"'Skull room'? Ah! Oh that's just Günana's house. Yeah he's kind of a weirdo and everything to him is just 'skull' this and 'skull' that." - Person living in Göbekli Tepe at the time
The skull cult is very interesting. I just recently read a book about the Sky disc of Nebra and the related settlements as well as some kind of stongehenge like wood-circles that also seemed to feature lots of skulls either burried in huge amounts in trenches around these "wood-henges" or that had been placed on top of the wooden poles. Also the book shows very plausibly that the european bronze-age people who made the disk had consistent contact with the cultures in the fertile crescent, learned from them and brought e.g. astonomical knowledge back home. They were also trading across vast distanced in order to get tin (which is needed to create bronze) from Cornwall to the South-Western part of Germany. We underrestimate how advanced and interconnected people in the bronze age and before were and there is still so much we don't know. For example why do we find (stone) henges across all of Europe from Malta (which is pretty isolated) to the South of France and the UK - and is Göbekli Tepe not also a henge of some kind? Maybe there has been cultural exchange for much longer than we think. There is also so whole "who invented writing" discussion that maybe the Babylonians weren't the first and in fact a culture from the Danube area - the Vinča - invented it before them. Sadly a lot of these informations is not in English, for example the book concerning the Sky disc of Nebra is only available in German, which is pretty sad because it's such a fascinating topic. (For anyone interested, its Die Himmelsscheibe von Nebra: Der Schlüssel zu einer untergegangenen Kultur im Herzen Europas | Ein archäologischer Sensationsfund zeigt die Bronzezeit in neuem Licht. by Prof. Dr. Harald Meller, Kai Michel.) Aside from it's archeological value the whole story how it was acquired is pretty wild - from grave robbers to ransom demands and scientists going undercover black market dealers there is everything in this story. @Joe: If you are ever interested in getting some of the German sources or need a scientific synopsis, let me know! These kind of things are my passion and I'd love to get more of it out there. :) Thank you for doing these episode, I like all of them but the archeological ones always hit different.
It's hard to fathom what must've been achieved once good stretches of peace and cultural cooperation were in play for human existence thousands of years ago. We've seen how chaotic things can be, even in an age of significant enlightenment and shared technology / inventions. It's a real struggle to get along. We barely avoided a complete global cataclysm in 2 world wars. Not even a century later, and we're on the brink of it yet again all because of one prominent nation. Why is it so hard to achieve lasting peace? Societal stability. And that all hinges on the average psychological maturity of human beings.
@@cytherians Absolutly! I think those finds are a testament to what humanity can achieve if we wor together instead of against each other - I think it's a hopeful message in times like these.
Never really believed in lost super advanced ancient civilizations, but I have always thought that before writing existed maybe super smart people randomly being born and dying caused their societies to advance but then rapidly decline. It's a lot easier to transmit knowledge from generation to generation with writing. Maybe a prehistoric Isaac Newton built Gobekli Tepe but they weren't able to build on that knowledge.
or Antikythera mechanism: gear-based analogue computer/calculator....unless proven an artifact hoax, I personally find just producing this (in any small quantities) without milling quite hard.
I love that you're back to somewhat regular uploads on here Joe, you're honestly probably my favorite UA-camr at this point. Glad to see you doing so well
You know, TMI can also be a place where you can include extra interesting details from videos posted on you main channel, and maybe include sources where people wanting to do their own research could look into. Just a thought. Love your stuff, Joe.
Uh, I'm writing a book on architectural history as I work my way through an honours BA in interior design. My book starts with Gobekli Tepe, and I was unaware of the skull thing there. So you're forgiven, and I have to do more research.
One thing about Gobekli Tepe that I haven't heard you mention is that in those many layers of building over many years/generations, it seems like the carving techniques got worse over time making the oldest sections the most ornate. This would seem to indicate that the original builders were more technologically advanced and knowledge was lost over the following centuries. This could lead one to believe that the original builders were remnants of a technologically advanced civilization that died out or devolved and the technology and knowledge was lost.
There was a recent archaeology project that took place at a former football (soccer) ground which had been abandoned 50 years before. It's interesting because some of the finds might well have been such a puzzle leading to wild theory had they been unearthed beyond living memory, let alone thousands of years later. Here's a quote from an article about it: "Perhaps the most bizarre find was a nappy (diaper) pin. It would have remained a mystery were it not for the arrival of Susan Farr, daughter of Chick Farr, a star goalkeeper. She explained that the elastic on her father’s shorts had snapped during a match, forcing the trainer on to the pitch to perform an emergency repair. It was an incident Farr never lived down, and he was regularly showered with pins when he was in goal thereafter."
That's a great analog, Alex! It goes to show how easy it can be to misinterpret cultural significance. Whereas an elaborate arrangement of skulls could easily be seen as macabre for our societies today, maybe back all those years ago, it was a kind of reverence for important people who helped their societies be successful. We've all seen in our lifetimes how single individuals can become tremendous cultural icons. But how easy it is to lose the substance of intention and purpose. Even in our modern age with video recording, people can often be taken out of context so easily.
@@cytherians Yes, the meaning of almost anything might be changed and mis or reinterpreted/understood depending on context and culture. I've been thinking about how our own remnants might be met by human(oids) of the far future and in particular how danger might be conveyed. There's an interesting article entitled 'How to build a nuclear warning for 10,000 years time' which is well worth searching out. Essentially a bunch of artists, engineers, anthropologists etc are having to think about preventing people digging up radioactive waste millennia from now. A picture of some skull and cross bones isn't going to cut it!
Joe, I was an early subscriber to your TMI channel and I have to say I love the format. Your open and relaxed presentation makes it feel like we’re having a personal conversation. I also subscribed to Joe Scott about four or five years ago and like your TMI channel, I’ve watched every video at least two or three times. Lastly, your video about 10 days ago where you shared your channels analytics, etc. was very interesting as I wasn’t aware how You Tubers monitored video viewership, etc. As an avid viewer, I want you to know your content, video subjects and presentation are great, entertaining and very informative. A big THANK YOU to you and your team. Cheers!
Hey Joe, how about doing a show where you take us on a "tour" of all or some of the interesting books & mementos displayed on your shelf behind you in these videos?... and what significance they may have to yourself, as well as us viewers.
Don't forget that Gobekli Tepe isn't the only monument in this region from the Tas Tepeler pre-pottery neolithic period. The others have similar architecture, particularly Karahan Tepe. There are at least 10 sites found so far, indicating that this was a well organised, stable civilisation with enough time and resources to build these amazing sites over hundreds of years. Plus, the Gobekli Tepe site is far bigger than archaeologists initially thought. They are currently excavating an area adjacent to the main circles, twice the size, which could be a settlement or workers housing. There are further indications that the site is at least 3-4 times the size of the first completed area. This is most definitely an advanced society, even if they are only using rock and wood to build. They must have been producing enough food for their society if they could spare workers to build such monuments.
Hi Joe, Regarding the communication abilities of human species 200,000 years ago. The only book I read on the topic is Yuval Harari's "Sapiens" and he actually argues that communication capabilities of all human species were much more limited than the one we have. He also argues that modern level capabilities evolved in Homo Sapiens around 70,000 years ago and it was enough to grant Homo Sapiens a decisive competitive advantage against other human species. Kinda murky how exactly this was established, though :) Anyways, the book calls it "Cognitive Revolution" and it is covered in the second chapter of the part one. It's a popular book, so plz forgive me if you've already read it.
My personal pet theory is that useful, relatively complex human language didn't really get off the ground until about 40,000 years ago, and until that happened you couldn't have anything resembling a civilization. We take language for granted now, but think of how long it must've taken to develop commonly accepted words and related syntax in pockets of hunter-gatherers. Not to mention how much more difficult it would be to maintain these early, fragile languages without the benefit of writing the words down (which didn't develop until, what, 5,000 years ago?). And like many developments that came about organically, there probably wasn't much impetus to innovate quickly because they couldn't have foreseen just how useful even modest innovations could be. The more knowledge we accumulate as a foundation, the bigger we can "dream", but it takes time to get there.
Assuming we had the same biological equipment, larynx, vocal cords etc. Doesn't it seem kinda weird that it took 160,000 ish years for us to start grunting coherently? IDK.
