Hunter - gatherer civilization

by Kris Wed Jun 29, 2011 3:20 pm

I chanced upon this article while cooling my heels at the doctor's for a routine checkup. Turns former theories of the origins of civilization on their heads. As one of the guys in the article puts it, its like someone built a 747 in his basement with a knife. More importantly, if this is true, what started civilization may not have been necessity but the human sense of wonder, as the article puts it. Interesting read. I skimmed thru it, but will come back to it again.

Have a looksee if this is you cup of tea

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/06/gobekli-tepe/mann-text

by charvaka Wed Jun 29, 2011 5:18 pm

Very cool... thanks for posting. I am not sure how important this will become in our understanding of the origins of civilization. But I like to think of it the way the article concludes... that different factors may have come together in different places to make the same leaps of technology possible.

There are many computer games out there that simulate "creating a civilization." (Freeciv is one addictive variant I used to play when I had a lot of time on my hands in b-school.) If you observe many different players play the same game with the same rules, you will see that they will make similar sets of "inventions" but come to them by different paths. And that's in a game where the number of variables is fairly limited (and set by the programmers.) In the real world, there are more variables and more states each of those variables can take.

So it's not hard to imagine one community settling down first (because resources are plentiful and they can't move to any area that is marginally better), and once settled, making tentative moves towards agriculture; while another nomadic community first starts tinkering with wild plants and returns to the same patch every year, gets a bumper harvest due to a mutation, and ends up settling down over time.

I feel sorry that I didn't go to this place when I was in Turkey.

by Kris Wed Jun 29, 2011 9:20 pm

The linear model of civilizational development was always a little too convenient, IMO. I liked this article in that it goes beyond that. In other words, *necessity* is not always the mother of invention. Sometimes the human mind *wants* to create something. There is hope in that.

by Kris Wed Jun 29, 2011 10:17 pm

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Hunter - gatherer civilization

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