Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and Chuck's
Speaker 2: here and it's just us and that's fine, and this
Speaker 2: is stuff you should know. One of my favorite types
Speaker 2: of addition is the Distant Past Let's figure it out
Speaker 2: edition and it's so surprising edition.
Speaker 1: Oh man, you've always loved this stuff.
Speaker 2: Huh, I certainly have it. Jazz is me at least
Speaker 2: as much as Earth's science.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you know the age old question like
Speaker 1: if you could, you know, have a real wayback machine
Speaker 1: and go back and go to like any concert. Your
Speaker 1: answer would be like m something where tuk took like
Speaker 1: took bones and banged it on rocks just so I
Speaker 1: could see what was going on.
Speaker 2: Ah yeah from a distance, as long as you didn't
Speaker 2: know I was there, because I assume I would get
Speaker 2: beaten to death by that same guy.
Speaker 1: You know you're like that. And craft Works first tour.
Speaker 2: I saw craft Work in the Disney like concert hall
Speaker 2: in La No.
Speaker 1: I'm very jealous of that show.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you about that every time. Man. That was
Speaker 2: a great show.
Speaker 1: Looks amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had like a three D light display and
Speaker 2: everything one day. Yeah, one day. They're still touring as
Speaker 2: far as I know.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they don't get around here that much, you know, No,
Speaker 1: but when they do, go see them, No for sure.
Speaker 2: Also, while we're on recommendations, I watched a movie that
Speaker 2: I've just been passing over for years now that is
Speaker 2: actually worth the watch. It's a mind bending horror movie
Speaker 2: called Triangle. I think it's Australian because I'm pretty sure
Speaker 2: just about everybody in it's Australian, but they're pretending to
Speaker 2: be American. But it's it's you know how often like
Speaker 2: mind bending movies that like mess with like just reality
Speaker 2: and stuff like just fall apart at some point. This
Speaker 2: one stayed tight from beginning to end.
Speaker 1: It. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a good movie. I would definitely recommend it.
Speaker 2: I mean I don't think it won any Oscars or
Speaker 2: anything like that, but it was definitely worth watching.
Speaker 1: You know what, you can take the Oscar Award and
Speaker 1: stick it right up the collective butt of the world.
Speaker 1: This is just called Triangle.
Speaker 2: Just Triangle.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, okay, never heard of it.
Speaker 2: You all hang out here, you go watch it and
Speaker 2: then come back and we'll talk about it.
Speaker 1: Two thousand and nine British film is what it says?
Speaker 1: Is that possible?
Speaker 2: I thought it was like twenty eighteen. Does it look
Speaker 2: like there's a person wearing like a bag over their
Speaker 2: head in the on the poster?
Speaker 1: No, that's another one trying.
Speaker 2: I want to say twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Fear Comes in Waves. Probably, Yes, it looks very b movie.
Speaker 1: But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 2: That's what I thought too.
Speaker 1: That can be good.
Speaker 2: I totally thought it looked be too. And then I
Speaker 2: was like, this is really good. This movie hasn't gotten
Speaker 2: enough credit from me.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, I'll check it out.
Speaker 2: Okay, So all of the archaeology and anthropology fans are like,
Speaker 2: shut up and start talking about go Beckley tepee. I
Speaker 2: don't know why that was hard. It's really actually a
Speaker 2: very easy word to say, or a pair of words.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw tepee. Actually, I don't know how specific
Speaker 1: that gets though.
Speaker 2: That's spoken by people who raise their pinkies when they
Speaker 2: drink their tea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but a tepee is is like a mound or
Speaker 1: a hill. Correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, go Beckley means belly, so people take it to
Speaker 2: basically mean pop belly hill.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this this is a place in Turkey, and
Speaker 1: it is an a place where a lot of archaeological
Speaker 1: digging is still going on, and it was one of
Speaker 1: these places that is. And I know you love this
Speaker 1: kind of thing more than anything, but like when an
Speaker 1: archaeological find kind of up ends traditional thought of how
Speaker 1: we thought things were, and this is one of the
Speaker 1: eight examples of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially when it's true and not like pseudoscience, like
Speaker 2: somebody's like it was ancient aliens.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, where's the proof?
Speaker 2: They're like, it's ancient aliens? Man, don't don't harsh my mellow.
Speaker 1: Well you want to hear something funny? What part of
Speaker 1: what I watched on YouTube about this was from the
Speaker 1: show Ancient Aliens.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of like pseudo archaeology that
Speaker 2: surrounds this that you have to kind of be careful of. Yeah,
Speaker 2: for sure, this is like true, like this truly has
Speaker 2: upended our current or yeah, I guess still basically our
Speaker 2: current understanding. And that is thus we've told this story
Speaker 2: many many times on this podcast, and it turns out
Speaker 2: that it's probably at least oversimplified, if not just outright
Speaker 2: and correct, But the whole basis of what we're talking
Speaker 2: about has to do with the Neolithic Revolution, which says
Speaker 2: that somewhere around ten eleven thousand years ago, people in
Speaker 2: the Fertile Crescent Mesopotamia started to settle down, raise crops,
Speaker 2: and as they were able to support more people, more
Speaker 2: and more people came and moved to that area. They
Speaker 2: domesticated animals, cities sprung up, and then from the city's
Speaker 2: hierarchies grew and then we had kingdoms and wars and
Speaker 2: all sorts of stuff, and also arts, culture, architecture. All
Speaker 2: that stuff developed from the people first settling down in
Speaker 2: domesticating cross becoming sedentary, like transitioning from hunter gathers to
Speaker 2: farmers essentially, and that that was the start of all
Speaker 2: the other stuff that followed. Go Beckley Teppe turns that
Speaker 2: on its head essentially.
