, I would not attempt to define it, but I think we take the measure from what is left behind.  For me, the Goblekli Tepe excavations are the most remarkable of the recent finds because the sophistication of the artefacts seem so very 'modern' when we consider their age and compare them to places such as Catal Huyuk.

Had written more, but that got lost shuffling between web pages.

Have attached a link to the radio interview where I first heard of the recent Jordan discoveries.  The comments by the archaeologist there, particularly regarding the sites irrigation, may put some perspective on my opening comments.  Though I do question her comments that Catal Huyuk was unfortified.  To me, the design of that settlement has always seemed defensive.

https://radio.abc.net.au/programitem/pgwOVknAK6?play=true

Kathleen

the recent Jordan discoveries，the sites irrigation all shows that the human lived there had high level of intelligence( wisdom)and had the knowledge to build resident place even if it is 9,000 years age. So I also think it is necessary to reconsider early human civilization (I willing call it the level of early human’s knowledge).

To places such as Catal Huyuk, still has the living condition as the main civilized standards. The early human (some) in our area lived in big caves; they did not need the knowledge of building resident places. But they built other knowledges, for example they had perfectly fishing skill. Maybe they also used fishing way to catch other animals. The strings, ropes and all kind of hooks (some other animals’ teeth) all are knowledge or wisdom of the early human. They also had conserved a great deal of foods. And so on other skills. Is the wisdom belongs to civilization?

I agree with your contention regarding Catal Huyuk, whether it was intended to be fortified, and I would suggest analogies with some native American architecture suggests it is, it would certainly function as an efficient fortification given the potential threat level.  I suspect one of two things is operating here. 

The first is as Luttwak (Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire) points out is that scholars without military experience tend to only accept preclusive defences as real all others being ritual, what they fail to recognise is that defences are usually keyed to the threat level.

The second is the almost pathological desire of many scholars to deny the existence of warfare in the pre literate world.  This tends to take the form of denying that a site is defended and then when someone points out that it is shift the argument to suggesting that because these are not preclusive defences, forgetting that none are defences exist as force multipliers, they must be ritual.  Sometimes we get the opposite approach and scholars will argue that the defences exceed the potential threat and therefore again they must have been a prestige project rather than indicative of violent reality.  This has largely changed but was still the prevalent view when I was an undergrad in 1980s.  An extreme example is Roaf's attempt to argue that the massive fortifications of Jericho were a combination of prestige project and flood defences.  For what it's worth military specialist works, e.g. Kern Ancient Siege Warfare, do consider that Catal Huyuk was fortified.

Having accessed your link I still am not impressed that this is a major paradigm shift in our modelling, I think that it's just a case of the media picking something up and inflating it's significance, yes the site is interesting but not at present a game changer, earlier fortifications are known that are at least as impressive .

wrt widening the discussion, don't forget Africa, without descending into the Black Athena nonsense there is much about early Egyptian culture that owes it's genesis to areas further south.

If we are talking about widening the picture in order to rewrite the timeline of human history we may need to go much wider in terms of geographical scope.  Kathleen's suggestions of Indus Valley, Dilmun and China are already areas where the development of civilisation is well known and acknowledged.  However, archaeological work is suggesting that areas previously regarded as peripheral may have had a much higher level of civilisation than has been acknowledged.  Newgrange etc. suggest that the Irish were building in stone far earlier than the Egyptians for instance, the new dating for Stone Henge based on Mike Parker Pearson's team's work suggest a level of cultural organisation that exceeded that of the Near East at the same date, while Projet Jade implied sophisticated society in Europe at a much earlier date, indeed the French scholars almost suggest a proto state based in France with hegemony over western Europe and a similar one maybe centred on Varna for Eastern Europe.

The upshot is that we may have to acknowledge the contribution of the barbarians to the development of human civilisation rather than see cultural civilisation as spreading from a few areas that were self appointed icons of culture later in history and whose literature has survived to direct our models of the ancient world.

I would have to dig, I believe in the articles from the SSE's journal, but I have seen an article that suggested that modern man developed in the Americas and this was signified by the development of the Clovis point for spears, and presumable arrows.  If this is accurate, then most of the proposals for rewriting are missing the mark by ignoring the proper beginning location.

William I must admit I am unfamiliar with SSE all I pick up on in UK is an electricity company

wrt Clovis culture, on present dating evidence this far too late to be the cradle of humanity since by the time it appears, mankind has already developed symbolic art, proto agriculture and possibly a semi sedentary civilisation, e.g. the earliest phases of Jericho, is it possible that you are misremembering an article that referred to the development of culture in America,

in point of fact the Clovis culture is so late that it has lead to the proposal that it was an offshoot of the European Solutrean culture,

Bradley, Bruce; Dennis Stanford (2004). "The North Atlantic ice-edge corridor: a possible Palaeolithic route to the New World" (PDF). World Archaeology. 36 (4): 459–478. doi:10.1080/0043824042000303656.

although most academics reject this hypothesis it does suggest that Clovis cannot be taken as suggesting that modern man evolved in the Americas

So sorry Timothy.  It is the Journal of Scientific Exploration, published by the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE).  I will try to locate the exact article.

