Before Göbekli Tepe there was ... ?

Michael Bott (: 00:01

Hello and I'm sorry I stopped because that screen came up that says we cannot access your video. I think it's a lie but I've had it before. Mine. Yeah. It only came up for me so I presume it's trying to talk to me. Alright. Hello and welcome to the Gabbakli Tabitha Stonehenge podcast.

Rupert (: 00:12

Whose video? Yours or... Oh really?

Rupert (: 00:21

Right.

Michael Bott (: 00:30

Michael Bott here.

Rupert (: 00:32

Yeah, Rupert Suskind here.

Michael Bott (: 00:34

And yeah, welcome to you. This is the first in, I don't know how many podcasts there will be, that we've got, we see a limitless road ahead of us, don't we? Yeah, anyway, for those of you who have not heard from us before, we run the, we are the Prehistory Guys, Michael Bott, Rupert Soskin, and we run a YouTube channel.

Rupert (: 00:43

Not a clue how many there will be, no.

Michael Bott (: 01:03

which you probably already know, but some of you may not. I live in Warwickshire in England. Rupert lives down. Where are you, Rupert?

Rupert (: 01:11

Yes, I live down near the Pyrenees, down in the south of France. Hmm, very rural.

Michael Bott (: 01:17

Yeah in rural France, you know, sometimes we have a we have a few glitches, but not today so far anyway, it seems so this is the very first of the gabecli Tepe to Stonehenge podcasts and explain a bit more about you know, why the name why the Gabecli Tepe to Stonehenge podcast series But this being the very first one

Rupert (: 01:24

the

Michael Bott (: 01:44

We thought it would be a good idea to kick off with talking about what came before Gebekele Tepe. So that's what we're going, I mean we've probably bitten off more than we could possibly chew in however long this podcast is going to be. You know, researchers, you know, because what we'll talk about later in just a moment about the basis for the Gebekele Tepe to Stonehenge and the project, we're on.

Rupert (: 01:58

Ha ha.

Michael Bott (: 02:14

In order to fulfil that, our prehistory focus has shifted over to the Levant and the Fertile Crescent in the years leading up to, what, about nine and a half thousand BC. And our tiny minds have been a little bit blown, haven't you? Would you like to expand upon that?

Rupert (: 02:38

Yeah, I think it's fair to say, if you don't know us, our history really, our history in prehistory is that we tended to focus on Neolithic going into the Bronze Age. And so, the same as a lot of people believed that, you know, Ghebekli Tepe is seen as this ground zero, this nothing happened before that. And it's only when we started really researching deeply into that, that we realized quite a

white how profound the 10,000 years or more before Gebekli Tepe actually is. A staggering amount of human culture going on. So so whilst Gebekli Tepe as a project is really about the passage of farming as it made its way west across the globe, that

Michael Bott (: 03:21

Mm-hmm.

Rupert (: 03:37

Getting into the Fertile Crescent and seeing quite how deeply people have been very comfortably exploiting their environment was a massive, massive learning curve for us and very exciting, it has to be said.

Michael Bott (: 03:50

Yeah. So what we're going to be doing over the next few minutes, we don't know how, we're just starting off. We've got no real plan as to how long this podcast is going to be. But absolutely, in essence, we're going to be covering the cultural and agricultural and all of other kinds of shifts that took place over those 10,000 years before.

Rupert (: 03:56

Hehehe

Michael Bott (: 04:17

Gobekli Tepe came into existence. So, tall order, wish us luck, there's loads to cover, obviously. So, think of this as a taste of a potpourri of dipping in. We don't have all the details, we couldn't possibly, but we've picked up a bit, so we'll do our best to outline it for you. So, that's what's happening in this episode.

Rupert (: 04:24

Hehehehe

Rupert (: 04:41

Yes.

Michael Bott (: 04:47

A few words though about why a Gebekli Tepe to Stonehenge podcast at all and what we'll be doing in the following episodes, upcoming episodes. Those of you who know us, as we said before, will be aware of the Gebekli Tepe to Stonehenge project, which is the making of a film, a travelogue if you like, which is going to take you and us from Gebekli Tepe right through the Mediterranean.

across the Black Sea, up through Greece, up the Balkans, up the Danube, that way around and up the Atlantic seaboard, taking how many thousands of years to explain how farmer folk, originating in the fertile crescent, how their ancestors carried the idea and practice of farming over the millennia until we arrive at

megalith building in northwest europe and ultimately stonehenge.

Rupert (: 05:47

You didn't mean their ancestors at all. You didn't mean their ancestors at all, did you? Their descendants!

Michael Bott (: 05:53

No, I meant the other way round. They're descendants, yes. Yeah, I've described it in a nutshell there. Any more to elaborate there?

Rupert (: 06:06

Do you know, I think it's one of the funny things that when we explore any of these ideas, that we are tracking, technically we're tracking the passage of how people carried farming and exploitation of the landscape across the world. It's funny how unromantic it sounds when you say you're following, you know, we're following the farmers really. And it's true, but it is fascinating how the cultural differences develop.

Michael Bott (: 06:20

Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 06:24

Hahaha

Michael Bott (: 06:28

Yeah.

Rupert (: 06:35

and how much they were dependent on what the environment was like where they were. It's a rich tapestry.

Michael Bott (: 06:42

Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 06:46

and how we wouldn't be where we are now, how Western civilisation would not be where it is now, had not that expansion taken place. So we regard it as quite a fundamental and a learning process following that journey. So what to expect over the next year, year and a half, two years.

Rupert (: 07:01

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 07:08

Maybe. We're already committed, in fact, as we speak now at this very moment, we're less than two weeks away for flying till we fly to Turkey and arrive at Göbekli Tepe at Stone itself to film for a few days there and then we're going to move on to Çatayhöyük and that'll be the first leg of filming complete.

Rupert (: 07:23

Yes.