@@knewledge8626 I’m not sure you can assume the same physiology. Early peeps with both the cognitive ability to store and interpret language AND the physiology that allowed more granular vocal skills would pass on a survival advantage. This would speed natural and artificial selection for these language processing brains and facilities
@@knewledge8626 Even assuming we had the vocal capabilities, I'd imagine the earliest languages were extremely limited in their vocabulary and probably only consisted of names for everyday objects: "fire", "rock", "wood", etc. That's fine if all Grogg wants is for Drogg to pass him a rock, but think of how much more developed language would need to be before you could successfully communicate abstractions, concepts, and ideas for things that didn't even exist yet. That would take a long, LONG time.
If you spend your life just trying to survive. There isn't much time spent working on new things. Even if someone figured out something. Doesn't mean they shared it. Tried to promote it. Or anyone cares about it. People everywhere come up with some handy way of doing their job. And it doesn't become a thing for whatever reason. Look at work now. How many people work for a living. Don't have the time or energy to improve themselves. A hunter gatherer in the past likely spent a lot of time looking for food daily. Preparing for winter. Entertaining themselves. One thing I've heard myself. You can't be creative if you are in survival mode.
You should read up on pochteca, itinerate Aztec merchant/traders who may have been the Kokopelli depicted in rock art and religious practice through out the southwest. The pochteca were identified as a merchant class in the aztec society that trade intensively through out Mexico and as far north as the Great Basin. They may have traded into Mississippian valley. I wouldn't surprise to find that they trade as far south as Peru. They may also be from an older civilization than the Aztec into the toltec period or older.
I'm ready for it Joe. I love your Tee designs, but I've kinda been waiting for something that more directly represents your channel. That Tee and Patch are perfect man.
People seem to forget that rivers move over time by large amounts. A farmer found a full paddle boat buried in his field. He had no idea the Mississippi River used to flow through his property.
If you have not seen “The Mystery of Chaco Canyon” on Bullfrog Films, do so. More mind-blowing than Stonehenge or anything else I know of, because of the knowledge of astronomy used in construction of the buildings, along with lines scratched miles out into the desert, all with astronomical significance. It was a sort of sequel to another Bullfrog film called “The Sun Dagger,” which is pretty impressive, but the Chaco Canyon film is nothing short of stunning. It was finally put on UA-cam this year. Going there is the biggest thing on my bucket list.
These ancient megathic monuments that are buried for hundreds if not thousands of years appear in many places throughout the world. I was in Mexico a few years ago and went on a tour with a local Indigenous man who showed us wild edible plants, plants that could be used as pigment for paint, etc. He also showed us huge stone walls like those in Peru. He said that there were places that were ritually buried to protect them. They were dug up every 100 years or so for very special Religious rights then buried again. I mentioned Gobeckli Tepi and he said that was probably true of that site as well. I personally believe, like Joe, that there were advanced civilizations way before us and probably before those we have been taught to believe were the beginning of Human civilization. Just look at Longyou Caves in China for example. What kind of advanced civilization created that? There are a lot of unanswered questions. I just hope we are around long enough to unravel them. Thanks for the videos Joe, we all appreciate them. Keep them coming.
Dinner and drinks with you is one of my bucket list items. I find your curiosity to align with my own, big difference is that you actually act on yours beyond watching answers with Joe. 😂
So when I turn the guy from down the street into a chandelier, People have a problem with that. But when a church does it it's considered a religious ritual
I would love a series discussing some of the evidences for ancient civilizations. If nothing else it's incredibly thought provoking. Recently been really fascinated by the idea of cataclysmic geologic episodes. Something that was widely adopted by many of the great early geologists.
There are geniuses in every population (even animals). Imagine that brilliance being applied to stones, wood, bones, water, mud, food stuff, native gold/copper/silver, ... because it had no where else to be expressed for 200k years.
Joe, I shot a doc with Dr. Robert Schoch whose work is all about this in a way. We spent a month in Egypt filming all over. He thinks the Sphinx was built by a previous, forgotten civilization and the Egyptians re-carved it to fit their culture. He had pretty suggestive geological arguments that were. to my mind persuasive. He says the Upper Dryas period wiped them out.
Couple of things: 1/ Gobekli Tepe was not a city. It was a settlement with a couple of hundred people at most. Besides, a city is more than just a group of settled people. None of that applies to Gobekli Tepe. 2/ We have plenty of evidence for human communities from 50,000 years ago. It would be bizarre if remains of small hunter gatherer groups in ephemeral camp sites preserves, yet remains from an “advanced civilization” does not .. if it existed, we would have some evidence for it by now. 3/ There is a misunderstanding between what we call anatomically modern humans (possibly as old as 300,000 years) and fully modern human behaviour. There were major changes in behaviour and artistic production ca. 50,000 years ago that might be the result of further evolution in the brain that does not leave fossilized traces. 4/ There is such a thing as the Ice Age. There is a clear correlation in different parts of the world with the end of the Ice Age and new developments in human behaviour that set a new trajectory leading down the line to domestications of plants and animals, different living arrangements, larger populations, new family structures, etc.
Exactly. Joe, please read this and think about it thoroughly. Speculation is nice and all but don't take it too serious (yourself). Let the evidence lead you, not the other way around.
it's a lot of "ifs". if they had developed language, if they had developed writing, if they had environmental conditions that didn't hinder progress, also if they had worked out some form of basic medicine to stop getting wiped out. I'm pretty sure I've seen an Eons episode where they showed that genetic mapping indicates a massive population crash down to several thousand people. if that happened again and again, that would be sufficient to stop progress. I know, it's another "if"...
Check out the Fenn Cache. A Clovis find. Some of the stone in Colorado used for points is from Texas. 12,000 year old evidence of extensive trade routes. Granted, we adapted as runners so covering ground is what we did.
I have never heard about this. It's interesting and it kind of draws parallels with our modern society and the future. So imagine if in 10,000 years we have future archeologists digging through the ruins one of our cities and they find tons of plastic toys, statues, or busts (like Marvel characters, Funko Pops and stuff like that). I wonder if they are going to think that we worshiped them, they were our gods or something along those lines. Granted this would probably require the records of our time to be lost but it's still interesting to think about how our lives will be interpreted in the future. Thanks for sharing this update Joe!
Well, here's the thing, Joe. The ocean level during the last ice age was much lower as so much water was locked in ice. Therefore, the shore that was then is now well underwater. Who knows what archeological finds might still be either undiscovered or obliterated. Life is much fun as we learn more.
From the time I found my first Flint point hunting mushrooms on the farm I've been perplexed by the first Nations. When I saw the Aztec knapped Flint twisted display at the Colorado history museum my mind has been blown. Definitely lost knowledge will be found again.
I''ve often wondered about the impact of the end of the ice age and the following climate changes on civilization development or even continuity if you imagine older civilizations. With Gobekli we're starting to creep closer to the period immediately after the retreat of the glaciers. Isn't there also a theory about a precedent to upper Nile Egyptian culture coming the migration of an advanced people from west of the Nile? Their region had been lush following the end of the ice age but slowly dried out forcing the relocation. And another about a pre-Sumerian culture further to the south that was flooded by the rising sea levels due to glacier melting later on than the end of the ice age, whose migrants were foundational to Sumerian culture?
There are theories about people concentrating on the Nile Valley as the Sahara region became increasingly arid, and of people inhabiting parts of the Persian Gulf region which became gradually flooded as sea levels rose. Those migrations of relatively small groups of people happened gradually and well before the emergence of larger complex societies in the 4th millennium BCE. Southern Mesopotamia (Sumer) was gradually inhabited by peoples from the surrounding area as they managed to develop water management technologies (basic irrigation and flood controls). The region is fertile when irrigated, but too arid otherwise. While there are not many sites excavated of the earliest inhabitation of southern Mesopotamia, this process is otherwise fairly well understood. There are zero indications of any "advanced civilization" populating this region. We're talking about small communities at first. We have evidence from those, their remains are preserved, so there is no reason to assume anything else for which magically any evidence would be erased.
