First the temple, then the city.
I just this afternoon came across this article in Newsweek. I tells the story of Gobekli Tepe, as does this Smithsonian article. Gobekli Tepe is an 11,500-year-old temple complex in southern Turkey that the archaeologist in charge, Klaus Schmidt, believes was used for death rituals. That is before agriculture, before pottery, before bronze, before writing, and before the wheel. However, the first domestic crop has been traced to a strain of wheat located just 20 miles away and dated about two-thirds of the way through Gobekli Tepe’s lifespan in 9000 BC. The first domesticated animals are similarly close and similarly dated. The exciting thing about this is that it suggests a hypothesis that contradicts the common belief that religious settlement, that urbanization, arose from the leisure and stationary lifestyle provided by agriculture. Rather, religous activities required permanent settlement, which led to agriculture and domestication.
[Note to self: Reread Jane Jacob's explanation for the first cities in Economy of Cities.]
I’m certainly not prepared to accept that Jacobs was right about the role of early cities.
This certainly does seem to challenge the emergence of religion in civilization, but not really the role of cities. As the article notes, they found no traces of a village.
I am also curious about the dating for agriculture. How long do you have to cultivate the natural grains before they become identifiable as “domesticated” wheat? The timing makes me wonder if they may have been starting rudimentary forms of agriculture already at the time the site was being constructed. Additionally, the carvings themselves could seem to suggest they had started some herding activities as well.
Overall, I’m still inclined to think agriculature and animal husbandry came before urban settlement, possible construction of communal sites for religious observations notwithstanding.
These findings don’t support Jacobs, but she presented the other alternative hypothesis that trade activities led to settlement, which led to cities. Coming together for religious purposes would be a direct parallel to this argument. The two could even have come naturally together. People migrate to the same location to honor their dead and exchange with other tribes.
The article says they didn’t find a village on the site itself. They did find a settlement nearby. And Schmidt cites this as support, since it shows that the primary developed site was religious and the secondary site supportive.
As to dating, I don’t know the science or the data, but for now I think we’ve got to trust the experts. That, of course, doesn’t mean that in the future some other presumption-upsetting finding won’t be discovered…
I think there are two separate issues:
1) What was the role and sequence of religion in the development of complex societies?
2) What were the relationships and sequence between agriculture and urbanization?
This site certainly provides new information that requires previous assumptions about the first question. As for the second question, I still don’t see urbanization as a likely predecessor of agriculture.
The dating of the permanent settlement was 1,500 years later than the ritual site, and it was later than the dating of the domesticated grain.
While the accuracy of either dating process is perhaps imprecise, my real question about agriculture is relying on the date for domesticated grain. I expect there is a substantial period of primitive agriculture that relies on wild seeds before the crops become domesticated. Given the nearness in the dates and lack of precision in both dating processes, together with the expectation that domestication dates don’t capture the actual beginning of agricultural development, it seems odds are very good some degree of agriculture was already underway at the point the temple complex was being started.
I would contend communal gathering places could easily predate the emergence of permanent settlements, but that the permanent settlements are not possible without a reliable food source. I think there are three conditions necessary for the Jacobs scenario to work:
1) Hunter gatherers produce a reliable surplus,
2) They have a regular need for trade, and
3) A permanent settlement provides significant advantages for that trade that could not be provided at temporary gatherings.
The notion of a reliable surplus doesn’t seem consistent with my limited understanding of hunter gatherers. I am also doubtful permanent sites would confer enough advantage for trade. We are certainly aware of temporary gathering places that have been successful. The outdoor, summer-only Icelandic site comes to mind as one example of a regular, yet temporary, gathering location. I also think of the Native American pow-wow. Fairs of all types are a tradition that we still remember in Western European culture.
It seems like there are other ways to create a shared gathering place for exchanges, without the need for a permanent settlement (although a regular site seems very convenient). To make a settlement permanent, there has to be a reliable food source. It still seems more likely that the reliable food source would have come from agriculture and domesticated animals (or perhaps rich fishing locations… although I haven’t ever heard of archeological evidence for that possibility).
For a permanent settlement to rely on trade among hunter gatherers for its food supply simply seems like it would require too much overhead, when there would be other easy alternatives to set up a neolithic swap meet.
Let’s consider the scenario of a drought that affected a whole region. These are relatively routine events.
The people living in the permanent settlement would be the first to starve. The hunter gatherers would no longer trade away their food once they had difficulty feeding themselves.
Hunter gatherer groups might suffer some deaths, but could carry on. The settlement would be wiped out.
(I’ve got insufficient time to address these concerns, but…) The Jane Jacobs thesis does respond to some of your concerns. I don’t know that it is correct, but she suggests that the first permanent settlements would near some immobile source of important tools. I believe she says an onyx quarry. The tools would be of such use to hunter-gatherers (as weapons, knives, etc.) that they would trade food for them. So an earlier version of specialization or division of labor would take effect. Experts in making tools would set up shop at a quarry, and the rest would come to visit and trade.
You’ve got her example right. Her model just doesn’t seem to survive the first general food shortage.
Her basic idea is still interesting, though. It would seem more suited to a fishing village than a quarry. A permanent settlement at the sea could corner a trade on shells, and might be able to rely on fishing and clamming for a stable supply of food.