(This week, cognitionandculture.net is hosting a "book club" webinar discussing Ara Norenzayan's latest book with its author. This précis introduces the discussion.)
On a hilltop in what is now Southeastern Turkey rests the world’s oldest temple of worship. With its massive, T-shaped stone pillars carved with images of animals and arranged in a set of rings, Göbekli Tepe is challenging long-held conceptions about the origins of civilization. While archeologists are unearthing clues and debating their meaning, there remain many unanswered questions. Yet, the significance if this site continues to grow.
No evidence of agriculture has been found, which may be explained by the fact that the site dates back about 11,500 years. The monumental architecture of Göbekli is old enough to have been built by hunting and foraging people, but massive enough to require the participation of many hundreds, possibly thousands of them, without the technological advantages of settled agriculture. True, foraging groups, despite their relatively small sizes, are known to vary in scope, densities, and degree of mobility. But what sets Göbekli apart is its scale and religious grandeur, despite its ancient origins. It gives us tantalizing clues that worshippers from the wider region periodically congregated there to worship and perform rituals. It may therefore hold clues to two of the deepest puzzles of human civilization. How did human societies scale up from comparatively small, mobile groups of foragers to massively large societies, even though anonymity is the enemy of cooperation? And how did organized religions with Big Gods – the great polytheistic and monotheistic faiths – culturally spread to colonize most minds in the world?
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