@@srenette82 The reference to southern Mesopotamia I made was from a theory I saw over at the Fall of Civilizations (great channel!). It had to do with the idea that at some point after last ice age the Persian Gulf advanced many kilometers north-westward forcing a migration of peoples that may have led to the beginnings of the Sumerian civilization. It is described beginning at the at 24 minute mark of this video: ua-cam.com/video/d2lJUOv0hLA/v-deo.html&ab_channel=FallofCivilizations It is, of course, only a theory. It does go a way towards answering the origins of the non-Semitic people (and language) in southern Mesopotamia and of course the ubiquitous flood myths. Fall of Civilizations usually sticks to much more verified historical sources, but they were intrigued by the idea as well, and mentioned it as an unverified theory. It caught my interest because of its similarity to the Egyptian case - forced migration of people due to environmental factors whose arrival and mixing with existing locals may have been the catalyst for the development of those societies. Joe had a great recent video on Doggerland that also makes the imagination soar in this direction. What piques my curiosity is wondering how much of our development was affected by the period of strong environmental change following the last ice age. For example, was Mesopotamia in need of irrigation early on? Or did that come later as the climate changed, forcing the locals to develop systems, both political and technical, to continue farming as the region grew more arid? I guess that would be paleo-geography which I think we are still working on understanding fully.
@@oombaca Thanks for the follow-up. I can tell you as a professional in the field with expertise in the region and period considered here that in southern Mesopotamia, agriculture was not viable without irrigation and water management systems (dams, etc.). We do increasingly understand the importance of exploiting marsh environments so that agriculture itself was not necessarily the only subsistence strategy. However, we do not currently have any evidence for any occupation in southern Mesopotamia before ca. 5500 BCE (maybe extending back to 6000 BCE), while there is lots of earlier occupation around southern Mesopotamia, especially closer to the mountain flanks where there is and was more rainfall. Mesopotamia is a very diverse landscape with lots of different ecological zones. Southern Mesopotamia specifically (the land later called Sumer and later still Babylonia) consisted of extensive marshlands near the Persian Gulf and mostly arid regions elsewhere that could only be inhabited and cultivated with water management systems. Northern Mesopotamia is a different case where rainfed agriculture was possible most periods in history, but irrigation was developed to increase reliability and output, especially in the zones along the edge of where rainfed agriculture is/was possible. Edit addition: as for the end of the last Ice Age, that occurred thousands of years before the development of irrigation, they are not related. That being said, certainly the major changes after the Ice Age clearly correlate with major transformations of human societies in this region and elsewhere.
@@oombaca Sure thing! I hope there will be some solid documentaries or shorter videos about this on this platform, or maybe some more accessible books on the topic soon! No need to take my word for it after all :) but I try to offer some corrections here and there on this platform.
What is most fascinating about this cult is the connection to early Jericho, c. 7,000 BC, but much later than Gobekli Tape. So this was likely a tradition that endured longer than any of our modern religions.
Love you Joe! Always a staple in my day! Keep going at your own pace, dont burn urself out! All of us will be subcribed, regardless of the TikToks you make or dont make xD.
I would love to see a video about your process, Joe. How do you come up with so much rich content? Do you have a massive idea-board that you progressively expand? I imagine you must keep track somehow, so that you don't accidentally make duplicates, or to plan enhancements-extensions to earlier work. Of course, comments are probably a great source of new ideas to help you focus on content generation. Do you also have friends and colleagues where you bounce off ideas and seed new content premises?
I've been itching for Joe to acknowledge the possibility of a past advanced (different technology tree) civilization. Like it can't be stressed enough how difficult it is for any objects, features, specimens, or evidence (whatever you want to call it) to be preserved and survive extended time scales, like everything rots, rusts, and is recycled or changed by the environment. Anything we find are the exceptions to the rules, due to a contemporary context of deposition of the specimen that may or may not be obvious. some rapid hot burial/cementation, Or oxygen poor environment, or intentional burial, Pompeii comes to mind seems to be ideal. Opposite side like burial by global water level changes, Or shifts in crust like isostatic adjustments due to shifting masses like glaciers, bodies of water, volcanic eruptions, land slides, many orher erosional forces (including living beings) can completely erase things like historical black holes, erasing the object and all information in regards to its creation, use and subsequent deposition. Be thankful for anything we find, I'm not saying believe in stuff there is no evidence for, but if we find anything be sure to preserve all the data we can in its surrounding context to the best of our ability and interpret evidence individually genuinely in our frame of view without assumptions imposed by others without looking at all information available.
"... that they could easily be explained away ..." 3:49 And that's exactly the thing that I worry about. How much wondrous discoveries have been filed away as not interesting? Or to put it differently: The other side of Occam's Razor.
I've heard an explanation for why civilization didn't appear earlier: there was no need for it. My understanding is that the hunter-gatherers who preceded civilization could get everything they need from only working 30-40 hours per week; why complicate it? What was supposed to prompt the development of agriculture & hence civilization was a climatic change which made food less available by the old means, so farming started.
there are quite a few channels here on the tube-u-all that cover pre-conquest Americas Ancient Americas is one. Atzlan Historian... there is an archeologist who also digs (literally) North Amerindian culture Nathanael Fossaen North 02 has also done some videos on prehistorical Amerindian movements... it is a growing field.
I was yelling "what about the skull cult, JOE??!!" The whole time your video was playing while my girl and I were making dinner listening to your video....this is the payoff!
I do love the thought of potential civilisations that could have existed and evolved between 65 million and 15'000 years ago, it's just entirely possible we never find sufficient evidence to be certain of it. As for the skull 'cult', it made me think of the strategy game Sid Meier's Civilization; one of the very early research advances is 'ceremonial burial', rather than a cult, is it not possible they just did things differently with their dead back then? Perhaps it is their version of a photo album, or family tree. I certainly do like that there's just enough evidence for us to wonder how much we don't know, if you would like to do a vid of wild speculation for this period of time, I'd watch.
Great Video as always. Have you ever watched any UnchartedX videos where Ben talks about some evidence of Lost Technologies that could help to open the mind of the possibility of another civilization before ours? Based alot on Graham Hancocks work but could be a good interview to have so he can walk you thru his own photos he has taken from Egypt, Peru, etc.. Something to think about.
All complete fiction unfortunately. Easily and completely debunked by actual evidence collected and studied by professionals who spent years of research on this.
“There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio than are dreamt of in our philosophy” Thank you for keeping it interesting and honest Sir… ;) Enjoy videos always food for thought.
When I watched the Monday video, I couldn't help but wonder if that part of Anatolia, back then, simply enjoyed such an abundance of wildlife that it was possible to have enough surpluses, consistently and reliably, to permit the leisure time to start to specialize. I mean, the consistent and reliably salmon runs of the Pacific Northwest permitted the indigenous people, there, to develop a fairly advanced culture, with specialized labor that produced sophisticated artifacts and unique architecture -- and all without agriculture or literacy. Could the people who lived at Göbekli Tepe enjoyed some sort of similar advantage, with vast herds of animals funneled through the region, for some reason?
Love your videos. Remember that the skulls of olds leaders would also be the ancestors. I agree that we under estimate the ancients when you hear that at Denisovan cave they found associated with those peoples whose name is derived there a broken stone bracelet which may have originated in North Africa, or how an ancient Egyptian mummy tested positive for cocain which is only found in South America, or the story of the black mummy of the Sahara which is 9000 years old and embalmed in the same technique as used by ancient Egypt using cedar oil. The common folk may not have shared in these resources but there is more to this tale.
the main argument against the lost advanced civilization is that mining leaves unmistakeable traces that we have not found. Actually, if civilization was to start again now, we would have quite a problem due to lack of ore as we have depleted most easy sources.
Here's a thought parking lots take up 25 to 30% of city land use go up not out parking garages. Yep a said it parking garages reduce those massive parking lots like Walmarts or the worst afenders car sells lots that can literally be miles big. Reduce them by 50% new land can be used for green spaces to help cool citys and reduce flooding wind co2 metals in the air and soil.
Seriously, though, I just saw a video that was talking about vulcanism at Yellowstone and it mentioned that obsidian quarried in Yellowstone thousands of years B.C. has been found as far east as Ohio & Pennsylvania and as far south as Kentucky. Many of the indigenous tribes territory overlapped to at least some degree, so it's not out of line to surmise that trading networks spanning the continent existed long before Europeans arrived.
