Let’s Go to the Movies: September 19, 2019 – What is Goebekli Tepe? by Klaus Schmidt

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1. This remarkable site predates catal huyuk. Yet, like catal huyuk, this culture did not break out into something horrifyingly new. The break-out in the direction of unconstrained complexity starts with the Ubaid, around 7800 years ago. The Ubaid becomes the Uruk. The Uruk becomes the Sumerian Dynastic. Egypt follows, then the Indus River Valley, then China. Razie Mah writes about this in An Archaeology of the Fall. Semiotics is key.

2. The horizontal arrangement of the “T-shaped” structures gives me, as an engineer, every suggestion that the T’s are column capitals, used for transferring floor loads to columns as diagrammed in this link: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-a-drop-panel-and-a-column-head
   These people were hewing stone by hand into slabs and balancing them during construction on their edges versus their flats making them much easier to erect. They also got higher ceilings with lower lift heights as a result. The decorations are …decorations probably of some, but not essential, significance. Needless to say, the floors eventually collapsed from weathering.

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