What proof is there that they were hunter and gatherers (aside from an assumption based on timeline)? Isn't building an extensive permanent structure a signature of settled people?

Proof that they were hunter and gatherers is essentially proof that they weren't farmers. That's mostly based on a consensus that agricultural societies didn't exist anywhere yet. Proving negative claims is difficult, especially considering the age of the site, 12000 years (at least). Both Gobleki Tepeh & the Neolithic Revolution date to the beginning of the Holocene climactic period. Climactic changes are destructive and evidence can get wiped out be sea level changes or glacial melt.

Gobleki Tepeh is itself does challenge the "neolithic revolution" narrative. Either farming started earlier or stuff historians generally associate with agricultural societies started before farming. It's hard to conceive of how this happened without "specialists, taxes or central authorities" or some functional equivalent. I don't see how our conventional understanding of hunter-gatherer society can explain a site like this.

This is a new-ish site. Singular. It's still not 95% or more is still underground. It's still not fully incorporated into our historical narratives.

The idea is that they were "settled" in a sense, they just didn't have agriculture (maybe).

Improving technology (e.g. archery, fishing) could have (albeit temporarily) given hunter-gatherers an overabundance of food which created a demand for increased storage and division of labor which might give you increased communication, trade and domination of nearby groups through force.

That it's the only permanent structure of its kind from that period, and that every other type of artefact from the era we have found so far is very different.

That's a bit deceptive I think. It's the only lasting permanent structure that we know of from that carbon-dated time period. But different parts of the world advanced at different rates, and central asia is one of the oldest hotbeds of civilization, so it makes since that neolithic structures in this region are older than elsewhere.

There are other structures that seem to have been built by hunter-gatherers. Stonehenge comes to mind. The construction dates of Stonehenge aligns with the absolute dates of civilizations elsewhere in the world, but in the British isles it was still a time of hunter gatherers.

There is also much archaeological evidence for large, permanent "meeting point" structures built with wood columns and dirt fortifications. What makes Gobekli Tepe interesting is that it is stone (albeit a very soft stone that didn't need complex tools to work with) and therefore we have more than just holes in the ground and oddly shaped hills to look at.

Stonehenge also appears to have been part of a much larger permanent settlement.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-wiltshire-34156673

And Stonehenge is far from being the only examplar of its kind. There's a big one in Scotland:

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

And another in Brittany:

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

It seems like back in the Neolithic, there must have some kind of pan-euroasian craze for menhir based construction.

This site is a lot older than stonehenge. Taking the oldest and youngest proposed dates for the two sites, and Stonehenge is still closer to the present than to Gobleki Tepeh. Ancient Britons were farmers. They lived in village communities that we can picture forming larger societies with religion, organisation and (fabulously impressive) masonry skills.

Gobleki Tepeh predates known agriculture and permanent settlements. It really is a singular site, with genuine mystery.

To further put this in perspective: estimates of Göbekli Tepe age are somewhere around 9000 years old.

Wooly Mammoths went extinct 4500 years ago.

I am not sure where it's established that Stonehenge was built by hunters/gatherers. But if it is true, it would be pretty impressive, given the absence of long distance communication and a low population density per mile (you need 32 mi2 to support 100 people). Aligning a population spread over potentially hundreds if not thousands of square miles behind a single goal is mind boggling (not the least being that if you were to get 10,000 people to agree and bring them to build Stonehenge, the land could not support them without some form of farming or agriculture.)

Ref: https://persquaremile.com/2011/08/17/hunter-gatherer-populat...

Depends on what you mean by "Stonehenge." The iconic stones are a late neolithic construction, but the site itself is very old. The visible portion today is built on top of a much older ritual structure.

I don't think you'd need 10,000 people to construct a structure like Stonehenge, especially when you consider that these were built over vast intervals of time (hundreds of years per structure, thousands for the entire site).

It's the only permanent one that has remains we can find. But if they built somewhat-permanent structures using only wood and other perishable materials, wouldn't there be no trace of those?

If the wooden structures eventually became covered in earth, or if they had foundations going into the ground, then archaeologists can identify them. Often wood posts that have been driven into the earth will crumble and rot, _but it still leaves a hole_ that's filled with water/sludge and it eventually looks like a column of dirt very different than all the dirt it's next to.

Archaeologists were able to use this technique at pompei, to learn exactly how vines & vineyard fenceposts were placed in ancient vineyards.