And to put the cherry on the cake. Göbekli Tepe is seven miles northeast of the city of Şanlıurfa, also called Urfa or Ur Kasdim, the hometown of Abraham brother of Nahor where skull ancestry worship began. Shows how a little reading goes a long way😮
I literally just now realized that you're posting these follow ups on Thursdays, like how you used to do random Thursdays 🤦😂 Keep up the awesome content! 😊😊😊
The idea that advanced civilizations existed long before ours is not only possible but is entirely plausible. We have found unexplained examples of apparently manufactured metals, like a series of fine metal tubes embedded in rock and other strange "machined" artefacts supposedly ancient. I would like to see a real investigation into this subject. Or even a Hollywood movie about previous civilisation. Remember, even the ancient Egyptians spoke of "the ancient ones" that came before. Sounds Epic!
Until the agricultural revolution about 10, 000 years ago, women nursed their young for about 4 years. That was a lot of maternal investment for a single child. Families had maybe 2 children at most. Civilization took so long because we needed the ability to harvest and store large amounts of grains. Once we could do this, women nursed about 2 years on average; allowing for family groups to get larger. Larger families meant more work could be done , and boom, you have civilization in the Fertile Crescent. As far as Gobekli Tepe is concerned, I think there is plenty of evidence to suggest they were temples or some sort of sacred space. Love the vid and the channel!!
You've got a great voice for youtube, I listen when I can't fall asleep :) Since Humans have been on the planet an estimated 200,000 years, we certainly could have had entire civilizations come and go long long long before we thought they could have ever existed as our written records only last 10,000 years or less.
"Hey there, Joe... Wha' do ya' know?" Just found you out on YT. Fascinated with the whole Göbekli Tepe discovery. Been wondering about the neighboring "settlements" (the other 'Tepe's) so-to-speak... Would you consider ever doing a follow-up vid about some of those other archeological finds? I always look to "connect the dots" and I'm a keen follower of more recent theories that address multiple "apocalyptic" events that changed the world (and humankind). Any thoughts?
In the early days of personal computers, say around the late 80's, a "trading post" for personal computers and electronics spontaneous erupted under a bridge in the Dallas area. That civilization collapsed and there is no longer any indication that it ever existed. It was completely unorganized. It just happened. I bought my first EGA monitor there. It quit working after about a week.
I love deep history, history, studying our modern world, thinking of near future and even distant future. Where man and our cousins came from, what our civilizations (or lack thereof) were in the first million years of hominid inhabitation, how our cousins died out. How far we've come as a species today, where we're going tomorrow, and where we might be in another million years - if we live that long. All of it is fascinating. We live in the great Middle times, let's see where we go next, and what past treasures of knowledge we may find still.
Jo please look into the possibility that the pyramids were not built by the ancient Egyptians but by a much much earlier civilisation who's technology was lost. They show far greater precision than anything in ancient Egypt and there are now hieroglyphs in they pyramids.... I would love to see your take on it...
I would love to see the ancient America series. I did not know at all about any other peoples here. Makes you wonder if this place has a whole entire lost history.
You should partner with one of those fecal sample analyses companies for a Joe Scat product line. tag line "I hope you give a crap" it fits your channel theme of some interesting things you think other people will also care about and be interested in.
It's hard to completely rule out earlier civilization and we have seen the earliest evidence of what we might call civilization pushed back earlier, but at the same time the idea really just isn't supported by the evidence. There might well have been much earlier sites like the Tepes that we just haven't found, but it's hard to see how anything much beyond that wouldn't have left traces. We can trace the beginnings of agriculture quite well - the origins of early domesticated crops are known and traced to the ancestral plants. Any civilization much older couldn't have been agricultural - or the knowledge and the crops would have had to disappear completely. Domestication itself took long periods of time
What was the climate like there 10k to 15k years ago? Probably a lot different than today considering the glaciers hadn't receded yet. Probably made for a more hospitable area.
Are people reading Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow? That book is so thought provoking and packed with anthropology references, I think it could be expanded into a series.
First of all, "possible" almost everything is... But probable? That's more difficult. 😬 But you're absolutely right. And more... Imagine if an alien civilization came to Earth, let's say around 40 million years ago and even had a base here for a while... What kind of evidence we could ever hope to find of them? It's REALLY difficult, because Earth's surface is always renovating itself... And to tell the truth, we're really lucky to be able to find dinosaur's fossils! Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Why did it take so long for humans to urbanize? Great question! Some has suggested that symbolic thinking took a lot time to develop. Some that writing was a gating item. I would guess that history is not linear and that pockets of human advanced at different rates, but that disease or some other horsemen of the apocalypse hit the reset button.
Honestly this is the thing that makes the most sense. Evolution of human populations, cultures, and civilizations is unfortunately thought of as constantly progressing. But it has only been since industrialization that food supplies have reached the point where humans could reach a level of progression like that in every aspect of their growth. As you say, before then, we were only slightly better off than the rest of life on Earth when she decided to make us adapt or die. And while we're making great progress at becoming a fully automated labor civilization, nature still has plenty to throw a wrench in our plans and set us back thousands of years, if not completely wipe us out.
It’s definitely possible for us to miss a civilisation on the level of gobekli tepe(or even a bit more advanced) that’s tens of thousands of years old. Advanced civilisation though? Not even talking about modern level(which would be impossible to miss), but even something like Roman or Egyptian - it would span too large of an area, leave too many traces. We can miss one small settlement hidden under a few hills, but we wouldn’t miss an entire country.
You would if those sites were re-inhabited by later people and rebuilt or renovated by them. Where today we credit such sites to the people that only we are aware of. There are places, such as in Peru and Egypt, where the greater technology is built at the base of the structures with megalithic blocks and such, and then lesser technology was used to build on top of it (random loose piled rocks). And even in some ancient sites, the local legends are that they discovered the place and credit the construction to other people/beings and consider it to be holy/sacred. Probably why they would attempt to renovate it in the first place.
I wish it were easier to buy merch from my favorite UA-camrs, who are almost all American or British. There just doesn't seem to be any support in the online stores for payment methods used in The Netherlands (iDeal for example).
1:23 I know! the skulls were used as lampions for Halloween! that's why they were painted and hanging from ropes.. LOL 5:22 I couldn't resist; they were gathering from all over the country for Country Music Festival!! 6:36, sorry Joe but Gobekli Tepe and the area around is just in the middle of Fertile Crescent...
I am having a cup of Joe while I watch Joe and the double dose of Joe is just right on a Thursday.
same here!
Do I have a coffee cup at home that says, "Cup of Joe" on it?
Yes. Yes I do.
@@joescott-tmi That's proper investment.
@@joescott-tmi but does it have your photo of you holding a cup that say cup of joe with a photo of you for proper joe-ception?
Yeah, I think you're right. Drinking Joe out of a skull of Joe would have been just a little too much Joe for a Thursday.
"'Skull room'? Ah! Oh that's just Günana's house. Yeah he's kind of a weirdo and everything to him is just 'skull' this and 'skull' that."
- Person living in Göbekli Tepe at the time
The skull cult is very interesting. I just recently read a book about the Sky disc of Nebra and the related settlements as well as some kind of stongehenge like wood-circles that also seemed to feature lots of skulls either burried in huge amounts in trenches around these "wood-henges" or that had been placed on top of the wooden poles. Also the book shows very plausibly that the european bronze-age people who made the disk had consistent contact with the cultures in the fertile crescent, learned from them and brought e.g. astonomical knowledge back home. They were also trading across vast distanced in order to get tin (which is needed to create bronze) from Cornwall to the South-Western part of Germany.
We underrestimate how advanced and interconnected people in the bronze age and before were and there is still so much we don't know. For example why do we find (stone) henges across all of Europe from Malta (which is pretty isolated) to the South of France and the UK - and is Göbekli Tepe not also a henge of some kind? Maybe there has been cultural exchange for much longer than we think. There is also so whole "who invented writing" discussion that maybe the Babylonians weren't the first and in fact a culture from the Danube area - the Vinča - invented it before them.
Sadly a lot of these informations is not in English, for example the book concerning the Sky disc of Nebra is only available in German, which is pretty sad because it's such a fascinating topic. (For anyone interested, its Die Himmelsscheibe von Nebra: Der Schlüssel zu einer untergegangenen Kultur im Herzen Europas | Ein archäologischer Sensationsfund zeigt die Bronzezeit in neuem Licht.
by Prof. Dr. Harald Meller, Kai Michel.) Aside from it's archeological value the whole story how it was acquired is pretty wild - from grave robbers to ransom demands and scientists going undercover black market dealers there is everything in this story.