Michael Bott (: 07:35

Obviously we've got a few more legs to, you know, over the coming months, whatever, how long it takes. We'll be revisiting, we'll be moving on through Europe, up the Danube, as I said, across the Mediterranean, until we get to Britain. So we reckon that's going to take us four, maybe five filming outings to complete, you know, maybe more with little bits of detail here and there.

Rupert (: 08:01

Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 08:02

for which we have asked for funding via our Buy Me a Coffee campaign. It's been wonderful so far how people have responded and enabled us to be going off in a few weeks on our first leg of filming, which we're very excited about and very much looking forward to. So funding for that is ongoing.

Rupert (: 08:20

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 08:28

You can have a look at how you can contribute to that at a Buy Me a Coffee website. Links will be in the description below and probably be a link to a promo video up in the corner if you're watching this on YouTube. The other way, also we couldn't do any of this without our Patreon supporters. We do...

Rupert (: 08:53

Mm-hmm.

Michael Bott (: 08:55

run this channel, this podcast and our YouTube channel on the basis of the support from our Patreon campaign. And we have a wonderful community there and it would be delightful if we could see you there as well, if you're not already a member that is here.

Rupert (: 09:14

Yes, and if you're remotely intrigued it's also worth knowing that there's a whole load of stuff on the Patreon site that is only for patrons, so you know, it's worth being a member.

Michael Bott (: 09:24

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So the purpose of the podcast is to kind of fill in the gaps, provide support material for what we'll be doing in the film, because obviously we'll end up with what we'll probably output no more than probably five hours or so of video at the end. And of course, we'll have had to cherry picked the best bits for the video.

We can't include everything. And there's so much detail. And we thought, well, why not have a supporting podcast going along alongside? And that's what this is, just to help fill in the gaps. Before we get moving onto the podcast problem, we've just been having a talk, actually. And we realized, fingers crossed, what we'd like to do is make the next, the Becquart-Tepeter Stonehenge

Rupert (: 09:57

Mm-hmm.

Rupert (: 10:03

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 10:21

podcast is one that we actually made while we're actually at Gebekli Tepe. How cool would that be? That won't be, yeah, whether that'll be that'll be a few weeks away yet so keep your fingers crossed.

Rupert (: 10:27

Hmm. Yes.

Rupert (: 10:35

Yes, yes, we're not going to know until our feet are on the ground there how good the connectivity is. If we can, we will!

Michael Bott (: 10:42

Yeah. But bottom line is we need your help both in both ways to support the making of Gobekli Tabita Stonehenge the film and to support this channel and the podcast by becoming a Patreon member whichever way works for you. We'd be very grateful indeed and we hope to see you around. On with the podcast proper. Wow.

Rupert (: 11:07

Mm-hmm.

Michael Bott (: 11:07

the 10,000 or so years before Gebekli Tepe. Now, what opened the door for us, Rupert? You know, what was the sort of gateway drug to having to? We have to. We have to put Gebekli Tepe into some kind of context. And yeah.

Rupert (: 11:14

Hmm.

Rupert (: 11:27

Yes.

Well, it was very much, I mean, all the publicity that there has been around Gobekli Tepe for years now about it being a ground zero, you know, that it was the first sophisticated settlement of humans really. That's kind of how it was put across.

Michael Bott (: 11:49

Well, it hasn't even been put forward as a first sophisticated settlement. It was being put forward as Grand Zero as the first temple. Like, yeah.

Rupert (: 11:56

the first temple, yes. And it was put forward that it was only a sacred site, that there was nothing domestic about it, people weren't living there. Yeah, I mean, I think that's wise. One of the things that's bugged us really is that what tends to happen is that the media give you information, you read the exciting news or you hear the exciting news.

And then when things are less exciting, then the media doesn't follow up on it. So, you know, unless you are actively looking for the latest archeological reports or whatever, then you don't hear any of the developments that are coming out. So, for example, the fact that one of the things about Gobekli Tepe that made it seem even more enigmatic.

Michael Bott (: 12:44

Mm-hmm.

Rupert (: 12:55

was that very early interpretations of the site was that it was deliberately buried. And people have made big claims about what this must mean, you know, spiritually or whatever, what this must mean. But the subsequent excavations have shown that no, that was a wrong interpretation, that this was gradual slumping over thousands of years, that the hill just sloped, slumped over the years and covered the site. So it wasn't deliberately buried at all.

But most people still have that in their heads as what happened. So, you know, so we started off the whole idea of this was to really get to the reality of Gebekli Tepe and give people the latest up to date information. Lee Clare, the one of the head archaeologists over there, is a friend of ours who we interviewed him on one of our shows actually a while ago.

He was giving us a lot more information that's come out in more recent years. And of course, a lot has happened since then. So that's what kicked us off. And it was in researching that we found out quite how much there was that nobody ever talks about sites that have been known about for decades. Decades, and yet nobody talks about them.

Michael Bott (: 14:16

Yeah, in the literature. Yeah, they don't get talked about in the media much and not that much on YouTube, although there are a few valiant folks that do fly the flag and tell a pretty good story about the dates before Gobekli Tepe. One of the sticking points that people have about Gobekli Tepe.

Rupert (: 14:28

Hmm. Yes. Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 14:42

And I think it's a good leverage and segue into talking about the culture before Gebekli Tepe. One of the sticking points about Gebekli Tepe, and many people we know from comments in videos that we've made previously about Gebekli Tepe, is they can't get over this fact that Gebekli Tepe is described as a hunter-gatherer site, i.e. it was created by people who were

inverted commas, hunter-gatherers. And the thing doesn't stick because people's idea of hunter-gatherers is that they're nomadic people. And I think this was kind of reinforced by the idea that Gebekli Tepe was a temple that was returned to. It was never a settlement site, that it was a temple there, out on the hillside, up the hill, you know, in the play.

Rupert (: 15:30

Mm-hmm.

Michael Bott (: 15:39

planes, otherwise in the planes, that people returned to at certain points of the year. So that idea fit in with the idea of a nomadic people. But the point is, no, we're not actually talking about nomads, we're talking about people that had adopted a sedentary way of life for a very long time, and yet the term hunter-gatherer is not inaccurate.

