Religion gives rise to civilization

[Furstentum Liechtenstein]

A recent National Geographic article now points to major evidence that religion gives rise to civilization and not the other way around. Now history books have to change . The evidence comes from the oldest temple in the world in Turkey which was built by HUNTERS AND GATHERERS (no indication that domesticated plants or animals were used around the site) .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

Any reactions?

This is actually an old idea. Our Oriental Heritage by Will Durant (Simon & Shuster, 1954) deals with this in greater depth. According to Durant, civilization arises - and is maintained by - a variety of factors. These include - but are not limited by - economic elements (agriculture, industry), political elements (community, law), moral elements (morals, religion). These factors are in constant interreaction.

Our Oriental Heritage is a good read if you can get your hands on it and certainly goes much further than a National Geographic article could.

FL

[Gman]

A recent National Geographic article now points to major evidence that religion gives rise to civilization and not the other way around. Now history books have to change . The evidence comes from the oldest temple in the world in Turkey which was built by HUNTERS AND GATHERERS (no indication that domesticated plants or animals were used around the site) .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

Any reactions?

Yes... Interesting it was found just a few miles north of Israel...

Few hundred though. But that is irrelevant because Abraham was a chaldean anyway.

It depends on what what borders you are defining... I find it very interesting that the oldest known temple just happens to be very close to the land of Israel. Perhaps the beginning of civilization.

Genesis 15:18-21

18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates — 19 the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20 Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21 Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”

True Biblical borders



Göbekli Tepe

[sandy_mcd]

Our Oriental Heritage by Will Durant (Simon & Shuster, 1954) deals with this in greater depth. According to Durant, civilization arises - and is maintained by - a variety of factors. These include - but are not limited by - economic elements (agriculture, industry), political elements (community, law), moral elements (morals, religion). These factors are in constant interreaction.

Thanks for bringing this up. The Durants' Story of Civilization series is very good. I had forgotten about them and what I read. [Long ago, I wrote him a letter and got a nice response.]

[Canuckster1127]

Our Oriental Heritage by Will Durant (Simon & Shuster, 1954) deals with this in greater depth. According to Durant, civilization arises - and is maintained by - a variety of factors. These include - but are not limited by - economic elements (agriculture, industry), political elements (community, law), moral elements (morals, religion). These factors are in constant interreaction.

Thanks for bringing this up. The Durants' Story of Civilization series is very good. I had forgotten about them and what I read. [Long ago, I wrote him a letter and got a nice response.]

Wow! That is neat. I spent $50 when $50 meant a lot to me in a used book store and bought the entire set of volumes by Will and Ariel Durant and read all of them over about a 2 year period. It may be an exageration, but I don't think it is entirely, but I feel like it was the equivilent of a College Degree in World History and Critical Thinking. I understood as I read it that Durant had been a priest in his past and moved toward Agnosticism and I could see those influences there but that didn't devalue much of what he (they really as Ariel was more involved than acknowledged early on.) I still read his The Story of Philosophy (which made him a rich man and able to devote his life to his other writing) every few years just to make sure I still have a handle on the basic philophers who have influenced the world we live in.

[Furstentum Liechtenstein]

Thanks for bringing this up. The Durants' Story of Civilization series is very good. I had forgotten about them and what I read. [Long ago, I wrote him a letter and got a nice response.]

http://www.willdurant.com

Wow! That is neat. I spent $50 when $50 meant a lot to me in a used book store and bought the entire set of volumes by Will and Ariel Durant and read all of them over about a 2 year period. It may be an exageration, but I don't think it is entirely, but I feel like it was the equivilent of a College Degree in World History and Critical Thinking. I understood as I read it that Durant had been a priest in his past and moved toward Agnosticism and I could see those influences there but that didn't devalue much of what he (they really as Ariel was more involved than acknowledged early on.) I still read his The Story of Philosophy (which made him a rich man and able to devote his life to his other writing) every few years just to make sure I still have a handle on the basic philophers who have influenced the world we live in.