@Joe: If you are ever interested in getting some of the German sources or need a scientific synopsis, let me know! These kind of things are my passion and I'd love to get more of it out there. :) Thank you for doing these episode, I like all of them but the archeological ones always hit different.
This much effort and information put into a UA-cam comment ought to be recognized. Thank you!
@@Lance_Manyn Aww, thank you! :) Have a nice day!
I think there's a NOVA documentary about the Nebra sky disc with all the drama you mention
It's hard to fathom what must've been achieved once good stretches of peace and cultural cooperation were in play for human existence thousands of years ago. We've seen how chaotic things can be, even in an age of significant enlightenment and shared technology / inventions. It's a real struggle to get along. We barely avoided a complete global cataclysm in 2 world wars. Not even a century later, and we're on the brink of it yet again all because of one prominent nation. Why is it so hard to achieve lasting peace? Societal stability. And that all hinges on the average psychological maturity of human beings.
@@cytherians Absolutly! I think those finds are a testament to what humanity can achieve if we wor together instead of against each other - I think it's a hopeful message in times like these.
Never really believed in lost super advanced ancient civilizations, but I have always thought that before writing existed maybe super smart people randomly being born and dying caused their societies to advance but then rapidly decline. It's a lot easier to transmit knowledge from generation to generation with writing. Maybe a prehistoric Isaac Newton built Gobekli Tepe but they weren't able to build on that knowledge.
YT video "The Ishango Bone - 22,000 Year Old Math Calculator" may interested you.
@@augustlandmesser1520 cool man thanks!
or Antikythera mechanism: gear-based analogue computer/calculator....unless proven an artifact hoax,
I personally find just producing this (in any small quantities) without milling quite hard.
I love that you're back to somewhat regular uploads on here Joe, you're honestly probably my favorite UA-camr at this point. Glad to see you doing so well
You know, TMI can also be a place where you can include extra interesting details from videos posted on you main channel, and maybe include sources where people wanting to do their own research could look into. Just a thought. Love your stuff, Joe.
Yeah I'd love that.
@@jeremyowen1 me three
Uh, I'm writing a book on architectural history as I work my way through an honours BA in interior design. My book starts with Gobekli Tepe, and I was unaware of the skull thing there. So you're forgiven, and I have to do more research.
One thing about Gobekli Tepe that I haven't heard you mention is that in those many layers of building over many years/generations, it seems like the carving techniques got worse over time making the oldest sections the most ornate. This would seem to indicate that the original builders were more technologically advanced and knowledge was lost over the following centuries. This could lead one to believe that the original builders were remnants of a technologically advanced civilization that died out or devolved and the technology and knowledge was lost.
There was a recent archaeology project that took place at a former football (soccer) ground which had been abandoned 50 years before. It's interesting because some of the finds might well have been such a puzzle leading to wild theory had they been unearthed beyond living memory, let alone thousands of years later.
Here's a quote from an article about it:
"Perhaps the most bizarre find was a nappy (diaper) pin. It would have remained a mystery were it not for the arrival of Susan Farr, daughter of Chick Farr, a star goalkeeper. She explained that the elastic on her father’s shorts had snapped during a match, forcing the trainer on to the pitch to perform an emergency repair. It was an incident Farr never lived down, and he was regularly showered with pins when he was in goal thereafter."
That's a great analog, Alex! It goes to show how easy it can be to misinterpret cultural significance. Whereas an elaborate arrangement of skulls could easily be seen as macabre for our societies today, maybe back all those years ago, it was a kind of reverence for important people who helped their societies be successful. We've all seen in our lifetimes how single individuals can become tremendous cultural icons. But how easy it is to lose the substance of intention and purpose. Even in our modern age with video recording, people can often be taken out of context so easily.
@@cytherians Yes, the meaning of almost anything might be changed and mis or reinterpreted/understood depending on context and culture.
I've been thinking about how our own remnants might be met by human(oids) of the far future and in particular how danger might be conveyed.
There's an interesting article entitled 'How to build a nuclear warning for 10,000 years time' which is well worth searching out. Essentially a bunch of artists, engineers, anthropologists etc are having to think about preventing people digging up radioactive waste millennia from now. A picture of some skull and cross bones isn't going to cut it!
Joe, I was an early subscriber to your TMI channel and I have to say I love the format. Your open and relaxed presentation makes it feel like we’re having a personal conversation. I also subscribed to Joe Scott about four or five years ago and like your TMI channel, I’ve watched every video at least two or three times. Lastly, your video about 10 days ago where you shared your channels analytics, etc. was very interesting as I wasn’t aware how You Tubers monitored video viewership, etc.
As an avid viewer, I want you to know your content, video subjects and presentation are great, entertaining and very informative. A big THANK YOU to you and your team. Cheers!
Same
Hey Joe, how about doing a show where you take us on a "tour" of all or some of the interesting books & mementos displayed on your shelf behind you in these videos?... and what significance they may have to yourself, as well as us viewers.
Would be great content for shorts per Joe's shorts experiment video 🙃
Yes! I have so many questions
Joe, I LOVE theses TMIs. Just discovered after years of subscribing.
Same!
Don't forget that Gobekli Tepe isn't the only monument in this region from the Tas Tepeler pre-pottery neolithic period. The others have similar architecture, particularly Karahan Tepe. There are at least 10 sites found so far, indicating that this was a well organised, stable civilisation with enough time and resources to build these amazing sites over hundreds of years.
Plus, the Gobekli Tepe site is far bigger than archaeologists initially thought. They are currently excavating an area adjacent to the main circles, twice the size, which could be a settlement or workers housing.
There are further indications that the site is at least 3-4 times the size of the first completed area. This is most definitely an advanced society, even if they are only using rock and wood to build. They must have been producing enough food for their society if they could spare workers to build such monuments.
It's definitly on my bucket list as well as Çatalhöyük
I've always thought there could have been humans before us that were just as or almost as capable as we are now. I'm glad I'm not the only one
Hi Joe,
Regarding the communication abilities of human species 200,000 years ago. The only book I read on the topic is Yuval Harari's "Sapiens" and he actually argues that communication capabilities of all human species were much more limited than the one we have. He also argues that modern level capabilities evolved in Homo Sapiens around 70,000 years ago and it was enough to grant Homo Sapiens a decisive competitive advantage against other human species. Kinda murky how exactly this was established, though :) Anyways, the book calls it "Cognitive Revolution" and it is covered in the second chapter of the part one.
It's a popular book, so plz forgive me if you've already read it.
My personal pet theory is that useful, relatively complex human language didn't really get off the ground until about 40,000 years ago, and until that happened you couldn't have anything resembling a civilization. We take language for granted now, but think of how long it must've taken to develop commonly accepted words and related syntax in pockets of hunter-gatherers. Not to mention how much more difficult it would be to maintain these early, fragile languages without the benefit of writing the words down (which didn't develop until, what, 5,000 years ago?). And like many developments that came about organically, there probably wasn't much impetus to innovate quickly because they couldn't have foreseen just how useful even modest innovations could be. The more knowledge we accumulate as a foundation, the bigger we can "dream", but it takes time to get there.
Assuming we had the same biological equipment, larynx, vocal cords etc. Doesn't it seem kinda weird that it took 160,000 ish years for us to start grunting coherently? IDK.
Though I gotta admit if you spend much time in the comment section, I'm seeing a lot of people who STILL can't grunt coherently. 😁
@@knewledge8626 I’m not sure you can assume the same physiology. Early peeps with both the cognitive ability to store and interpret language AND the physiology that allowed more granular vocal skills would pass on a survival advantage. This would speed natural and artificial selection for these language processing brains and facilities
@@knewledge8626 Even assuming we had the vocal capabilities, I'd imagine the earliest languages were extremely limited in their vocabulary and probably only consisted of names for everyday objects: "fire", "rock", "wood", etc. That's fine if all Grogg wants is for Drogg to pass him a rock, but think of how much more developed language would need to be before you could successfully communicate abstractions, concepts, and ideas for things that didn't even exist yet. That would take a long, LONG time.
If you spend your life just trying to survive. There isn't much time spent working on new things. Even if someone figured out something. Doesn't mean they shared it. Tried to promote it. Or anyone cares about it. People everywhere come up with some handy way of doing their job. And it doesn't become a thing for whatever reason. Look at work now. How many people work for a living. Don't have the time or energy to improve themselves. A hunter gatherer in the past likely spent a lot of time looking for food daily. Preparing for winter. Entertaining themselves. One thing I've heard myself. You can't be creative if you are in survival mode.