Speaker 1: That's right. And this was one of those discoveries that,
Speaker 1: like I said, really sort of upends everything that we
Speaker 1: thought to be true. The real discovery and you know,
Speaker 1: we'll kind of get to what had happened before this,
Speaker 1: But the big, big find was in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: and that's when you know, archaeologists started really literally digging
Speaker 1: into it. It had been known to local there, you know,
Speaker 1: for a while obviously, because it's sort of like the
Speaker 1: Sherpa that are like climb this mountain all the time.
Speaker 1: There were people living nearby and Turkey in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties even that were finding pretty cool stuff here. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't until nineteen ninety four that they made the big,
Speaker 1: big discovery and really, like I said, started digging in
Speaker 1: and forming opinions over and you know, we'll get to
Speaker 1: these because they still haven't settled on exactly what gebecley
Speaker 1: Tepe was.
Speaker 2: No, they haven't, which explains why we haven't said what
Speaker 2: it is yet. But that nineteen sixties survey found a
Speaker 2: bunch of slabs of limestone, but they mistook what they were.
Speaker 2: They mistook their significance. They thought they were gravestones from
Speaker 2: a medieval cemetery, and it would turn out that they
Speaker 2: were about eleven thousand years older than that, because what
Speaker 2: go beckley Tepe was when they started digging it up
Speaker 2: in the nineties under the leadership of a guy named
Speaker 2: Klaus Schmidt, who was the guy who saw this and
Speaker 2: was like, this is not a natural formation, this is
Speaker 2: clearly human made. Let's see what's underneath this hill. He
Speaker 2: found that this was essentially a Neolithic settlement that dates
Speaker 2: back at its earliest spot as far as we know,
Speaker 2: to about eleven thousand, six hundred years before today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, the significance of all of this,
Speaker 1: if we haven't been clear enough, is that basically they're
Speaker 1: dating this long before like hundreds maybe even a thousand
Speaker 1: years before what we thought was when people started settling
Speaker 1: down and becoming farmers, which led to all the you know,
Speaker 1: modern advances eventually that we know today that, like you mentioned,
Speaker 1: so this was a long long time before that when
Speaker 1: we were like no, no, no, At the time, people were
Speaker 1: just moving around hunting and gathering and kind of just
Speaker 1: I don't know about struggling to survive, but subsistence living,
Speaker 1: you know, from season to season, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And ninety four, like you said, was when Schmidt came
Speaker 1: in there and he got pretty excited, like so excited
Speaker 1: that he bought a house nearby and set up camp
Speaker 1: and said, all right, this is going to be the
Speaker 1: base for me and my small team. Anytime students are
Speaker 1: coming over here, they can stay here, and this is
Speaker 1: now the official home base of this extraordinarily interesting archaeological site.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he would go on to lead the dig
Speaker 2: at Gobeca Teppe until his death I think at age
Speaker 2: sixty in twenty fourteen. If I'm not mistake anybody or else,
Speaker 2: you know, well, this was like he was like, well,
Speaker 2: here's my career. This is what I'm doing for the
Speaker 2: rest of my life. Like they're totally they They've been
Speaker 2: digging at Gebecley Tepping now for what thirty years. They've
Speaker 2: easily got another fifty years of excavation left unless some
Speaker 2: huge new technological advance and archaeology comes along, but using
Speaker 2: current practice says they have decades left of exploration to
Speaker 2: do of this site. But what Schmidt found from the
Speaker 2: outset just didn't make sense because, like you said, they
Speaker 2: think that they were building this before people even started
Speaker 2: to settle down and start farming, which means it was
Speaker 2: thousands of years before people should have been able to
Speaker 2: create things like this, like massive structures. That it takes
Speaker 2: a lot of people in a coordinated manner to come
Speaker 2: up with a coherent plan and then build this stuff
Speaker 2: and then also imbue it with symbolism as we'll see,
Speaker 2: it just did not make sense. But the date the
Speaker 2: radiocarbon dating was right and so Klaus Schmidt was smart
Speaker 2: enough to be like, we might have this whole Neolithic
Speaker 2: revolution story wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, so just sort of brass tacks. It
Speaker 1: is in southern Turkey. It's located at the highest point
Speaker 1: of the Germis germ Us unfortunately named Mountain range, which
Speaker 1: is right on the edge of the Fertile Crescent there
Speaker 1: not coincidentally, and the mound itself is about fifty feet tall,
Speaker 1: covers about twenty two acres and it was kind of
Speaker 1: one of these things where basically he had gone there
Speaker 1: he knew that people nearby had dug up some things
Speaker 1: that looked like tools and stuff like that. He was like, well,
Speaker 1: this is pretty interesting. And when he stood back and looked,
Speaker 1: he was like, that hill up there doesn't look like
Speaker 1: the rest of these sort of flatish plateaus. It's more
Speaker 1: rounded and it looks like clearly formed by humans. And
Speaker 1: that's when everyone, you know, all the locals in their language,
Speaker 1: said no, duh, we've known this for a while. So
Speaker 1: he said, all right, you know, I'm going to set
Speaker 1: up shop here, and they got to work, starting with
Speaker 1: that uppermost level, which was what did we figure it
Speaker 1: was like ten thousand ish years ago.
Speaker 2: Yes, so the most recent use of it was ten
Speaker 2: thousand years ago. And Olivia helps us with this, and
Speaker 2: she pointed something out that I thought is definitely worth mentioning.
Speaker 2: The go Beckley Tepe site was older to the people
Speaker 2: who built the pyramids at Giza and Stonehenge. Then the
Speaker 2: people who built the pyramids and Stonehenge are to us.