Interesting, but do those holes and such survive the 11,000 years we are talking about here (as opposed to 2,000)? That's so much time it's hard to even imagine. Aside from gradual erosion and settling, wouldn't one major earthquake or flood wipe them out?

I'm just shooting from the hip, but: Unless the posthole was actually on a fault line, there's no reason that an earthquake would wipe it out. The ground all moves together. Erosion & flooding can absolutely destroy them. But there's enough places that have been undisturbed since that time period.

When I was in Chengdu I visited Jinsha, which has lots of evidence of postholes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinsha_(archaeological_site) http://www.kaogu.cn/en/Chinese%20Archaeology/3/Discovery%20a... Granted, that's only 3000 years old.

A better example (which I just learned about-- I'm literally trying to google for the oldest post holes found :) ) is Monte Verde: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verde

> Radiocarbon dating of bones and charcoal in 1982 gave the site an average age of 14,800 years ago (calibrated), more than 1000 years earlier than the oldest-known site of human habitation in the Americas at that time.[2][8][9]

> In the initial excavation, two large hearths were found and many small ones as well. The remains of local animals were found, in addition to wooden posts from approximately twelve huts.

But the amount of resources required to build that type of structure is not present in a H&G society. Those societies tend to be small groups. Quarrying large stones requires a lot of resources, which is only present in a settled society.

While I agree with your general sentiment—I would also be skittish to refer to them as H&G—I think a few things are clear that we can all agree on:

1. The site well pre-dates current archeological evidence for sustained agriculture.

2. The site clearly supported a lot of people with similar aims and (most likely) religious significance.

3. The site is quite impressive to build on both a physical and organizational level.

The question I've heard posed around the site is: did the social/religious element help bootstrap sustained agriculture, or did the agriculture allow the gathering to form when it couldn't be sustained before, or did they form in unison? I don't think the archeological record is anywhere near answering that question; I don't recall much evidence of agriculture, and the only other model of clearly pre-agriculture society we have is H&G societies.

Long-winded; apologies. But I think we can have a more nuanced discussion than H&G vs Settled.

That's one of the things discussed in the article:

"To Schmidt and others, these new findings suggest a novel theory of civilization. Scholars have long believed that only after people learned to farm and live in settled communities did they have the time, organization and resources to construct temples and support complicated social structures. But Schmidt argues it was the other way around: the extensive, coordinated effort to build the monoliths literally laid the groundwork for the development of complex societies."

Some hunter-gatherer groups lived in areas with much greater resources than others, for instance in the Pacific Northwest where they had the potlatches. From what I've read, the Fertile Crescent was such an area. (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedentism#Historical_regions_o...)

I don't know about quarrying stone, though.

This is overly simplistic imo. We know that H&G groups periodically congregated and cooperated in groups far larger than a single band, such as to share in hunting the seasonal peak of herds. It's not that much of a stretch to believe they'd periodically congregate to advance a construction.

Umm...Id say it's a stretch. Wanna hunt together? Wanna quarry some stone and build a temple? I don't think we are talking about apples and apples here.

I disagree. I think it's entirely likely things started along the lines of "We gather here every year this season to share in the peak hunt festival. Let's make a mark upon this place" and over a few centuries that grew motivating enough for people to incrementally build more elaborate megalithic structures. This is just my view, and I'm certainly no anthropologist. But I would point out this narrative exactly matches what we see at Gobekli Teki: layers of megalith construction, each covering and supplanting the previous.

As long as we accept that this group of people was unique for its time, why shouldn't the uniqueness include settlement?

The discovery of Gobekli Tepe was completely random and could just as easily not have happened. Our picture of the post ice age period is tenative at best and easily disrupted by new information. I suspect there are many more sites like this lurking under the soil, especially in this region.

I'd never heard of this theory. Interesting.

I always thought that the neolithic revolution narrative needed friends. It seems entirely possible that other forms of "civilization" existed even if they did not persist and/or spread the way agricultural ones did.

> that the site was built by hunter-gatherers

Hilarious, ha ha ha! And thus fodder continues… It's almost like the western linguists were there only yesterday:

"people with no granaries, no specialists, no taxes or central authorities." :-)

Regardless of your viewpoint, the way you express yourself makes you sound like one of those conspiracy theorists that pats other people on the shoulder saying "don't worry, you'll figure it out some day". Does not help with credibility at all.