Rupert (: 15:51

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 16:07

It's just slightly misleading. And I think that's what looking for the truth of that has taken us back. Well, let's really jump back to the beginnings right now, shall we, and mention the site by the banks of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. That has the earliest evidence of people settling down. Go, Rupert. Tell us. Yeah.

Rupert (: 16:10

Yeah.

Rupert (: 16:20

Hmm.

Rupert (: 16:26

Yes. Yeah.

Rupert (: 16:33

Yes, well, Ohalo 2, it's 22,000 years old. I'll say that again. It's 22,000 years old. And it was discovered in 1989 when weather conditions were the Sea of Galilee had dried to such a low level that it was spotted there. And Ohalo 2 is it's only a small settlement of oval shaped houses, but

Basically, because of the waterlogged conditions, the level of preservation of the remains was staggering.

Michael Bott (: 17:11

Yeah. Oh, and the fact that it had been burnt as well. The combination of the fact that the houses had been burnt, so they were carbonized and then buried, submerged, actually miraculously preserved. I don't think you're going to find many other Ahalu-2-like sites preserved. And the important thing is the organic material was preserved. So, yeah.

Rupert (: 17:15

That's true too. Yeah.

Rupert (: 17:23

Hmm.

Rupert (: 17:36

Yes, yes, and in fact it's the organic, it's the plant remains that have been so staggering because literally they excavated thousands upon thousands of seeds, fruits and seeds, from this site and what they could tell from that was that these people

Michael Bott (: 17:46

Mm-hmm.

Rupert (: 18:02

were exploiting over a hundred different species of plant types. Now that in itself, if you have a people who have created, you can imagine it anywhere that you've just found this place that is by a river or it's by the banks of...

wherever, you can fish here, you can live peacefully here. It's a beautiful place. Why do you wanna keep moving around when this is a lovely place to be? Particularly if you can settle here and then just by walking around where you live, harvest huge amounts of food that you can then store. It's 22,000 years old.

Michael Bott (: 18:49

Mm. Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 18:55

So the fact, and the giveaway at our harlot, the other giveaway at our harlot too, was a presence of grinding tools. Your querns, your pestle and mortars and other grinding implements, which is the dead giveaway. That people are gathering seeds, not only for the consumption of, in whatever form, we're not quite sure whether they were doing sorts of...

Rupert (: 19:03

Yes.

Rupert (: 19:15

Mm.

Michael Bott (: 19:25

of breads or porridges, but the fact is they were being made out of grains. They were gathering from the local wild areas in which what are we talking, primitive wheat and encorns and emas and things like that. I think also, sorry Ripper, go on.

Rupert (: 19:48

Yeah, I think... No, it's alright, I was just going to say, I think you only need to think in terms of wild grasses really, that, you know...

Michael Bott (: 19:55

Yeah, yeah.

Michael Bott (: 20:00

but that they were able to settle, to be sedentary and subsist out of this combination of wheat and grasses, and of course doing the hunting thing as well. It's a really good note because we're talking about a period called the Epipalagolithic. It's not a term you often hear when talking about prehistory.

Rupert (: 20:23

Mm-hmm.

Michael Bott (: 20:27

in Europe, but the Epipaleolithic period is something that's used particularly in the Middle East, in the Fertile Crescent Mesopotamia. And the reason is that particularly at this time, and it seems beginning round about, and we're talking about the middle of a glacial maximum for the rest of the world here,

So oddly in this part of the world, the landscape was less arid and more fertile. So we're talking about wooded areas, you know, with a variety of landscapes to exploit. But it also seemed if we were in Europe, we'd still be talking about the Mesolithic. So the two kind of overlap. But the distinguishing feature...

Rupert (: 21:06

Hmm.

Rupert (: 21:14

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 21:16

in the Middle East seems to be the adoption of smaller, bladelut-based weaponry for the hunting of smaller animals, for the hunting of rabbit, hare, fox, whatever, fish indeed, so that in this period of research we see the first beginnings of the adoption of a broad spectrum diet.

where people are feeling they've got enough in their immediate environment to, as I was saying earlier, to satisfy their needs. No need to go walk about following the herds in order to survive. We can stay in one place.

Rupert (: 21:59

Yeah. It's also a good point to reinforce there that the archaeology at O'Halo II had shown that people lived there all year round. And that's one of the most significant things for me anyway, it's one of the most significant things here that it completely underscores the fact that these people were happily sedentary by this point.

But picking up on what you were just saying about bladelets, I think it's interesting that Caranui IV, which is a little bit later, that dates to between 21,000 and 18,500 years ago, where they found traces of stone foundations for round huts. It's interesting that we'd call them hut circles. In Britain we'd call them hut circles.

Michael Bott (: 22:49

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Rupert (: 22:53

But the interesting thing there is that this site, which was, you know, it was a fair size really. It was, you know, over two hectares in size. So you're talking about, you know, five and a half acres roughly. And what they found, what archaeologists found there was literally millions, millions of discarded flints. And that, yeah, I mean, if you've got that many flints.

Michael Bott (: 23:07

Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 23:14

Ah, yeah.

Rupert (: 23:21

then clearly this is something that, you know, people have got their hunting practices and their working practices, you know, they've really got them sorted out by this point, haven't they?

Michael Bott (: 23:36

Yeah, yeah. It's kind of worth pointing out that obviously there aren't that many sites that are mentioned up until now. I mean, we're basing our words about shooting back to 20,000 years BC around Ahalo II. And there's only a few more sites that we come forward 2,000 years as we have to carry on it for.

comfort of, you know,: 2000

Rupert (: 24:11

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 24:33

excavate and create these stories out of, to create the hypotheses that we have about how people were living. We sort of take for granted that the finding of a site is definitive and yet it may not be the one to tell us the true story. It's the others that we're missing at the same time. That said, there are an awful, awful lot.