Speaker 2: It's that ancient, that like, it was, yeah, thousands and
Speaker 2: thousands of years old. That ancient when the people started
Speaker 2: building the pyramids. It's just yeah, like you said, it's
Speaker 2: a brain breaker, like how old this thing was, and
Speaker 2: then what they were able to do and what they're
Speaker 2: able to do. So, by the way, no one knows
Speaker 2: what culture this is, because again it's not supposed to
Speaker 2: be a culture from our understanding of people at the time.
Speaker 2: I've seen interpretations of communities at around this time what's
Speaker 2: called the pre pottery Neolithic, which is a specific era
Speaker 2: in the Fertile Crescent where there wasn't pottery. Pottery existed
Speaker 2: elsewhere in the world, like Japan was making a maze
Speaker 2: using conk shell pottery around this time. China has twenty
Speaker 2: thousand year old pottery, but just in the fertile Christ
Speaker 2: and they hadn't started making pottery yet, so they're called
Speaker 2: the pre pottery Neolithic group essentially. But suffice to say,
Speaker 2: this group got together and decided to build this at
Speaker 2: least as far back as eleven six hundred years ago,
Speaker 2: and then they stopped using it about ten thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they started top down, like you said, the
Speaker 1: most recent use would be the stuff on top, obviously,
Speaker 1: and they started to notice, wow, there are actually buildings
Speaker 1: here with straight walls, so that means that somebody shaped those.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just by pure chance or luck that those
Speaker 1: walls ended up being straight. They found these limestone pillars.
Speaker 1: There were about two meters high on this upper level.
Speaker 1: Some of them had decorations on them. These upper ones
Speaker 1: had etchings of lions. And then they started going down.
Speaker 1: Obviously things are getting a little bit older, and then
Speaker 1: they said, wow, these pillars are getting a lot bigger
Speaker 1: than the ones on top. Some of these things are
Speaker 1: fifteen to eighteen feet high, weigh about ten tons, and
Speaker 1: they look like they're arranged in very specific ways. There
Speaker 1: were at least twenty circles or ovals that had these
Speaker 1: that basically made up these enclosures, and there were you know,
Speaker 1: some of them actually were shaped in such a way
Speaker 1: that they wondered, like, it's no accident that they're shaped
Speaker 1: in the form of a triangle. If you connect them,
Speaker 1: like it might be like a stone hinge kind of
Speaker 1: thing happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's definitely one theory is that at least part
Speaker 2: of this was a cosmic observatory. And yeah, like you said,
Speaker 2: the settlement overall the site forms it like some of
Speaker 2: the columns form an equilateral triangle, and then the center
Speaker 2: of the site bisects that triangle perfectly. So it's just
Speaker 2: it's not accidental. And again, people weren't supposed to be
Speaker 2: using geometry, even root menary geometry at this point for
Speaker 2: thousands of more years, and yet these people were doing it.
Speaker 2: Some of the other things that they figured out, as
Speaker 2: the limestone did come from the area, but it still
Speaker 2: came from hundreds of meters away, right, So these you said,
Speaker 2: sixteen feet about five and a half meters ten tons
Speaker 2: of rocks carved out of the limestone bedrock and then
Speaker 2: carried over to this site and then raised. That takes
Speaker 2: a lot of people, even using like logs and rollers
Speaker 2: and things like that it still takes a lot of coordination,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it takes a lot of determination too. And
Speaker 2: to me, the fact that those columns are smaller and
Speaker 2: smaller the more recent you get, and then bigger further
Speaker 2: down almost suggests that there was like a loss of
Speaker 2: enthusiasm over time.
Speaker 1: They got worn out.
Speaker 2: I think so, yeah, over thirteen hundred years or yeah,
Speaker 2: thirteen hundred.
Speaker 1: Years, they're like, hey, those inner levels look great, but
Speaker 1: do we really need that much headroom? The tallest one
Speaker 1: among us is five and a half feet.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, they were shorter back then, I think.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. Everything you mentioned there is possible
Speaker 1: that limestone is pretty soft as stone goes, and the
Speaker 1: flint tools that they had back then could have been
Speaker 1: used to do something like this. And depending on who
Speaker 1: you talk to, some people will say, like, you know,
Speaker 1: it may have taken a few hundred very determined people
Speaker 1: to move these things. Other people Olivia found this one
Speaker 1: guy and archaeologist named Edward Banning from the University of
Speaker 1: Toronto that said, nah, give me, give me twenty crown men,
Speaker 1: and I could do this even without rollers.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Watch, yeah, no one ever called us bluff. Should
Speaker 2: we take a break yeah, let's take a break.
Speaker 1: All right, great setup, everyone's on the edge of their
Speaker 1: limestone seat and we'll be right.
Speaker 2: Back, okay, Chuck. So one of the things that I
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier is that these people not only created these
Speaker 2: huge pillars and walls and enclosures, they also put they
Speaker 2: carved them. There's a lot of symbols on this stuff,
Speaker 2: and essentially they're pictograms like they're symbols that directly represent
Speaker 2: the thing they are. There's not any encoded meaning to it,
Speaker 2: like if it's a bird, it's supposed to be a bird.