However, a key question would be, what constitutes the beginning of "modern man" as Neanderthals also seem to have had art and specific cultural behaviors.  I am not certain if Neanderthals achieved semi-sedentary lifestyles though.  I have not explored them that extensively.

William, as Wikipedia notes, "the Society for Scientific Exploration is a group committed to studying fringe science'.

And, "The society's magazine, the Journal of Scientific Exploration, was established to provide a scientific forum for ufology, parapsychology and cryptozoology, having published research articles, essays, book reviews and letters on those and many other topics that are largely ignored in mainstream journals."

These contentions are affirmed by the society's own website.

I do have some sympathy with the aspirations behind the society (as set out in the letter to the journal Science).  I agree that many scholars are afraid to even acknowledge the very possibility that such subjects may need proper investigation, for fear of losing credibility with their peers.  I also think that many of the arguments put forward by 'professional' sceptics can often be as ill informed as some of the work they are criticising.  They are also overlooking the intentionality of their own perceptions and thought processes.  Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, is a case in point.  While I haven't read the book I've heard him argue his case often enough to know that he takes a very simplistic and dangerously literalistic approach to the complex and very diverse subject of religion.

That said, I would have to approach with caution any arguments based solely on articles in journals such as the Journal of Scientific Exploration, in the absence of corroborative evidence from the relevant mainstream fields of research.  On which point, you may wish to open up your own topic for debate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Scientific_Exploration

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/216/4544/360.2

https://www.scientificexploration.org/journal

wrt Professor Dawkins and human development, the problem with The God Delusion is that it is not written for academics, the same applies to the majority of his televised talks, he is attempting to counter the views that the religious extremists are putting forward to recruit the non academics to their cause, this restricts the level of debate in which he can indulge, since in a hearts and minds battle the 'plain' speaking demagogue is always going to defeat the academic who leaves his audience confused, the Church has used this for years, Plato complained about it and it is brilliantly satirised by William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar with the two funeral speeches,

William does, however, make a good point re the Neanderthals, what exactly constitutes 'modern man', the debate used to be simple Cro Magnon man, who usually seemed to be a proto WASP, then it became more nuanced with concepts such as Anatomically Modern Human and Culturally Modern Human, both of which excluded Neanderthal, more recently researchers have started to group creatures such as Homo Erectus as human, although again this is irrelevant to the Americas since by the time the Clovis technology develops these groups have all gone, apart from what is left in our DNA, furthermore there is no evidence for any pre AMH hominid settlement in the Americas at present, if we discount the Sasquatch legends

With so much of the archaeological record destroyed over time, our view of the past depends on "striking it lucky" during an excavation to find the oldest example of for example "civilisation" or the first person in North America, or the last Neanderthal in Europe. Statistical probability says that the more samples you take, the the wider the range of measurements within these samples will become. So the more sites are excavated and dated, the higher the probability is that you will find an outlier. Hence, as excavations continue we will continue to get headlines announcing that humans arrived in North America earlier than was believed, Neanderthals lasted longer and  farming (is that a definition of the start of "civilisation" ?) started earlier than was previously believed.

Off the subject, but re: Dawkins, Timothy - While I am all in favour of countering the views of religious extremism, I, personally, feel is quite misguided in his approach.  And not all fundamentalists are 'non-academics'.  My partner has a physiotherapist for hydrotherapy who is a dedicated fundamentalist.  He believes in Noah's Ark, follows a man, an Australian in the US, who's currently building a copy of the ark - sure to be a great theme park attraction - and actively tries to sell his beliefs to his patients.  Highly educated, highly fundamentalist, and certain to switch off if any of Dawkins arguments came his way.

Where I used to work there was a chap who was a member of Mensa, with a BA and BSc.  His passion was cryptozoology, and he was a very conservative Anglican in his beliefs.

Academic training of itself is no defence against fundamentalism, and no guarantee of a reliable scientific method in a persons approach to life.  Especially where religion is concerned.  Enough said.

It does for North America (and the western hemisphere).  Recent work in South America and North America shows evidence of human occupation prior to Clovis culture (ca 13,000 BP).  Material recovered is much more varied stone tools then what is found in Clovis culture.

Mark, yes I am aware of work identifying pre 13000 BP human settlement in the Americas, although I also understand that this is culturally sensitive in some places since the physiology and dates may not be compatible with the first settlers being of Amer Indian physiology.  However, these are still AMHs and my comment was specifically linked to a posting regarding America as where humans developed for which we would require evidence of pre AMH populations.