Rupert (: 24:50

Hmm.

Rupert (: 24:54

Hmm.

Rupert (: 24:57

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 25:02

of sites that have been excavated but there are sort of your usual suspects when it comes to the evolution of farming or agricultural gathering practices as we go through these few thousand years that keep popping up and you know forgive us for sort of name dropping as we go through you know um well as well carrying ahead for

Nahal Hadirah 5, Ayn Gev, I think that's about in the same ballpark, we've already done Ohala 2, we've got El Wadi, Tel Abu Huraira, Tel Es Sultan, that's a big one, Aynan, the list will keep coming. So there's a lot more to all that backs up all this progression that we know about.

Rupert (: 25:54

Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 26:00

through these times than you may think. And the complete list of excavated sites is really quite extensive. That said, it tends to be concentrated over in the Levant, i.e. present day Israel. And that's right. And there's a lot more archaeology goes on that side. While we're mentioning...

Rupert (: 26:07

Yes.

Rupert (: 26:14

Israel, Jordan, Syria, yeah.

Michael Bott (: 26:25

Ohala too and these earlier sites. It's worthwhile just going over further a bit over to the east a bit more to the Iran Iraq borders because there has been some archaeology going on there as well and In the Zagros mountains there are contemporary sites contemporary with these others which are over in the in the Levant more The the Zazian culture also shows signs of sedentism

and getting control of their environment in the plains around the Zagros mountains. But we've done less of a deep dive, I think, on that. But it's just worthwhile keeping in mind it wasn't confined to the Levant, over the other side between Tigris and the Euphrates, and that area was also coming into focus and coming to life as far as managing their environment was concerned.

Rupert (: 27:12

Yeah.

Rupert (: 27:22

I think it's also worth making the point really that there are so many concepts about prehistory that they're rooted in very old archaeology. So you know if you go back a century or more when obviously the discoveries that have been made you know significantly less, we didn't have the technology to interpret them in the same way.

our understanding of how people lived, how indigenous people lived the world over, that it made sense to interpret these cultures as nomadic hunter-gatherers, like the Australian aborigines, we know how they live. So that made sense. It's only in much more recent times that this understanding of people adopting a sedentary lifestyle.

has really become established, this knowledge and understanding. And of course, that doesn't filter through so much into a more global domain, because it's not a period of history that gets discussed very much at all. I think that's...

Michael Bott (: 28:40

There are plenty of archaeological papers, academic papers, if you care to really look quite hard. They haven't been, they haven't very often been synthesized and gathered together in one place. Nobody seems to have really taken on that responsibility. You have to.

Rupert (: 28:49

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 29:06

hunt about a bit. I can't think of any one book that deals with the period that we're talking about now, although it is such an important period. There is one guy I would hope could take up that task and that's Trevor Watkins, yeah, who's done such a lot of work in this area and excavated such a lot and he seems, I think, of everybody that's alive now he seems to be the

Rupert (: 29:22

Are you talking about Trevor? Yes.

Michael Bott (: 29:36

authority particularly on the period and we can only wish for you know that one day a book is published in the meantime stuff is piecemeal. As I said earlier though if you look around on YouTube there are a few brave souls that have gone there and make really great efforts not always accurate but have made attempts at synthesizing the story. Before we leave

Rupert (: 29:39

Yeah.

Rupert (: 29:47

Yes.

Rupert (: 29:57

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 30:06

Karaheni 4. It's worthwhile mentioning. Uh, yeah, were you going to mention shells?

Rupert (: 30:08

I've got something else I want to say, yes go on. I was going to mention shells, that's exactly what I was going to mention. Go on, you go first then.

Michael Bott (: 30:19

Well, isn't it one of the first instances of evidence of people wearing decorative jewelry?

Rupert (: 30:26

Indeed, and I wasn't, to be honest, thinking so much of the fact that they were wearing it. It's the fact that they found marine shells at Karane Fort, bearing in mind, just to say again, that we're talking about a site that's between, say, 18 and 20...

Michael Bott (: 30:34

as they obtained it in the first place.

Rupert (: 30:54

1,000 years old and these shells, some of them came from the Mediterranean, some of them came from the Red Sea and you're talking about that's 125 miles away is the nearest and 250 miles away at the Red Sea. Now how they acquired those, how they came to be there, obviously there's all sorts of theories. It could have been exchange between people. We know that people have been

Michael Bott (: 31:01

Yeah, the nearest.

Rupert (: 31:23

interconnecting over huge distances for a long time. So maybe they were trading them, maybe they were just swapping them. Maybe they traveled the distance and pick them up themselves. The point is that people were traveling. That's major.

Michael Bott (: 31:35

Yeah, well the point is that people were probably networking as well. I mean like you say exchanging that of course implies that these you know not settlements in isolation. That yeah people were doing that thing where they've actually begun

Rupert (: 31:40

Yeah.

Rupert (: 31:57

Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 32:03

with the purpose of looking good as well. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. I mean this goes back way, way. I mean, this is not an isolated instance, but it's the fact that you know, we've got evidence of distance covered in order to look good. That's something.

Rupert (: 32:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rupert (: 32:20

That's true. I think it's worth, and this really is going off on a tangent, but it's worth saying that we have seen some pretty stunning Denisovan jewellery. There's one particular greenstone bracelet. It's broken, but this beautifully highly polished bracelet and that's what I think that's 36,000 years old. So humans have been doing their damnedest to look cool.

Michael Bott (: 32:34

Oh, yeah.

Rupert (: 32:49

for a very long time.

Michael Bott (: 32:54

Also, they're still hunting gazelle a lot, aurochs, so large game is still in the diet. So we're talking about sort of interim stage here between maybe Ohalo 2 going back to 22,000 years ago.

Rupert (: 32:58

Mm.

Rupert (: 33:05

Hmm

Rupert (: 33:17

Mm.