Speaker 2: And there's a lot of really readable symbols, like they're
Speaker 2: it's not like, wow, it's photo realistic, but you can
Speaker 2: clearly see this is a bird, this is a gazelle,
Speaker 2: this is a fox, this is a scorpion. And they
Speaker 2: started to notice that some of the enclosures were essentially
Speaker 2: dedicated to one kind of animal. But the biggest enclosure
Speaker 2: enclosure D was there's a bunch of different animals on
Speaker 2: the like scratched or carved into the different kind of
Speaker 2: pillars and walls and everything, And there's a lot of
Speaker 2: interpretation just in that stuff alone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, like the ones where it's just like nothing,
Speaker 1: but Foxes. They think could have been a specific clan
Speaker 1: because it was part of the clan system, like clan
Speaker 1: of the cave Bear, it would have carved a bunch
Speaker 1: of cave bears. So if it was a fox clan,
Speaker 1: they may have just carved foxes. But it might make
Speaker 1: sense that the biggest one because you know, there's still
Speaker 1: you know, as we pointed out, guessing as to what
Speaker 1: even was going on and what all this stuff was
Speaker 1: used for and what it all meant. So I think
Speaker 1: it just sort of makes sense that maybe the biggest
Speaker 1: one was maybe where groupings of clans came, so they
Speaker 1: were all represented by their favorite football pretty much.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the things also that gave away that
Speaker 2: fox enclosure is that one of the carvings says foxes
Speaker 2: rule and it's foxz, So clearly they were pretty yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So those pillars too, sixteen feet five and a half
Speaker 2: meter ten ton pillars at the largest if you look
Speaker 2: at them, they actually represent people, but they represent like
Speaker 2: a really non descript type of person.
Speaker 1: Yea.
Speaker 2: So these are T shaped pillars. So at first I
Speaker 2: just assume, well, that's like you know, shoulders, and then
Speaker 2: like the head's carved into the middle of the shoulders. Wrong.
Speaker 2: The tea itself is actually the head viewed from the side,
Speaker 2: so that when you look at the narrow ends on
Speaker 2: each side of that top of the tee, that's the
Speaker 2: face in the back of the head. I thought that
Speaker 2: was a really strange artistic decision.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. The other thing too, is I don't
Speaker 1: think we mentioned that kind of One of the first
Speaker 1: theories was that, or maybe we did, that it was
Speaker 1: kind of ritual based, because I think when they find
Speaker 1: anything from this time, they think, well, this wasn't a
Speaker 1: permanent settlement because they didn't have those, so this was
Speaker 1: just a place where they did rituals and maybe sacrifices
Speaker 1: or whatever, prayed to whatever God. They did find things
Speaker 1: like masks that maybe were ceremonial that at least lent
Speaker 1: itself to the idea that that could have been going
Speaker 1: on there. They did find some other images that weren't
Speaker 1: as straightforward as the sort of clear ones that you described,
Speaker 1: like birds with human legs, and they speculate that could
Speaker 1: have been like maybe people in costume at a ritual
Speaker 1: or a rite that we're displaying here in this little story,
Speaker 1: and the fun part about all of this is that
Speaker 1: they seem to have been drinking beer at the time,
Speaker 1: because there were beer brewing vats nearby.
Speaker 2: Like huge fats. It could brew tens and tens of
Speaker 2: gallons at a time, and that supports this idea that
Speaker 2: this was a ritual place. I mean, just the fact
Speaker 2: that they went to the trouble of making this, and
Speaker 2: then the fact that they added these symbols to these
Speaker 2: huge monolists that they raised, and then the fact that
Speaker 2: there was beer strongly supports that they were essentially partying
Speaker 2: in one way or another at Go Beckley Tepee. Right.
Speaker 2: But in addition to that, in those very obvious pictograms
Speaker 2: or pictographs, there's also some straight up symbols that are
Speaker 2: not immediately obvious that does suggest that there was meaning
Speaker 2: and coded in it, which would make it writing. There's
Speaker 2: a what looks like a capital ie that keeps popping
Speaker 2: up here. There. There's also a capital H that's usually
Speaker 2: associated with the capital ie, and they think it's possible
Speaker 2: that represented the summer solstice in the winter solstice or
Speaker 2: day and night because it's just used so repeatedly. One
Speaker 2: of the other reasons they think that is a guy
Speaker 2: named Martin Sweatman, who's an engineering researcher from the University
Speaker 2: of Edinburgh. He he analyzed one of the one of
Speaker 2: the pillars and there's a bunch of different markings on them,
Speaker 2: and he interpreted them as essentially a calendar that not
Speaker 2: only you could track the year with, but he took
Speaker 2: it to be like a timestamp for a potential common
Speaker 2: impact that allegedly set off the younger driest mini ice age.
Speaker 2: So if that's true, that means that they were proto
Speaker 2: writing seven thousand years before the Sumerians came up with
Speaker 2: the what's considered the first alphabet seven thousand years Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then in addition to that, they they were able
Speaker 2: to track the procession of Earth, that they were able
Speaker 2: to account for the wobble that changes the time and
Speaker 2: days throughout the year enough that they could create a
Speaker 2: lunar calendar, and they supposedly, if this actually is a
Speaker 2: time stamp, they were able to date things that were
Speaker 2: like major celestial events like meteor showers or again a
Speaker 2: potential commet strike.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is like, I mean, I guess we'll
Speaker 1: talk about the significance of calendars in a couple of
Speaker 1: ways here and later. But one thing to think about
Speaker 1: is like, if you're hunter gatherers and you're not around
Speaker 1: very long, like, what do you need a twelve month calendar? For?
Speaker 1: Another way of looking at it, and this kind of
Speaker 1: kind of lends itself to some of the later theories
Speaker 1: is that, well, maybe we'll hold on to that. That'll
Speaker 1: be a nice little teaser.
Speaker 2: Actually even I'm teased, but we.
Speaker 1: Can talk about this right now, which is the fact
Speaker 1: that they found remnants of bones and wild plants and
Speaker 1: things that pretty much clearly indicate that they had been
Speaker 1: butchered and cooked. There mostly gazelle, about sixty percent were gazelle,
Speaker 1: but they also add sheep and deer and wild boar
Speaker 1: and birds like geese and ducks and cranes and things
Speaker 1: like that, So they were it seems like they were
Speaker 1: eating and drinking pretty well here they were.