I completely agree. Poverty Point is not well developed, out in the middle of farmland, but well worth the trip if you are in the neighborhood.
I suspect the skulls were simply displayed mementos, like our photos on the mantle.
I thought the exact same thing then I read this....
You should read up on pochteca, itinerate Aztec merchant/traders who may have been the Kokopelli depicted in rock art and religious practice through out the southwest. The pochteca were identified as a merchant class in the aztec society that trade intensively through out Mexico and as far north as the Great Basin. They may have traded into Mississippian valley. I wouldn't surprise to find that they trade as far south as Peru. They may also be from an older civilization than the Aztec into the toltec period or older.
I'm ready for it Joe. I love your Tee designs, but I've kinda been waiting for something that more directly represents your channel. That Tee and Patch are perfect man.
People seem to forget that rivers move over time by large amounts. A farmer found a full paddle boat buried in his field. He had no idea the Mississippi River used to flow through his property.
If you have not seen “The Mystery of Chaco Canyon” on Bullfrog Films, do so. More mind-blowing than Stonehenge or anything else I know of, because of the knowledge of astronomy used in construction of the buildings, along with lines scratched miles out into the desert, all with astronomical significance. It was a sort of sequel to another Bullfrog film called “The Sun Dagger,” which is pretty impressive, but the Chaco Canyon film is nothing short of stunning. It was finally put on UA-cam this year. Going there is the biggest thing on my bucket list.
Thanks for the recommendation man.
Congrats on 100k subs!
These ancient megathic monuments that are buried for hundreds if not thousands of years appear in many places throughout the world. I was in Mexico a few years ago and went on a tour with a local Indigenous man who showed us wild edible plants, plants that could be used as pigment for paint, etc. He also showed us huge stone walls like those in Peru. He said that there were places that were ritually buried to protect them. They were dug up every 100 years or so for very special Religious rights then buried again. I mentioned Gobeckli Tepi and he said that was probably true of that site as well. I personally believe, like Joe, that there were advanced civilizations way before us and probably before those we have been taught to believe were the beginning of Human civilization. Just look at Longyou Caves in China for example. What kind of advanced civilization created that? There are a lot of unanswered questions. I just hope we are around long enough to unravel them. Thanks for the videos Joe, we all appreciate them. Keep them coming.
Dinner and drinks with you is one of my bucket list items. I find your curiosity to align with my own, big difference is that you actually act on yours beyond watching answers with Joe. 😂
He would be a good guy to talk with! I’m slightly more history-skewed than he is, but I think there’s enough there that it would be a real treat.
So when I turn the guy from down the street into a chandelier, People have a problem with that. But when a church does it it's considered a religious ritual
I would love a series discussing some of the evidences for ancient civilizations. If nothing else it's incredibly thought provoking.
Recently been really fascinated by the idea of cataclysmic geologic episodes. Something that was widely adopted by many of the great early geologists.
There are geniuses in every population (even animals). Imagine that brilliance being applied to stones, wood, bones, water, mud, food stuff, native gold/copper/silver, ... because it had no where else to be expressed for 200k years.
Joe, I shot a doc with Dr. Robert Schoch whose work is all about this in a way. We spent a month in Egypt filming all over. He thinks the Sphinx was built by a previous, forgotten civilization and the Egyptians re-carved it to fit their culture. He had pretty suggestive geological arguments that were. to my mind persuasive. He says the Upper Dryas period wiped them out.
Joe, next time you come to Europe you seriously need to visit the "Chapel of bones" in Evora, Portugal. It's seriously impressive.
Thanks Joe. Another great episode. Always look forward to seeing a video of yours pop up in my subs.
Couple of things:
1/ Gobekli Tepe was not a city. It was a settlement with a couple of hundred people at most. Besides, a city is more than just a group of settled people. None of that applies to Gobekli Tepe.
2/ We have plenty of evidence for human communities from 50,000 years ago. It would be bizarre if remains of small hunter gatherer groups in ephemeral camp sites preserves, yet remains from an “advanced civilization” does not .. if it existed, we would have some evidence for it by now.
3/ There is a misunderstanding between what we call anatomically modern humans (possibly as old as 300,000 years) and fully modern human behaviour. There were major changes in behaviour and artistic production ca. 50,000 years ago that might be the result of further evolution in the brain that does not leave fossilized traces.
4/ There is such a thing as the Ice Age. There is a clear correlation in different parts of the world with the end of the Ice Age and new developments in human behaviour that set a new trajectory leading down the line to domestications of plants and animals, different living arrangements, larger populations, new family structures, etc.
Exactly. Joe, please read this and think about it thoroughly. Speculation is nice and all but don't take it too serious (yourself). Let the evidence lead you, not the other way around.
it's a lot of "ifs". if they had developed language, if they had developed writing, if they had environmental conditions that didn't hinder progress, also if they had worked out some form of basic medicine to stop getting wiped out.
I'm pretty sure I've seen an Eons episode where they showed that genetic mapping indicates a massive population crash down to several thousand people. if that happened again and again, that would be sufficient to stop progress.
I know, it's another "if"...
Check out the Fenn Cache. A Clovis find. Some of the stone in Colorado used for points is from Texas. 12,000 year old evidence of extensive trade routes. Granted, we adapted as runners so covering ground is what we did.
I have never heard about this. It's interesting and it kind of draws parallels with our modern society and the future. So imagine if in 10,000 years we have future archeologists digging through the ruins one of our cities and they find tons of plastic toys, statues, or busts (like Marvel characters, Funko Pops and stuff like that). I wonder if they are going to think that we worshiped them, they were our gods or something along those lines. Granted this would probably require the records of our time to be lost but it's still interesting to think about how our lives will be interpreted in the future.
Thanks for sharing this update Joe!
Landfill sites could provide evidence of our culture's toys & tools for our future archeologists.
Especially because our most valuable knowledge is almost never held in durable, easily readable formats anymore.
Well, here's the thing, Joe. The ocean level during the last ice age was much lower as so much water was locked in ice. Therefore, the shore that was then is now well underwater. Who knows what archeological finds might still be either undiscovered or obliterated. Life is much fun as we learn more.
From the time I found my first Flint point hunting mushrooms on the farm I've been perplexed by the first Nations. When I saw the Aztec knapped Flint twisted display at the Colorado history museum my mind has been blown. Definitely lost knowledge will be found again.
I've already found my answers to everything
I''ve often wondered about the impact of the end of the ice age and the following climate changes on civilization development or even continuity if you imagine older civilizations. With Gobekli we're starting to creep closer to the period immediately after the retreat of the glaciers.
Isn't there also a theory about a precedent to upper Nile Egyptian culture coming the migration of an advanced people from west of the Nile? Their region had been lush following the end of the ice age but slowly dried out forcing the relocation.
And another about a pre-Sumerian culture further to the south that was flooded by the rising sea levels due to glacier melting later on than the end of the ice age, whose migrants were foundational to Sumerian culture?
There are theories about people concentrating on the Nile Valley as the Sahara region became increasingly arid, and of people inhabiting parts of the Persian Gulf region which became gradually flooded as sea levels rose. Those migrations of relatively small groups of people happened gradually and well before the emergence of larger complex societies in the 4th millennium BCE.
Southern Mesopotamia (Sumer) was gradually inhabited by peoples from the surrounding area as they managed to develop water management technologies (basic irrigation and flood controls). The region is fertile when irrigated, but too arid otherwise.
While there are not many sites excavated of the earliest inhabitation of southern Mesopotamia, this process is otherwise fairly well understood. There are zero indications of any "advanced civilization" populating this region. We're talking about small communities at first. We have evidence from those, their remains are preserved, so there is no reason to assume anything else for which magically any evidence would be erased.
@@srenette82 The reference to southern Mesopotamia I made was from a theory I saw over at the Fall of Civilizations (great channel!). It had to do with the idea that at some point after last ice age the Persian Gulf advanced many kilometers north-westward forcing a migration of peoples that may have led to the beginnings of the Sumerian civilization. It is described beginning at the at 24 minute mark of this video: ua-cam.com/video/d2lJUOv0hLA/v-deo.html&ab_channel=FallofCivilizations
It is, of course, only a theory. It does go a way towards answering the origins of the non-Semitic people (and language) in southern Mesopotamia and of course the ubiquitous flood myths. Fall of Civilizations usually sticks to much more verified historical sources, but they were intrigued by the idea as well, and mentioned it as an unverified theory.