Michael Bott (: 33:17

But now we've sort of filled the gap between that and something we really know about. Well, we don't really know about. I'm talking about the Royal Weaver. The academic contingent really begin to know stuff and that's when we talk about the Natufians. When did we first start talking about the Natufians, Rupert? Because I think it's relevant.

Rupert (: 33:26

Hahaha!

Rupert (: 33:37

Mmm.

Rupert (: 33:41

We first started talking about the Natufians, oh it was a few years ago that there was a discovery made at a site where... Well, the article talked about the earliest known toast, which is 14,500 years old. And that just put a big smile on my face.

Michael Bott (: 33:47

Mm.

Michael Bott (: 34:06

tickled your imagination, didn't it?

Rupert (: 34:07

phase it really did really did and it was a natufian site and I've got to be honest you know prior to that I didn't really know I'd heard the name but I didn't know about the Natufians and it's fascinating when you start looking at Natufian sites generally that you know again these are a people who had life pretty sorted out there's a lot of Natufian sites

Michael Bott (: 34:34

Yeah, I mean obviously they didn't spring out of nowhere but again we're sort of leaping forward a few another few thousand years. I mean the Natufians on the timeline they appear what 13000 BC thereabouts? Yeah, and if you want to find out more about them I think one of the major sites that does really...

Rupert (: 34:50

PC yeah, so you're talking about between 15,000 and 11 and a half thousand years ago

Michael Bott (: 35:01

apart from when Dorothy Garrett was the archaeologist that first named the culture itself. I think the first instance of it, well, Natufian, there must be named for Natufian.

Rupert (: 35:08

Hmm.

Rupert (: 35:17

Well, it's the valley. Is it the Natufe Valley? Something like that. I should know that.

Michael Bott (: 35:20

Ah, yeah, yeah. Which I think was a cave site that she was excavating, mainly.

Rupert (: 35:28

Yes, it's the Albaca cave, is that the one? It's probably an appalling pronunciation, but hey, I'm good at that.

Michael Bott (: 35:32

Yeah, I think that makes sense. But here we have evidence, not in every case, obviously, but particularly at the site of Onan.

Which is, well that's definitely, is that still northern, are we still in Israel? We're above, we're quite near the Mediterranean again, northern Israel I do believe. But we're talking about a cave site. Now...

Rupert (: 36:05

Mm-hmm.

Michael Bott (: 36:10

You need to really, really qualify that because the way that the Natufians are distinguishing this cave site is not only occupying the cave from, you know, from God knows how long ago, but no, they're settled in this cave. It's not seasonal or anything like that. They're creating terraced landscapes around about the caves. They're making buildings. They're using stone to...

Rupert (: 36:27

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 36:39

form buildings around the cave entrance and actually inhabiting quite a large area around this cave. So we've got a sense of people really, again, really, really in control of their environment. And it wasn't so many weeks ago that we did a piece about, remember the Natufian flute? Yeah, that's where this was found.

Rupert (: 37:02

Indeed.

Michael Bott (: 37:07

Not a flute, we think, but a sort of bird-caller thing made out of a duck's leg, but it's got holes bored into it so that it makes the sound of a raptor. So we've got in our imaginations these people who are regularly hunting around this sort of marsh area with lakes and the sun and so forth. Hunting small game. Reptiles, maybe.

Rupert (: 37:19

Yes.

Hehehe

Michael Bott (: 37:35

and birds and ducks themselves. So, oh, I'll save that for a little while longer. I was going to mention another animal that we haven't quite mentioned yet as part of a major part of the diet. Yeah, absolutely. So, I'll just reiterate again this idea of a broad spectrum diet that enables people to stay in one place. One aspect we haven't mentioned.

Rupert (: 37:50

Oh, I know where you're going, yes.

Rupert (: 38:02

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 38:04

it's important that when you start living off seeds and cereals, and that's the idea of storage and I think it's at these Natufian sites that we begin to get a glimpse of people for the first time really storing stuff, you know, so that they can really live in the same place year out.

Rupert (: 38:24

Yeah.

Rupert (: 38:28

Yeah, yeah. In fact, it has to be said that, certainly speaking for myself, I don't know about you, Mike, but that actually this whole thing about storage was a real bombshell for me because we have this, I say we, I think we do, generally have this notion that people decided to...

Michael Bott (: 38:41

Mm-hmm.

Michael Bott (: 38:46

Hehehe

Rupert (: 38:54

settled down, when people decided that they wanted to start farming and that's when people settled down and farming started. As opposed to, it's actually entirely the other way around, that when, so these sedentary people who still were not farmers, that a team of researchers did some number crunching on this and they came up with that one individual working hard for three weeks.

could gather enough wild grain to keep a family for an entire year. Now if you think about that, that you have this period where, you know, towards the end of summer, or maybe in the height of summer depending on where you are, that's when the grains that are absolute best and that's when you want to harvest them. So you go out and you gather all this stuff. Well, you've gathered all this stuff. What are you going to do with it? You can't carry it with you.

It's the need to store stuff that actually made people settle down because you've got tons of stuff that you now need to look after. That completely changed my worldview in terms of the history of sedentism.

Michael Bott (: 40:00

Mm.

Michael Bott (: 40:09

Yeah, not only the production possibly, you know, because if we think about wheat cultivation and gathering, we automatically think about bread. We've mentioned bread, you know, the Natufian burnt toaster earlier, but also in one of the cave sites, I think it's the Rakafet cave that they found. Which is the lower bit, the pestle or the mortar?

Rupert (: 40:25

Yeah. Mm hmm.

Rupert (: 40:40

The pestle is the tool isn't it? And that's the mortar.

Michael Bott (: 40:42

The pestle is the tool and the mortar is the bowl.

Rupert (: 40:49

Do you know what?

Michael Bott (: 40:51

That's terrible, isn't it? Anyway, they found that the bowl bits actually hollowed out into the ground of this cave, the base of this cave. Several of them. Obviously a thing was going on, a process was going on.

Rupert (: 40:53

That's actually quite shocking. I'm sure we know that. Anyway, go on.