Will & Ariel Durant's summary about Jesus should be required reading for atheists. See Caesar and Christ, page 557, the paragraph that starts with ''In summary...'' and ends at II. The Growth of Jesus. A model of fairness and the acknowledgement of evidence, it is even more remarkable for having been written by unbelievers.

FL

[sandy_mcd]

Can anyone else see this or am I getting automatic access through work?
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/ ... /mann-text

[wrain62]

Can anyone else see this or am I getting automatic access through work?
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/ ... /mann-text

Yes thank you I requested permission but now I don't need it. I can see it. Also here is the other better source you guys were talking about in pdf.
The Story of Civilization I: Our Oriental Heritage
http://www.archive.org/details/StoryOfC ... alHeritage

[wrain62]

Here I will post some interesting points from the passage National Geographic passage.

-Before them are dozens of massive stone pillars arranged into a set of rings, one mashed up against the next. Known as Göbekli Tepe (pronounced Guh-behk-LEE TEH-peh), the site is vaguely reminiscent of Stonehenge, except that Göbekli Tepe was built much earlier and is made not from roughly hewn blocks but from cleanly carved limestone pillars splashed with bas-reliefs of animals—a cavalcade of gazelles, snakes, foxes, scorpions, and ferocious wild boars. The assemblage was built some 11,600 years ago, seven millennia before the Great Pyramid of Giza. It contains the oldest known temple. Indeed, Göbekli Tepe is the oldest known example of monumental architecture—the first structure human beings put together that was bigger and more complicated than a hut. When these pillars were erected, so far as we know, nothing of comparable scale existed in the world.

-Schmidt emphasizes that further research on Göbekli Tepe may change his current understanding of the site's importance. Even its age is not clear—Schmidt is not certain he has reached the bottom layer. "We come up with two new mysteries for every one that we solve," he says. Still, he has already drawn some conclusions. "Twenty years ago everyone believed civilization was driven by ecological forces," Schmidt says. "I think what we are learning is that civilization is a product of the human mind."

-As important as what the researchers found was what they did not find: any sign of habitation. Hundreds of people must have been required to carve and erect the pillars, but the site had no water source—the nearest stream was about three miles away. Those workers would have needed homes, but excavations have uncovered no sign of walls, hearths, or houses—no other buildings that Schmidt has interpreted as domestic. They would have had to be fed, but there is also no trace of agriculture. For that matter, Schmidt has found no mess kitchens or cooking fires. It was purely a ceremonial center. If anyone ever lived at this site, they were less its residents than its staff. To judge by the thousands of gazelle and aurochs bones found at the site, the workers seem to have been fed by constant shipments of game, brought from faraway hunts. All of this complex endeavor must have had organizers and overseers, but there is as yet no good evidence of a social hierarchy—no living area reserved for richer people, no tombs filled with elite goods, no sign of some people having better diets than others.

"These people were foragers," Schmidt says, people who gathered plants and hunted wild animals. "Our picture of foragers was always just small, mobile groups, a few dozen people. They cannot make big permanent structures, we thought, because they must move around to follow the resources. They can't maintain a separate class of priests and craft workers, because they can't carry around all the extra supplies to feed them. Then here is Göbekli Tepe, and they obviously did that."

Discovering that hunter-gatherers had constructed Göbekli Tepe was like finding that someone had built a 747 in a basement with an X-Acto knife. "I, my colleagues, we all thought, What? How?" Schmidt said. Paradoxically, Göbekli Tepe appeared to be both a harbinger of the civilized world that was to come and the last, greatest emblem of a nomadic past that was already disappearing. The accomplishment was astonishing, but it was hard to understand how it had been done or what it meant. "In 10 or 15 years," Schmidt predicts, "Göbekli Tepe will be more famous than Stonehenge. And for good reason."

-Indeed, scientists now believe that one center of agriculture arose in southern Turkey—well within trekking distance of Göbekli Tepe—at exactly the time the temple was at its height.