Was drawn back to this question after watching a recent documentary on Gobekli Tepe.  Don't be put off by the title, The Garden of Eden, if you have a chance to see it.  The insights into the site are fascinating.  The title is obviously a marketing ploy that made the archaeologists cringe, but the core material remains accurate, as you can read on the link to this blog by one of the archaeologists on the site, Oliver Dietrich.

https://tepetelegrams.wordpress.com/

Kathleen - Human being have inhibited the Earth for much longer than the timeline you cite! Your question is "Does the timeline of human 'civilisation' need to be redrawn?" The old tradition of civilisation arising in Mesopotamia and Egypt is looking fragile.

Well the first and most basic requirement for CIVILIZATION is writing and none of the locations you cite discovered writing. Can you find people who lived in huts in France 20,000 years ago, sure. Does that fact undermines the fact that civilization was born in Sumer some 4,500 years ago? NO.

I can't agree, Amir. I do believe that the Sumerian's marked a significant advance in the development of urban, agricultural societies. But I do not accept that writing must be seen as the benchmark of what makes a civilisation.

Rather, I would argue that what marks a civilisation out is its capacity to bring its 'citizens' together to work on projects for the common good, as they saw it, that go well beyond anything that would be undertaken by primeval tribal societies.

This may manifest in various ways, from building a city for shelter and defence, such as at Catal Huyuk, the creation of major religious artefacts such as Stonehenge or the sculptures at Goblekli Tepe, or practical works like major irrigation systems.

Which begs the further question, what do other people think defines a culture as civilised? I'll be interested to hear from others on their views.

Dear Kathleen,

There are many facts/unknown "human civilization" stories. whenever, we/one hear/hearing to such stories. we feel it to be a real one but when it comes into a real world, there finds nothing much from what we think

I agree with you that the history of human civilization needs to be redrawn

Thank-you

Ad charming as this question is, it becomes pointless when a definition of 'civilization' is not provided. The above comments are using as many indicators for civilization as monumentality, spear points, irrigation, and urbanization. Given that we are trying to pinpoint a modern concept in the past, we may as well define it. It will be necessarily arbitrary to some extent, but not useless.

The great Sphinx in Egypt shows almost 4,500 years of erosion. The last great rainfall period in this region of Egypt was 2686 – 2134 BC. This would date the building of the sphinx to around 10,000 years ago.

Scientists such as Gerard Gierlinski have also found fossilized footprints, which show dating in the millions of years. While the footprints are very neanderthal in nature, they are still a part of our history that is not written to accommodate for human life at that time period.

Do some research, many findings are hard to get publicized because they disagree with current theory.

given the definition you advanced a month ago Kathleen, sorry for delay my computers been offline, have you come across Vicky Cummins' work on the construction of Mesolithic and Early Neolithic monuments as exercises in mobilising community labur?

Hi Timothy. Sorry to hear you've been having computer connection problems.

I'm taking it you're referring to Vicki Cummings of the Univeristy of Central Lancashire. https://uclan.academia.edu/VickiCummings

I don't know her work, personally, but am now following her on academia.edu.

Since posting this question, I have seen a TV program on Stonehenge that argued that the people who built it, or at least the final stages, came together from all parts of mainland Britain, and, from memory, at least the Shetlands as well. Is that the kind of community mobilisation she's referring to?

If it is, then it would appear to have some strong parallels with the construction of the monuments at Goblekli Tepe, according to reports I've read on that site. Both representing monumental works undertaken at a specific site over an extended period of time by neolithic tribes coming together at least once a year for ritualistic purposes associated with the construction of these monuments.

What continues to amaze me about Goblekli Tepe is the sophistication of at least some of the art work displayed there, given the age of the site.

Maria Oddo, with respect I did offer a suggested definition of what constitutes a civilisation about a month ago, and then asked for others to offer their ideas on that.

My definition was:

"I would argue that what marks a civilisation out is its capacity to bring its 'citizens' together to work on projects for the common good, as they saw it, that go well beyond anything that would be undertaken by primeval tribal societies. This may manifest in various ways, from building a city for shelter and defence, such as at Catal Huyuk, the creation of major religious artefacts such as Stonehenge or the sculptures at Goblekli Tepe, or practical works like major irrigation systems."

As to the issue you raise about the age of the Sphinx, I believe there are good grounds for believing it to be much older than the Pyramids, if not perhaps as old as you suggest.