Michael Bott (: 41:18

But what they reckon is in this particular case that because of the analysis of the remnants in the bottom of these pestle mortars, whichever they are, that they were actually brewing. They were creating, they were for the creation of an early form of beer.

Rupert (: 41:31

Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Rupert (: 41:39

Yes.

Michael Bott (: 41:43

not very alcoholic, but alcoholic enough for Robert Braidwood to suggest that beer as well as bread or even beer more than bread may be a cause or a major factor, shall we say, in the development of agriculture. Maybe beer was a causal factor.

in people needing to grind stuff and ferment stuff.

Rupert (: 42:23

We... sorry, I... I

Michael Bott (: 42:30

water of the pole. Of course it is, it makes sense now. But was beer a driver of agriculture? That's the question. Actually, a little sidebar, I mentioned Robert Braidwood there, he's an American archaeologist and he deserves, he's dead now.

Rupert (: 42:43

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 42:54

But he is not a name that's mentioned that very often. And I think he deserves to be mentioned, because it's his influence and his analysis of climate and the geography of the Fertile Crescent that he had that it was under his hypotheses that a lot of the sites were pinpointed in the first place for excavation.

Rupert (: 43:24

Mm-hmm.

Michael Bott (: 43:24

So without that man, we probably wouldn't be having quite the conversation we're having now. I don't know. But I think, yeah, look up Robert Braidwood. He deserves a lot more recognition than I think he probably gets for all sorts of reasons.

Rupert (: 43:31

Interesting.

Rupert (: 43:45

You know, something else I'd like to mention while we're talking about the Natufians, because, you know, obviously farming and living, very important, but it's an interesting development in burial practices with the Natufians. And something that's intriguing,

Michael Bott (: 43:51

Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 44:05

Oh yeah. Yes, yes.

Rupert (: 44:11

generally is that something that's seen in Natufian burials is that somebody was buried and then at some point afterwards the grave was reopened for them to remove the skull, just the skull. There are lots of burials where the body is headless and they know that the skull was taken out at a later date.

Michael Bott (: 44:27

Oh.

Rupert (: 44:39

There's nothing that we can really say about that other than the fact that you can see that humans have had some pretty interesting belief systems if you like around how to deal with the dead for a very long time.

Michael Bott (: 44:50

Yeah.

Hmm.

Well, it seems from excavations of Natufian sites that there's quite an acceleration, should we say, in the complexity of burial practices. As we've mentioned before, shells seem to be a popular thing to decorate people, but they seem, but burials seem to have become more elaborate in these times.

Rupert (: 45:08

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 45:22

maybe we've got the appearance, you know, first appearance of some kind of hierarchies, particularly people being honoured in special way, in the way in which they're, what attire they're buried in and what grave goods associate them, to associate them with. Actually, while we're talking about grave goods, it's worth mentioning the burial at Halizen at Taktit.

Rupert (: 45:50

Yeah, go on.

Michael Bott (: 45:51

Well, yes, the burial, this is an Atufian burial, it seems. I can't remember where exactly. I think it's more southern Israel, this one. Halazan Taksit, there was a burial of a 45-year-old woman who amongst other things was buried, let me look at my notes, what have we got? She was 45 years old. She is...

buried with fifty tortoise shells, two skulls of two pine martin, a single human foot, bones from boar and leopard and aurochs amongst other things. So go figure that one. Now I mentioned the fifty tortoise first in that and if you've not heard of this before you think it well go...

50 tortoise, what is that about? That sounds like an awful lot of work to put 50 tortoise in with a burial. But not so fast, because these folks were eating a heckle of tortoise. So finding 50 shells was...

Rupert (: 46:50

Yeah.

Rupert (: 47:03

Yes, yes, I think, I have to say, I think it's utterly shameful that you said not so fast, but... But... But, yes, yeah. Do you know, this is a complete aside, but I think it is worth telling the story that...

that when there were all the expeditions over to the Galapagos Islands, Charles Darwin and all the subsequent expeditions, and the giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands, and the idea for a long time was to bring some back to put in zoos. But they never made it home because even when they put some on board to bring home to put in zoos, they just tasted so good that they never made it.

Michael Bott (: 47:34

Oh my god.

Rupert (: 47:58

They just, you can imagine that was the last tortoise on a ship and they're going, oh go on, just cook it. People obviously, I don't know what does a tortoise taste like, but obviously they taste very good. And interesting that if she was buried with that many shells, it also raises the question, how long have people been using tortoise shells as a...

Michael Bott (: 47:58

Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 48:06

Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 48:26

Hmm.

Rupert (: 48:27

a jewellery item as well. You know, I mean, notice that she was buried with the shells rather than artifacts, but interesting.

Michael Bott (: 48:31

And also...

Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 48:37

Here's a cheeky thought about tortoise and I'd like some, you know, anybody's input on this is some hunting tortoise probably not that hard. You know, so easy in fact that you'd probably run out very fast unless you were managing that population, that resource as well. And I'm thinking, ooh, were they farming tortoise? Were they, did, was there, had, I mean...

Rupert (: 49:03

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 49:06

In my mind, it would become very easy to domesticate the tortoise. I don't know how, I think they breed pretty, pretty slowly, so... It ought to grow quite slowly, so I don't know quite how that would work. I'm just thinking that tortoise farming is a precursor to... for the domestication of larger animals in the future.

Rupert (: 49:11

Hmm.

Rupert (: 49:16

They also grow quite slowly.

Rupert (: 49:26

Yes, yes. But you know, again, it begs another question though, that she was buried with that many tortoise shells. And I have to wonder just, because I can't think of anywhere in the world today where you see tortoises in large quantities. Turtles, yes. Tortoises, no.

Michael Bott (: 49:38

Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 49:50

Yeah.

Rupert (: 49:52

And even in the wilds of jungles, I've only ever come across one at a time. So it makes you wonder, have we completely destroyed tortoise populations as well?