It caught my interest because of its similarity to the Egyptian case - forced migration of people due to environmental factors whose arrival and mixing with existing locals may have been the catalyst for the development of those societies. Joe had a great recent video on Doggerland that also makes the imagination soar in this direction.
What piques my curiosity is wondering how much of our development was affected by the period of strong environmental change following the last ice age. For example, was Mesopotamia in need of irrigation early on? Or did that come later as the climate changed, forcing the locals to develop systems, both political and technical, to continue farming as the region grew more arid? I guess that would be paleo-geography which I think we are still working on understanding fully.
@@oombaca Thanks for the follow-up. I can tell you as a professional in the field with expertise in the region and period considered here that in southern Mesopotamia, agriculture was not viable without irrigation and water management systems (dams, etc.). We do increasingly understand the importance of exploiting marsh environments so that agriculture itself was not necessarily the only subsistence strategy. However, we do not currently have any evidence for any occupation in southern Mesopotamia before ca. 5500 BCE (maybe extending back to 6000 BCE), while there is lots of earlier occupation around southern Mesopotamia, especially closer to the mountain flanks where there is and was more rainfall.
Mesopotamia is a very diverse landscape with lots of different ecological zones. Southern Mesopotamia specifically (the land later called Sumer and later still Babylonia) consisted of extensive marshlands near the Persian Gulf and mostly arid regions elsewhere that could only be inhabited and cultivated with water management systems. Northern Mesopotamia is a different case where rainfed agriculture was possible most periods in history, but irrigation was developed to increase reliability and output, especially in the zones along the edge of where rainfed agriculture is/was possible.
Edit addition: as for the end of the last Ice Age, that occurred thousands of years before the development of irrigation, they are not related. That being said, certainly the major changes after the Ice Age clearly correlate with major transformations of human societies in this region and elsewhere.
@@srenette82 Thank-you for sharing your expertise with me! I am just an avid tourist of history.
@@oombaca Sure thing! I hope there will be some solid documentaries or shorter videos about this on this platform, or maybe some more accessible books on the topic soon! No need to take my word for it after all :) but I try to offer some corrections here and there on this platform.
What is most fascinating about this cult is the connection to early Jericho, c. 7,000 BC, but much later than Gobekli Tape. So this was likely a tradition that endured longer than any of our modern religions.
I would love it if you interviewed graham handcock or randal carlson on gobleki tepe or other potential ancient civilizations.
Love you Joe! Always a staple in my day! Keep going at your own pace, dont burn urself out! All of us will be subcribed, regardless of the TikToks you make or dont make xD.
It does appear the Anatolian skull cult lasted for several thousand years.
They're also found in Çatal Huyuk which existed 2000+ after Gobekli Tepe.
Love watching Joe's content.
Please do! Do a series on that stuff!
I would love to see a video about your process, Joe. How do you come up with so much rich content? Do you have a massive idea-board that you progressively expand? I imagine you must keep track somehow, so that you don't accidentally make duplicates, or to plan enhancements-extensions to earlier work. Of course, comments are probably a great source of new ideas to help you focus on content generation. Do you also have friends and colleagues where you bounce off ideas and seed new content premises?
I've been itching for Joe to acknowledge the possibility of a past advanced (different technology tree) civilization.
Like it can't be stressed enough how difficult it is for any objects, features, specimens, or evidence (whatever you want to call it) to be preserved and survive extended time scales, like everything rots, rusts, and is recycled or changed by the environment. Anything we find are the exceptions to the rules, due to a contemporary context of deposition of the specimen that may or may not be obvious. some rapid hot burial/cementation, Or oxygen poor environment, or intentional burial, Pompeii comes to mind seems to be ideal. Opposite side like burial by global water level changes, Or shifts in crust like isostatic adjustments due to shifting masses like glaciers, bodies of water, volcanic eruptions, land slides, many orher
erosional forces (including living beings) can completely erase things like historical black holes, erasing the object and all information in regards to its creation, use and subsequent deposition.
Be thankful for anything we find, I'm not saying believe in stuff there is no evidence for, but if we find anything be sure to preserve all the data we can in its surrounding context to the best of our ability and interpret evidence individually genuinely in our frame of view without assumptions imposed by others without looking at all information available.
P.s. stoned
"... that they could easily be explained away ..." 3:49
And that's exactly the thing that I worry about. How much wondrous discoveries have been filed away as not interesting?
Or to put it differently: The other side of Occam's Razor.
I've heard an explanation for why civilization didn't appear earlier: there was no need for it. My understanding is that the hunter-gatherers who preceded civilization could get everything they need from only working 30-40 hours per week; why complicate it? What was supposed to prompt the development of agriculture & hence civilization was a climatic change which made food less available by the old means, so farming started.
there are quite a few channels here on the tube-u-all that cover
pre-conquest Americas
Ancient Americas is one.
Atzlan Historian...
there is an archeologist who also digs (literally) North Amerindian culture
Nathanael Fossaen
North 02 has also done some videos on prehistorical Amerindian movements...
it is a growing field.
I was yelling "what about the skull cult, JOE??!!" The whole time your video was playing while my girl and I were making dinner listening to your video....this is the payoff!
I always wondered what's buried in the vast desserts under all that sand. There has to be some village's from a lost people there
Answers with Joe retro lunchbox coming soon..
We lived right by Poverty Point. Used to hike there all the time. Interesting place.
Maybe something like forgotten civilization after you finish forgotten atrocities?
You might want to look into the Cahokia Mound Peoples. In the 1500s when Marquette came down the Mississippi. Cahokia was larger than London!
I do love the thought of potential civilisations that could have existed and evolved between 65 million and 15'000 years ago, it's just entirely possible we never find sufficient evidence to be certain of it.
As for the skull 'cult', it made me think of the strategy game Sid Meier's Civilization; one of the very early research advances is 'ceremonial burial', rather than a cult, is it not possible they just did things differently with their dead back then? Perhaps it is their version of a photo album, or family tree. I certainly do like that there's just enough evidence for us to wonder how much we don't know, if you would like to do a vid of wild speculation for this period of time, I'd watch.
Great Video as always. Have you ever watched any UnchartedX videos where Ben talks about some evidence of Lost Technologies that could help to open the mind of the possibility of another civilization before ours? Based alot on Graham Hancocks work but could be a good interview to have so he can walk you thru his own photos he has taken from Egypt, Peru, etc.. Something to think about.
All complete fiction unfortunately. Easily and completely debunked by actual evidence collected and studied by professionals who spent years of research on this.
Great job. You should have millions of subs.
Ah the pillar men :)
*pillar man themes start playing*
AWAKEN MY MASTERS
“There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio than are dreamt of in our philosophy” Thank you for keeping it interesting and honest Sir… ;) Enjoy videos always food for thought.
I wonder if the construction of Göbekli Tepe had something to do with the Black Sea deluge.. or younger dryas since they're around the same times...
When I watched the Monday video, I couldn't help but wonder if that part of Anatolia, back then, simply enjoyed such an abundance of wildlife that it was possible to have enough surpluses, consistently and reliably, to permit the leisure time to start to specialize.
I mean, the consistent and reliably salmon runs of the Pacific Northwest permitted the indigenous people, there, to develop a fairly advanced culture, with specialized labor that produced sophisticated artifacts and unique architecture -- and all without agriculture or literacy.
Could the people who lived at Göbekli Tepe enjoyed some sort of similar advantage, with vast herds of animals funneled through the region, for some reason?
Please 🙏 make more videos on it. I'AM a firm believer of a passed adviced civilization.
Check out Graham Hancock
Love your videos. Remember that the skulls of olds leaders would also be the ancestors. I agree that we under estimate the ancients when you hear that at Denisovan cave they found associated with those peoples whose name is derived there a broken stone bracelet which may have originated in North Africa, or how an ancient Egyptian mummy tested positive for cocain which is only found in South America, or the story of the black mummy of the Sahara which is 9000 years old and embalmed in the same technique as used by ancient Egypt using cedar oil. The common folk may not have shared in these resources but there is more to this tale.
the main argument against the lost advanced civilization is that mining leaves unmistakeable traces that we have not found. Actually, if civilization was to start again now, we would have quite a problem due to lack of ore as we have depleted most easy sources.