Speaker 2: This also supports Chuck because if they were not farmers
Speaker 2: and they were just hunter gatherers who would come to
Speaker 2: this area, you know, occasionally, and they were making beer,
Speaker 2: that supports that idea that we've talked about before that
Speaker 2: bread was actually invented as a portable beer starter.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because of that, Old Jim.
Speaker 2: This says that beer came before farming, then if this
Speaker 2: is what's going on here, for interpreting this correctly, so
Speaker 2: that is very significant too. The bones and the plants
Speaker 2: that they found at the site are all wild and
Speaker 2: that strongly suggests to researchers, not just us, that these
Speaker 2: were these were hunter gathers. They weren't farmers at all.
Speaker 2: There was no sign of domesticated animal bones. And even more,
Speaker 2: if you look at all of the animals on any
Speaker 2: of the engravings or carvings or sculptures, they are all
Speaker 2: wild animals too. There's not a single sheep or pig
Speaker 2: or anything like that, any domesticated animal to be found,
Speaker 2: Like even the pig is the wild boars. They're just
Speaker 2: all wild animals. And that will become a little more
Speaker 2: significant in a second.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The other thing too we didn't mention is that
Speaker 1: lends itself to the idea that things were still very transient.
Speaker 1: Was they didn't find things that you normally find, at
Speaker 1: least at this point as a permanent settlement, like trash,
Speaker 1: like big buried mounds of trash, or any indication that
Speaker 1: there were homes there, or like a hearth where someone
Speaker 1: might have burned a fire repeatedly over and over in
Speaker 1: the same home like place. So they're not finding that stuff,
Speaker 1: they're finding other things that kind of contradict that you
Speaker 1: mention those human like carvings. There were other ones that
Speaker 1: had like pretty clear symbolism of death, like a fully
Speaker 1: carved human sculpture where they intentionally cut off the head.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't just like, you know, hey, look it's
Speaker 1: a person without a head. They would carve it into
Speaker 1: a person, cut off the head, and then place that
Speaker 1: head somewhere else. That was significant to them, clearly symbolization, symbolization,
Speaker 1: symbolizing something. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah. So you put all that stuff together, and
Speaker 2: what you have is this hypothesis that Klaus Schmidt came
Speaker 2: up with. Remember he's the guy who essentially discovered this
Speaker 2: place and kept going until twenty fourteen. His hypothesis was this,
Speaker 2: because there's no evidence of permanent habitation, right like you
Speaker 2: were saying, because all of this stuff is wild game
Speaker 2: and wild plants that's left over, and because these structures
Speaker 2: don't appear to ever have been roofed, like these enclosures
Speaker 2: were always open air. You put all that together, this
Speaker 2: was not a permanent settlement. It was a settlement that
Speaker 2: was created for religious purposes or spiritual purposes or something
Speaker 2: like that, symbolic purposes by hunter gatherer groups, and every year,
Speaker 2: a couple of years or whenever, a bunch of them
Speaker 2: from all around the area would come together and they
Speaker 2: would party, they would eat, they would drink a bunch
Speaker 2: of beer, and they would carve out these pillars and
Speaker 2: raise them. And then weirdly, Schmid also added, they would
Speaker 2: fill these enclosures in with rubble ceremonially, because when they
Speaker 2: discovered them, all the enclosures were well filled in with rubble.
Speaker 2: So he interpreted that to mean that that was part
Speaker 2: of this ceremony. They would cover one up and then
Speaker 2: they'd build another one on top.
Speaker 1: He said it was Coachella.
Speaker 2: Do they fill things in with rubble at Coachella?
Speaker 1: No, of course not. The Indio Polo grounds are very nice, actually,
Speaker 1: But he did sort of say, like, hey, this is
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that we think they just met
Speaker 1: here occasionally over decades, maybe even hundreds of years. Maybe
Speaker 1: these rituals sort of evolved over time to maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: because there's clear sort of death symbolism in places to
Speaker 1: honor people that were important to the community maybe help
Speaker 1: establish their identity somewhat as wandering tribes. And that's what
Speaker 1: he thought, you know, one of the keys to this
Speaker 1: whole thing, Yeah, was that to do something like this,
Speaker 1: they would have had to had you know, even if
Speaker 1: they were hunters and gatherers, they had to have had
Speaker 1: a lot of people there that stayed there for long
Speaker 1: enough time to get this done.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that over time, over those decades or centuries,
Speaker 2: it just attracted more and more and more people to
Speaker 2: the area. And so rather than the monumental structures and
Speaker 2: religion arising from farming, Klaus Schmidt said, coming together to
Speaker 2: create this religious structure actually essentially trap people in the
Speaker 2: area where they became farmers. We had it totally backwards.
Speaker 2: That was Schmidt's hypothesis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like a geological geological chicken or the
Speaker 1: egg or I guess archaeological chicken or the egg.
Speaker 2: Yes, but the chicken came first.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: You know, that's the answer to that question.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, we've covered it.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're not going to again. I'll tell you that.
Speaker 1: No. Heck no, why reach read something?
Speaker 2: So do you want to take another breaker? Is it
Speaker 2: too soon?
Speaker 1: Well, let's take a break right after this, because there
Speaker 1: was one other thing that we should point out is
Speaker 1: some of the other things sort of supporting this idea
Speaker 1: of Schmidt was they didn't see a water source anywhere,
Speaker 1: which wouldn't be a good place for people to permanently be.