I made a brief comment on this in my Nexialism paper (p.3 & n. 4), Article Towards a science of Nexialism

Sorry, yes that should have been Vicki Cummings. The Stonehenge material is indeed the sort of thing I was thinking about, although it is on a larger scale than that which she looked at in her earlier work at Cardiff along with Alaisdair Whittle. Given that you are asking for origins I recommend looking at the work she did early this century on early British monuments and particularly her use of Australian Aboriginal examples to interpret them, especially

Cummings, VC and Whittle, A (2004) Places of special virtue: megaliths in the Neolithic landscapes of Wales. Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 1-215. ISBN 1842171089

regarding Gobekli Tepe, I am curious as to why you should be surprised by the sophistication of the art, to me it is no more sophisticated in concept to the far older mobiliary art of the Palaeolithic or potentially the cave art, although it may be interms of the execution

Yes, it is the sophistication of the execution of the art that intrigues me, Timothy. Not the subject matter. Although looking for recent material on the site on line before writing this, two points of interest did strike me.

Before detailing those, I should add that there is at least on archaeologist on RG currently working on the site, and publishing findings here.

The first point is the sad fact that there is a lot of populist disinformation building up online about the site, ranging from religious fundamentalists to Skeptics determined to prove that the whole site is a hoax. There's even at least one that seeks to link the site to the Yazidis of Iraq.

The more interesting discussion that's apparently recently been raised, is the idea that the site may be linked to an ancient comet fragments strike. Can't spare the time to check these out myself at the moment, but here are the relevant links for anyone interested:

https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2017/ancient-stone-confirms-date-of-comet-strike

http://maajournal.com/Issues/2017/Vol17-1/Sweatman%20and%20Tsikritsis%2017%281%29.pdf

(Decoding GobekliTepe with ArchaeoAstronomy).

Breaking News.

From what I've read of it since first posting this question, Gobleki Tepe appears to have developed a a regular ritual assembly point for hunter-gather communities. (I'm grossly oversimplifying here.) It was not a place of human settlement.

News coming on line in the past few days has now revealed the discovery of an ancient city housing 2,000+ people, close to modern Jerusalem. This city appears to have been roughly as old as Gobekli Tepe. The site apparently includes large buildings, dwelling, ritual, public function and burial places, with alleys between the buildings.

You can read about it here.

https://mfa.gov.il/mfa/israelexperience/history/pages/huge-prehistoric-settlement-exposed-near-jerusalem-16-july-2019.aspx

And here

https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/ancient-city-discovered-near-jerusalem-is-the-largest-neolithic-settlement-ever-found-in-israel/

The latter, and other news reports does include a photo of what looks like a bronze spearhead that is anachronistic. This may be just journalistic licence - and ignorance, or an artifact found on site during the excavations from a much later time period that overlay the much older city.

Hi Kathleen,

If you are really interested in the dating of Gobekli Tepe, and the factors that determine its dating, you may wish to read my five papers on this subject. They are posted here at Researchgate.net and at academia.edu

Gobekli Tepe has been sold as a PPNA/B site, for many reasons, only very few having to do with real Archeology. People usually accept things, because either "someone said so" or because they want to hear so to satisfy their wild imagination. Please do your own research (again, if you are really interested in finding out reasonable explanations and not accept outlandish statements prima facia). Archeology, and Archaeo-Astronomy are, unfortunately, full of outlandish statements (especially regarding the Neolithic).

Dimitrios, I do not outlandish statements prima facia. The possibility intrigues me, but I have found apparently solid evidence to support an early date on this site through the research of Oliver Dietrich, Klaus Schmidt and others.

I appreciate that you appear to take a contrary position to their findings. When I have time, I'll have a look at your work. But I remain open to the possibility that the older date is correct.

I have actually attended a lecture a couple of years ago by an archaeologist working on the sphinx. I put to her that I'd seen someone suggest on TV that the sphinx was much older than the pyramids. She had come to the same conclusion, but felt reluctant to contest the issue openly because it runs so contrary to the established wisdom among the scholars she has to work with.

Only time will eventually resolve who's right and who's wrong there.

I expect the dating of Gobekli Tepe will be just as divisive.

I'm just interested in the possibility that it may be that old.

Currently, my research is deeply embedded in the career of Alexander the Great, with little time for other matters.

Thanks for your contribution. I'll be interested to hear from others on this.

Thanks for your response Kathleen.

Since you mentioned your interest in Alexander III of Macedonia, you may wish to take a look at this:

(PDF) Alexander's Network of Cities and their Dynamics | Dimitrios S Dendrinos - Academia.edu

Have a nice day! And always do your own work on various subjects, before accepting (especially "establishment") viewpoints. There's a quantum om "viewpoints".

يحتاج الى اعادة قراءة

For those like myself who can't read Arabic, Raed Knudner's answer in English, according to Google Translate, is:

It needs to be re-read

I take this he means it needs to be redrawn.

Thank yo Kathleen.