Here's a thought parking lots take up 25 to 30% of city land use go up not out parking garages.
Yep a said it parking garages reduce those massive parking lots like Walmarts or the worst afenders car sells lots that can literally be miles big.
Reduce them by 50% new land can be used for green spaces to help cool citys and reduce flooding wind co2 metals in the air and soil.
Why go up? Why not go down? Go down and put a green zone on the top, to help fight the urban heat island effect.
Half-expected you to go full Yogurt at the end there: "Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the moviechannel is made!"
Those bone buildings are in Portugal as well.
Sounds almost like pre 1000 AD Vikings. Turkey is not that far away because Vikings got some of their steel while trading from that general area.
You mean a way to support your channel without a monthly commitment? Awesome!!
Seriously, though, I just saw a video that was talking about vulcanism at Yellowstone and it mentioned that obsidian quarried in Yellowstone thousands of years B.C. has been found as far east as Ohio & Pennsylvania and as far south as Kentucky. Many of the indigenous tribes territory overlapped to at least some degree, so it's not out of line to surmise that trading networks spanning the continent existed long before Europeans arrived.
Pre-history humanity is endlessly fascinating to theorize about.
Pleeaase tell us more about GÖbelki Tepe and the HE calendar!
And to put the cherry on the cake. Göbekli Tepe is seven miles northeast of the city of Şanlıurfa, also called Urfa or Ur Kasdim, the hometown of Abraham brother of Nahor where skull ancestry worship began. Shows how a little reading goes a long way😮
I literally just now realized that you're posting these follow ups on Thursdays, like how you used to do random Thursdays 🤦😂 Keep up the awesome content! 😊😊😊
I'd love to hear your take on Tartaria, the mud flood.
The idea that advanced civilizations existed long before ours is not only possible but is entirely plausible.
We have found unexplained examples of apparently manufactured metals, like a series of fine metal tubes embedded in rock and other strange "machined" artefacts supposedly ancient. I would like to see a real investigation into this subject. Or even a Hollywood movie about previous civilisation. Remember, even the ancient Egyptians spoke of "the ancient ones" that came before. Sounds Epic!
Until the agricultural revolution about 10, 000 years ago, women nursed their young for about 4 years. That was a lot of maternal investment for a single child. Families had maybe 2 children at most. Civilization took so long because we needed the ability to harvest and store large amounts of grains. Once we could do this, women nursed about 2 years on average; allowing for family groups to get larger. Larger families meant more work could be done , and boom, you have civilization in the Fertile Crescent. As far as Gobekli Tepe is concerned, I think there is plenty of evidence to suggest they were temples or some sort of sacred space. Love the vid and the channel!!
You've got a great voice for youtube, I listen when I can't fall asleep :) Since Humans have been on the planet an estimated 200,000 years, we certainly could have had entire civilizations come and go long long long before we thought they could have ever existed as our written records only last 10,000 years or less.
What an amazing world we live in. Thank you Joe 🙏🙏🙏
"Hey there, Joe... Wha' do ya' know?" Just found you out on YT. Fascinated with the whole Göbekli Tepe discovery. Been wondering about the neighboring "settlements" (the other 'Tepe's) so-to-speak... Would you consider ever doing a follow-up vid about some of those other archeological finds? I always look to "connect the dots" and I'm a keen follower of more recent theories that address multiple "apocalyptic" events that changed the world (and humankind). Any thoughts?
I’d love to hear your thoughts towards the kinds of things Graham Hancock and Randal Carlson talk about. Especially around the younger dryas event!!
Joe, do a video on the Mississippi River going dry!
I'm curious what's under the Sahara desert and it's sand dunes. Given that the area used to be a lush jungle.
In the early days of personal computers, say around the late 80's, a "trading post" for personal computers and electronics spontaneous erupted under a bridge in the Dallas area. That civilization collapsed and there is no longer any indication that it ever existed. It was completely unorganized. It just happened. I bought my first EGA monitor there. It quit working after about a week.
Poverty Point was also available to traffic across the Gulf
I love deep history, history, studying our modern world, thinking of near future and even distant future. Where man and our cousins came from, what our civilizations (or lack thereof) were in the first million years of hominid inhabitation, how our cousins died out. How far we've come as a species today, where we're going tomorrow, and where we might be in another million years - if we live that long. All of it is fascinating. We live in the great Middle times, let's see where we go next, and what past treasures of knowledge we may find still.
Jo please look into the possibility that the pyramids were not built by the ancient Egyptians but by a much much earlier civilisation who's technology was lost. They show far greater precision than anything in ancient Egypt and there are now hieroglyphs in they pyramids.... I would love to see your take on it...
I would love to see the ancient America series. I did not know at all about any other peoples here. Makes you wonder if this place has a whole entire lost history.
You should partner with one of those fecal sample analyses companies for a Joe Scat product line. tag line "I hope you give a crap" it fits your channel theme of some interesting things you think other people will also care about and be interested in.
It's hard to completely rule out earlier civilization and we have seen the earliest evidence of what we might call civilization pushed back earlier, but at the same time the idea really just isn't supported by the evidence.
There might well have been much earlier sites like the Tepes that we just haven't found, but it's hard to see how anything much beyond that wouldn't have left traces. We can trace the beginnings of agriculture quite well - the origins of early domesticated crops are known and traced to the ancestral plants. Any civilization much older couldn't have been agricultural - or the knowledge and the crops would have had to disappear completely. Domestication itself took long periods of time
Ossuaries are common in areas where land for burial is in high demand.
What was the climate like there 10k to 15k years ago? Probably a lot different than today considering the glaciers hadn't receded yet. Probably made for a more hospitable area.
Are people reading Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow? That book is so thought provoking and packed with anthropology references, I think it could be expanded into a series.
First of all, "possible" almost everything is... But probable? That's more difficult. 😬
But you're absolutely right. And more... Imagine if an alien civilization came to Earth, let's say around 40 million years ago and even had a base here for a while... What kind of evidence we could ever hope to find of them? It's REALLY difficult, because Earth's surface is always renovating itself... And to tell the truth, we're really lucky to be able to find dinosaur's fossils!
Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Why did it take so long for humans to urbanize? Great question! Some has suggested that symbolic thinking took a lot time to develop. Some that writing was a gating item. I would guess that history is not linear and that pockets of human advanced at different rates, but that disease or some other horsemen of the apocalypse hit the reset button.
Honestly this is the thing that makes the most sense. Evolution of human populations, cultures, and civilizations is unfortunately thought of as constantly progressing. But it has only been since industrialization that food supplies have reached the point where humans could reach a level of progression like that in every aspect of their growth.
As you say, before then, we were only slightly better off than the rest of life on Earth when she decided to make us adapt or die. And while we're making great progress at becoming a fully automated labor civilization, nature still has plenty to throw a wrench in our plans and set us back thousands of years, if not completely wipe us out.
It’s definitely possible for us to miss a civilisation on the level of gobekli tepe(or even a bit more advanced) that’s tens of thousands of years old.
Advanced civilisation though? Not even talking about modern level(which would be impossible to miss), but even something like Roman or Egyptian - it would span too large of an area, leave too many traces.
We can miss one small settlement hidden under a few hills, but we wouldn’t miss an entire country.
You would if those sites were re-inhabited by later people and rebuilt or renovated by them. Where today we credit such sites to the people that only we are aware of. There are places, such as in Peru and Egypt, where the greater technology is built at the base of the structures with megalithic blocks and such, and then lesser technology was used to build on top of it (random loose piled rocks). And even in some ancient sites, the local legends are that they discovered the place and credit the construction to other people/beings and consider it to be holy/sacred. Probably why they would attempt to renovate it in the first place.
I wish it were easier to buy merch from my favorite UA-camrs, who are almost all American or British. There just doesn't seem to be any support in the online stores for payment methods used in The Netherlands (iDeal for example).
1:23 I know! the skulls were used as lampions for Halloween!
that's why they were painted and hanging from ropes.. LOL
5:22 I couldn't resist; they were gathering from all over the country for Country Music Festival!!
6:36, sorry Joe but Gobekli Tepe and the area around is just in the middle of Fertile Crescent...