Michael Bott (: 50:07

I wonder. That's another matter. I think the fact is, you know, we've covered a lot of time already. The chronology is, if we bring ourselves forward to about 11,000 BC, just after, we have to start mentioning the Younger Dryas. And the fact that, you know, the climate

Rupert (: 50:08

Mmm, it is indeed.

Rupert (: 50:16

Yes.

Rupert (: 50:25

Hmm.

Rupert (: 50:32

Indeed.

Michael Bott (: 50:37

changed quite drastically, not only over all over the world, but in the area we're talking about here as well. And it seems, although the Natufian culture seems to have survived this period, that for all that we've been talking about, people settling down, that as the climate did become colder and in this area became more arid, that people were forced to become a bit more nomadic again, less settled.

Rupert (: 50:58

Hmm.

Rupert (: 51:06

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 51:06

during this time. And in case you think, you know, we think, so far we're thinking about all the progression of agriculture and people managing their things and just hinting at people cultivating stuff. The mercy of the climate and to a large degree, you know, our

Michael Bott (: 51:36

climatic fluctuations are not going to pay completely to things that have been developing over millennia in terms of our ability to manage our resources. So

Rupert (: 51:47

Yeah, yeah, it's...

Rupert (: 51:52

Yeah, it's an interesting point. You mentioned Abu Huraira before and Abu Huraira is a good example of that. Where, as the weather conditions changed, they tried to cultivate more wild rye, which is a hardier crop and can deal with colder conditions. But it was, it still didn't work. The site was still abandoned during or...

Michael Bott (: 52:10

Yes.

Michael Bott (: 52:18

Yeah, Abu Huraira is up in the northern Syria. And the site itself is actually now underwater, under a man-made lake reservoir, I think. Yeah.

Rupert (: 52:22

It's Northern Syria, yeah.

Rupert (: 52:30

Hmm.

Rupert (: 52:38

Do you know what, actually, before we move on from that, just while I think about it with Abu Hurera, also worth pointing out there that the interpretation of the archaeological remains there is that they think that Abu Hurera in its later stages was home for around, well, for thousands of people, certainly.

Michael Bott (: 53:02

Yeah.

Rupert (: 53:05

That's an important thing to get in your head really, the fact that we're not talking about small settlements of a hundred people. We're talking about, you know, villages of thousands of people. It's, you know, it's a different thing to have in your head.

Michael Bott (: 53:12

out.

Michael Bott (: 53:18

Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 53:23

But despite the fact, it seems that some people were becoming less sedentary and had become more mobile. It seems that the idea of building seems to have actually taken hold.

Rupert (: 53:35

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 53:43

I know people have been building buildings and making, you know, using stone to build stone based houses and so on and so forth before, but now it begins to start to take hold. I mean, towards the end of the Younger Dryads, and we're talking about, if we're talking about the end of the Younger Dryads, we're also talking about the end of the Epipaleolithic period. And just coming into the beginnings of...

Rupert (: 53:54

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 54:12

dare I say it, the pre-pottery Neolithic. We could do a whole number on the definition of Neolithic but let's just stick with the definitions as we've got them. Not today.

Rupert (: 54:15

Mm.

Rupert (: 54:19

Ahem.

Rupert (: 54:24

Yes, not today.

Michael Bott (: 54:28

Yeah, because Neolithic means many different things depending where in the world you are. And so, you know, hopefully as we go on you get used to the idea of being Neolithic being different wherever where you are in the world. Here we've got the pre-pottery Neolithic or the

Rupert (: 54:34

Hmm.

Rupert (: 54:51

Yes. Yeah, I must admit that there are aspects of that I think obviously archaeologists are constrained to interpret what's found. But you know, I can think of all sorts of instances where you can make yourself a cup out of a tree bark.

People make cups out of leaves and what have you. So, you know, it might be that, yes, it's certainly pre-pottery, but they probably had all sorts of sophisticated drinking vessels that just haven't lasted in the archaeological record. I wonder what they were.

Michael Bott (: 55:36

Yeah.

But we've got all sorts of examples around about this time period, say, 10,000 BC, 12,000 years ago. In that area, they're really starting to get handled, the idea of building permanent settlements out of stone. And we begin to see the idea of special buildings within those settlements. And these special buildings,

Rupert (: 55:47

Hmm.

Rupert (: 55:54

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 56:05

seem to be some to do with something that we've already been talking about and that is storage. That the storage area in so many of these buildings, settlements, seem to be at the center of the settlement and quite elaborate too seem to be devoted to the storage of wheat and all those consumables.

Michael Bott (: 56:34

What is it? Jaffa Al-Akhmar, I think, is probably an exemplar of that. So we've got what looks like a circular special building in the middle. But you've also got indications that it may have been treated specially as well because of the activities there. Is it not Jaffa Al-Akhmar where

there's a human body was found in the middle of this area which yeah and other indications maybe

Rupert (: 57:02

Oh, I'm not sure.

Michael Bott (: 57:10

of some kind of ritual stuff going on in these central buildings which are also serving this storage thing. So what essentially we've got is circular buildings for silo storage surrounded by square inhabited buildings, certainly square buildings that were perhaps devoted to the processing of the grain that has been stored in those silos.

Rupert (: 57:38

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 57:40

Yeah, Jaffa Al-Akhmar is a good place as a reference for that. But now we're really coming up to the beginning of the pre-pottery Neolithic, as I said. And I don't think we can dwell any more on the developments of agriculture that we've just done for the past, what, 8,000 years of development without beginning to mention the...

Rupert (: 58:04

Hmm

Michael Bott (: 58:08

the Tash-Tepler sites and the sites in southeastern Turkey, the epitome of which is, of course, Göbekli Tepe itself.

Rupert (: 58:22

Well yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, the point obviously been made that people have been living very comfortably in their environment for a long time. So to get to the point where these sites are so settled and sophisticated, you can't look at a site like Bekli Tepe without appreciating that site has developed over a long period of time.

You know, there must have been people...