Speaker 1: And what else. I already mentioned the garbage dumps and
Speaker 1: the lack of houses, so I guess the only thing
Speaker 1: I didn't mention was the water source.
Speaker 2: Right. The thing is Klaus Schmidt was I think he
Speaker 2: formed this hypothesis, you know, within a couple of years
Speaker 2: of starting excavation, and it held up at least until
Speaker 2: his death. But after his death, some new evidence came
Speaker 2: to light that caused people to go back and re
Speaker 2: look at some of the original evidence too, or some
Speaker 2: of the original artifacts and data, and they were like,
Speaker 2: we're not quite sure Klaus Schmidt had it right. And
Speaker 2: we'll talk about what they came up with the new
Speaker 2: hypothesis right after this.
Speaker 1: One person we need to shout out besides Olivia is
Speaker 1: a journalist named Andrew Curry. By the way, he's kind
Speaker 1: of the guy that has invested He's kind of like
Speaker 1: the Schmidt on the journalism side. For decades and decades,
Speaker 1: this guy's been writing about most of the popular stories
Speaker 1: about the Gibilecki, Giblic Giblick, Glavin, the Schenectady Tepe, the
Speaker 1: big shout out, big shout out there. But before we
Speaker 1: broke you mentioned new ideas coming along post Schmidt. In
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, his successor Won Lee Claire of the German
Speaker 1: Archaeological Institute or the DAI. They built a German shorthand
Speaker 1: for that, they constructed a big old canopy over the
Speaker 1: whole thing so they could dig more, because I don't
Speaker 1: think we mentioned for many, many years they were digging
Speaker 1: in the spring and fall because summer was too hot,
Speaker 1: winter was too wet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just four months a year, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they could dig dig more with this big canopy
Speaker 1: over it, shielding from the sun and rain and in
Speaker 1: order to build I mean, this is kind of one
Speaker 1: of those dumb luck kind of things that they probably
Speaker 1: would have gotten to eventually, but it expedited the situation
Speaker 1: when they realized to make this big canopy not just
Speaker 1: like a pop up with sandbags, They needed to like
Speaker 1: root this thing into the ground. So they dug down
Speaker 1: deeper than they ever had before to make supports and
Speaker 1: had some interesting fines down there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just not deeper than anyone in the world
Speaker 2: ever had before, just in this area. Right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, did you think I mean they take the
Speaker 1: dug the defice hole ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just kept going. They're like, well, we're already
Speaker 2: this far, we might as well set a record.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: They so they found they were able to take samples
Speaker 2: from those pillar holes. I think they went down even
Speaker 2: below the lowest layer they could possibly find. So when
Speaker 2: they took those samples, they were like, oh, here's all
Speaker 2: the stuff that Klaus Schmidt based his hypothesis on. Because
Speaker 2: they were missing garbage dumps, hearts, evidence of homes. We
Speaker 2: found a cistern eventually, like a thirty foot diameter cistern
Speaker 2: that held a bunch of rain water, all the stuff
Speaker 2: you would need to support a permanent settlement.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I can't decide. When I read this part of
Speaker 1: the story, I immediately was like, oh, no, Like I
Speaker 1: wonder if because Schmid died a few years earlier, I
Speaker 1: wondered if he because at first, off, I'm glad that
Speaker 1: he wasn't around to see that because it was kind
Speaker 1: of proved him wrong. But then I thought Now, Schmidt
Speaker 1: seems like the kind of guy that would have like
Speaker 1: loved knowing that he was wrong. Well, maybe not loved it,
Speaker 1: but loved knowing that they were on the right track
Speaker 1: to getting the accurate picture there.
Speaker 2: So that's funny. I interpreted him differently. I imagined him
Speaker 2: showing up at Lee Claire's tent in the middle of
Speaker 2: the night as a ghost, going, Lee, how could you
Speaker 2: betray me?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Maybe I think that actually happened too. I saw it
Speaker 2: on ancient aliens.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, perfect.
Speaker 2: So so here's the new hypothesis. They're like, okay, Kaus,
Speaker 2: he was working with what he had to work with
Speaker 2: at the time. But now that we have all this
Speaker 2: other stuff, what we realize is that part of this
Speaker 2: site might have actually been permanently occupied by some people,
Speaker 2: But that doesn't mean that it wasn't also like a
Speaker 2: ritual site, like clearly it was. This is not just
Speaker 2: how people built houses back then. People weren't even supposed
Speaker 2: to build these kind of complexes back then. One of
Speaker 2: the things that they're like, Okay, Klaus definitely got this
Speaker 2: wrong was the idea that part of the rituals were
Speaker 2: filling these enclosures in with rubble and then starting a
Speaker 2: new one on top. Somebody noticed that if you look uphill,
Speaker 2: the that are on the uphill side of the enclosure
Speaker 2: are usually damaged, whereas the walls opposite are fine, which
Speaker 2: strongly suggests landslide damage. There's also a lot of earthquakes
Speaker 2: in that area, so they're like, actually, we think that
Speaker 2: this stuff just kept getting destroyed. But the site was
Speaker 2: so important that for thirteen hundred years after an earthquake
Speaker 2: came through, they would come and rebuild, Like that's how
Speaker 2: important the.
Speaker 1: Site was to them. Yeah, and this is where it
Speaker 1: gets super interesting to me. Claire and some other people,
Speaker 1: some of her colleagues and others thought hey, maybe what
Speaker 1: this was was something created because agriculture and people settling
Speaker 1: down may have already been happening, and this was sort
Speaker 1: of created as part of the backlash against that. So
Speaker 1: people were domesticating plants and animals nearby, and they were
Speaker 1: still like, no, we want to be hunter gatherers, but
Speaker 1: we want to have this place maybe where we where
Speaker 1: we come and meet seasonally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or this is where we live. Like we're like,
Speaker 2: this is our this is our habit our settlement, but
Speaker 2: we're not going to farm. We're still going to you.
Speaker 1: Know, hunt and gather exactly.
Speaker 2: And one interpretation by a guy named Thomas Zimmerman, who
Speaker 2: is an archaeologist from bill Kent University, he sees this
Speaker 2: as a place that was populated by staunchly conservative, male
Speaker 2: dominated population, and there's a lot of stuff to support that. Right. So,
Speaker 2: first of all, if you have a group of people
Speaker 2: who are railing against these new sweeping changes to society
Speaker 2: that's going in ways, they don't like it, and they're
Speaker 2: they're going against that, that automatically makes them conservative. And
Speaker 2: then also if you look around at the iconography and imagery,
Speaker 2: it is very male centric. There's a lot of foulacies
Speaker 2: sticking up. There's all of the figures that are depicted
Speaker 2: are men. I read that wherever a wild animal that's
Speaker 2: carved into one of the pillars is gendered, it's invariably male,
Speaker 2: and it makes a lot of sense. And then simultaneously
Speaker 2: Thomas Zimmerman is like, I think that this was this
Speaker 2: was meant to be a place of It was kind
Speaker 2: of agro place where like you would come and like
Speaker 2: put some young hunters through their scary first rights. Like
Speaker 2: it was not a place of peace. It's a if
Speaker 2: you look at most of the animals, they're snarling, they're dangerous.
Speaker 2: This is not it is not meant to be a
Speaker 2: calm place. And Thomas Zimmerman, I hope he can unwind
Speaker 2: one day, right for his sake and the sake of
Speaker 2: people around him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he kind of described it as I don't know,
Speaker 1: like the birthplace of m M A and like, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of a lot of stuff we're seeing in the
Speaker 1: news today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the birthplace of people who watch ancient aliens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much. Here's the thing, though, we still don't
Speaker 1: know so much. I believe they're what like over fifty
Speaker 1: percent of it has still not been excavated.
Speaker 2: Oh no, ninety to ninety five percent is unexcavated.
Speaker 1: Oh I thought that was just ninety percent was underground
Speaker 1: and they had been doing stuff underground now.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so it's kind of confusing, and maybe you're right.
Speaker 2: But what I saw is that the whole site is
Speaker 2: ninety to ninety five percent unexcavated, but that the enclosures
Speaker 2: that they've been able to find, only half of them
Speaker 2: are even partially excavated. So they know that there's enclosures
Speaker 2: down there, they just haven't gotten to them yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, I like this last theory in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. That was a book called The Dawn of
Speaker 1: Everything by an anthropologist and an archaeologist David Graeber and
Speaker 1: David wind Grow, respectively, and they said, all right, here's
Speaker 1: what we think is that maybe it was just a
Speaker 1: non aggricate cultural society, and maybe they were just a
Speaker 1: lot more diverse than we thought they were. We kind
Speaker 1: of had this locked in idea that everyone was like this,
Speaker 1: and then everyone was like this, and they were like,
Speaker 1: maybe there was just a lot more overlap and sort
Speaker 1: of a spectrum of rituals and behaviors and things that
Speaker 1: people did, and it's just not so clear that things
Speaker 1: were like this until they stopped and then they were
Speaker 1: like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And now I remember I got off track earlier
Speaker 2: when I was talking about the pre Pottery Neolithic group
Speaker 2: that I have seen this era of people and earlier
Speaker 2: human beings their culture essentially likened to that of like
Speaker 2: bonobos or chimps. That that's like the level of like
Speaker 2: introspection or material culture or contributions that they would make
Speaker 2: that they were that backwards. And yeah, Graybor and Weingar
Speaker 2: are like, we got this all wrong. And so one
Speaker 2: of the things, the ways that Gebeckley Teppe ties into
Speaker 2: this is those the two Davids, that's what I call them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: They looked at some current hunter gatherer groups, which are
Speaker 2: obviously not perfect analogies, but what they found is that
Speaker 2: some groups have hierarchical structures during some parts of the
Speaker 2: year where they're sedentary, and then in other parts of
Speaker 2: the year where not times of plenty where you have
Speaker 2: to like spread out and go find food, they break
Speaker 2: up into smaller bands of hunter gatherers, and they suspect
Speaker 2: that Gebecley Teppe was a place where they all came
Speaker 2: together again and enjoyed times of plenty, like where there
Speaker 2: are tons of gazelles to hunt, lots of nuts and
Speaker 2: grains and stuff just for the picking, and that they
Speaker 2: didn't have to farm, but that they were capable of
Speaker 2: being sedentary while they were also hunter gatherers for the
Speaker 2: other part of the year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and not only capable of being sedentary, but capable
Speaker 1: of having a fairly complex society as they settled for
Speaker 1: that season, you know, before they went out. And you know,
Speaker 1: I love this idea because you picture them just sort
Speaker 1: of barely surviving and moving on until they find better
Speaker 1: places to hunt or a source of water, whereas this
Speaker 1: posit's just a just sort of a a better way
Speaker 1: of life that anyone thought they lived to such that
Speaker 1: they could be like, Hey, we're going to brew beer
Speaker 1: and we're going to party and we're gonna have fun
Speaker 1: because you know, we're all doing pretty well out here.
Speaker 1: Guys look around, let's like enjoy this season of settlement,
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or plenty, right, Yeah, And there's a lot of
Speaker 2: beasting seasons still today in human culture around this time
Speaker 2: of year, around late fall, like after the Hord, say,
Speaker 2: even through whether exactly and I don't know if it
Speaker 2: was from the two David's or somebody interpreting their work,
Speaker 2: but they were saying, there's a really good chance or
Speaker 2: at least a chance that our holiday seasons, right, is
Speaker 2: an ancient or remnant of that ancient seasonality where we
Speaker 2: would come together and share in times of plenty and
Speaker 2: then when you know, throughout the rest of the year,
Speaker 2: we'd spread out and go do our own thing. But
Speaker 2: during those times, community is emphasized, family is emphasized, coming
Speaker 2: together is all very much emphasized during that time of year,
Speaker 2: and they wonder if that's just a like, we're just
Speaker 2: unaware that that is a really ancient tradition that we're
Speaker 2: taking part in. Still, we just kind of transmuted into
Speaker 2: our own thing.
Speaker 1: You know. It really missed a great opportunity for a deep,
Speaker 1: deep cut what David and David I could have said.
Speaker 1: David and David looked around and they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to the Boomtown.
Speaker 2: What is that?
Speaker 1: It's the only hit song by David and David.
Speaker 2: What's Welcome to the Boomtown?
Speaker 1: The only hit song by David and David.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, let's hear some of it sing it. Sing
Speaker 2: it like Sammy Davis.
Speaker 3: Oh, I said, welcome babe, Welcome to the boom town. Man,
Speaker 3: all those what makes such a succulent sound?
Speaker 1: Welcome to the boom Town.
Speaker 2: I half suspect you're making this up as you go along.
Speaker 1: It was a great, great one hit wonder from back
Speaker 1: in the day by.
Speaker 2: David and David.
Speaker 1: David and David, that's would have been talking about this
Speaker 1: all time, And now it makes sense that you never
Speaker 1: knew what I was talking about time I did.
Speaker 2: It's still a good joke just because I got you
Speaker 2: to sing like Sammy Davis Junior.
Speaker 1: We all appreciate that it's a great song. It really is, So.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go listen to that. But first, there were
Speaker 2: just a couple of more things I wanted to say
Speaker 2: about this, the David and David interpretation of how people
Speaker 2: were way more complex than we give them credit for
Speaker 2: in the past. One of the things they point to
Speaker 2: her ancient burials like twenty six thirty thousand years old,
Speaker 2: where there's like grave goods and people and beaded headdresses,
Speaker 2: like clearly being treated differently than other people would have
Speaker 2: been buried. So obviously are hierarchical structures, like maybe they
Speaker 2: were mystics or shaman or something like that. And then
Speaker 2: there was another interpretation of Beckley Tepe itself that I
Speaker 2: thought was worth mentioning by archaeologists Anna Fagan from the
Speaker 2: University of Melbourne, and she was like, sill your role,
Speaker 2: Thomas Zimmerman. I actually think that all these depictions of
Speaker 2: death and mayhem and scary animals is actually symbolic of
Speaker 2: life and death and regeneration. And she makes some pretty
Speaker 2: good points, and I like her interpretation a little more
Speaker 2: because it doesn't alter anything else. This is still a
Speaker 2: hunter gathered tribe and they could still even be railing
Speaker 2: against farming. But that doesn't mean that they have to
Speaker 2: be like agro and and you know, want to just
Speaker 2: kill everybody essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2: I do too. Let's just keep talking about Black Beckley
Speaker 2: Teppie forever.
Speaker 1: It's a good one. And but now all I can
Speaker 1: think about is getting that theory officially named the Welcome
Speaker 1: to the Boomtown theory. Okay, I think that's because it
Speaker 1: fits in every way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, it really does. Chuck. I think if
Speaker 2: the two David's here this, they're going to be into that.
Speaker 1: You remember that song, Miss Christina drives a non full four.
Speaker 1: No I have the first line.
Speaker 2: No idea what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Well, I just sad it to you. It's a great song.
Speaker 2: Okay, thanks man. Well, since Chuck's on me a song,
Speaker 2: obviously he's just triggered listener name.
Speaker 1: That's right. This is from Siara and it's about the
Speaker 1: Ford Motor Company because her works there as a Michigander. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: one thing I thought I'd mentioned about that is you
Speaker 1: mentioned that the Ford Motor Company has been around since
Speaker 1: nineteen oh three and is still standing. But I think
Speaker 1: one of the coolest things about our company is that
Speaker 1: the what was it, the Rouge site. Yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 1: Rouge River site that you also mentioned in the episode
Speaker 1: is still standing and today builds f one fifties. In
Speaker 1: its history, the Rouge has built the Model B, the Mercury,
Speaker 1: the Thunderbird, and multiple generations of the Mustang. The site
Speaker 1: itself has so much history in the henry Ford Museum
Speaker 1: that the henry Ford Museum offers a Rouge Factory tour
Speaker 1: that actually takes you into one of the manufacturing buildings
Speaker 1: of the site to see the assembly line from a
Speaker 1: set of mezzanines. One last thing you didn't mention was
Speaker 1: that he was a supporter of prohibition, and it always
Speaker 1: reminds me of this funny quote from him. If Booze
Speaker 1: ever comes back to the United States, I am through
Speaker 1: with manufacturing. I wouldn't be interested in putting automobiles into
Speaker 1: the hands of a generation soggy with drink. Thanks for
Speaker 1: all the knowledge that you share in keeping me company
Speaker 1: on my compute, and that is from CR.
Speaker 2: Thanks CR. That's awesome. We appreciate all the extra info
Speaker 2: and if you want to be like CRRA and show
Speaker 2: off your knowledge of extra info by sharing it with us,
Speaker 2: we would love that. Just send it off to stuff
Speaker 2: podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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