Michael Bott (: 58:50

Or the ideas that you see epitomized at Gebekli Tepe have been in development for quite some time. We haven't mentioned Tel-Sultan or otherwise perhaps known as Jericho. I don't know if Tel-Sultan is the Jericho, the basis of Jericho itself, but that's a very old site and got the first built tower.

Rupert (: 58:59

Hmm.

Rupert (: 59:19

Yes.

Michael Bott (: 59:20

That's a wonderful stone-built tower there which predates Gebekli Tepe. But fascinatingly, how many sites are there now in the whole of the Tash-Tepler project, which is the Turkish project to do archaeology on majorly what are called the T-pillar sites. It began with Gebekli Tepe and has been developing with Karan Tepe.

Rupert (: 59:27

Yes.

Rupert (: 59:45

Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 59:49

and so many other Tepe sites that were developing this style of teapillar and other things. And that project has uncovered more and more. So in fact we have uncovered, it seems uncovered relatively recently, is a site called Chattel, I beg its pardon, Chakmak Tepe.

which predates the Gebekli Tepe by quite some time, but it is reckoned to be a precursor, because although it has circular special buildings in the middle, it seems that those were constructed of wood. So instead of stone pillars or T-pillars, this earlier site seems to show

progenitor of that, a precursor of that kind of support, only that the supports were timber posts set in the rock in hollowed out post holes to support a roof, because that's what we're talking about inevitably. And Rupert, I mean, in about four weeks' time, fingers crossed, we will be at Chukmak Tepe, so we'll be able to see for ourselves, you know, this

Rupert (: 01:00:58

Hmm.

Rupert (: 01:01:10

Indeed.

Michael Bott (: 01:01:12

how they were supporting roofs above the special buildings originally, you know, before a couple of hundred years later we've got Gobekli Tepe and the other Tas Tepler sites, Tas Tepler sites.

Rupert (: 01:01:17

Yeah.

Rupert (: 01:01:23

Yeah, yeah.

Yes, yes, it's remarkable, I think, when you... I mean, another aspect of, if this isn't leaping forwards too much, but another aspect of Gobekli Tepe that has become quite remarkable is that they have found thousands upon thousands of grinding stones there, quern stones, thousands of them. Now...

They're not broken. So it wasn't like it was necessary, this one's broken, we need to make a new one. There are thousands of them. How much grain were these people actually processing? And on what scale? That is remarkable. And when you look at one of the other sites, Bonsho Klytala, for example, the field of beads, that excavations,

Michael Bott (: 01:02:12

Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 01:02:21

which also predates Govec Lutepe by quite a margin. Yeah.

Rupert (: 01:02:24

also pre-excavated by quite a while, and the things that they have found, countless thousands of beads, and they've only excavated a tiny percentage of the site. So if you're making beads on that almost industrial scale, well what's that about? You know, clearly life is pretty sorted if you're doing fancy stuff rather than worrying about food.

Rupert (: 01:02:53

There are so many aspects to what these particular types of artifacts are telling us about how established people's lifestyles actually were.

Michael Bott (: 01:03:06

Yeah. There is also, it seems, an artistic continuity. I'm not quite sure how much Chuck MacTepay predates Gobekli Tepe by. I think it's one or two hundred years, at least. But the artistic representations, albeit on a smaller scale, on small plaques or what have you, that have been found at Chuck MacTepay, are the same kind of designs that we find enlarged at Gobekli Tepe and make it quite famous.

Rupert (: 01:03:12

Hmm.

Rupert (: 01:03:36

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 01:03:37

those representations of animals that they knew day in, day out, present at a smaller scale and represented in a very similar style at Chakmak Tepe and obviously in the way we know so well at Gubeklu Tepe later. So there's this artistic continuity as well.

Rupert (: 01:04:01

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 01:04:04

I'm just going to mention this as a sidebar, Rupert. I mean, we haven't mentioned, you know, so we've come to Gobekli Tepe and we know that they had not domesticated, they were not domesticated farmers in the way that we understand it. You know, they were not herding cattle yet. In fact, they were overhunting gazelles, as far as we can make out.

Rupert (: 01:04:30

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 01:04:31

That's a fascinating aspect of the process and probably this has something to do with the younger Dryas and human beings as they do pushing things to the extreme. There's a huge shift from the hunting of smaller animals to, it seems like an almost industrial scale, hunting of gazelle. I'm just wondering, this is a conjecture, I'm not asserting this, but I'm asking the question. At the same time...

Rupert (: 01:04:54

Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 01:05:00

as it ran about, we've got these larger settled sites developing, you know, using the local material. Here's another thing, availability of local materials is an important aspect of why we find these sites here. But contemporaneously with the development of these, we've got the appearance of what are known as desert kites in the landscape. Desert kites, you describe

Rupert (: 01:05:15

Mm-hmm.

Michael Bott (: 01:05:30

a desert kite rooper.

Rupert (: 01:05:32

Well, they're called kites because that's the shape that they are. These diamond shapes almost, or kite shapes. But they were for corralling animals. These are hunting structures of stone wars. Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 01:05:49

for funneling travelling herds into narrower and narrower gaps so that they could be managed in some way or picked off with greater efficiency. But the numbers in which gazelle were being consumed shoots up in this period. The amount of smaller mammals and smaller fauna being consumed

Rupert (: 01:05:56

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 01:06:17

goes way down, disappears off the graph, and the gazelle shoot up. And I do wonder that the use of the desert kites, kind of industrialized hunting, and enabled the settlement of these larger sites in some way, or contributed to it in some way.

Rupert (: 01:06:35

Hmm. It's certainly not an unreasonable idea.

Michael Bott (: 01:06:42

I mean it dropped off rapidly as well, because I suspect this increased efficiency that it gave them actually caused overhunting over time, so that end of it may have collapsed, I don't know.

Rupert (: 01:06:58

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 01:06:58

So as promised, here we are at Gebekli Tepe. We've got lots more to say about Gebekli Tepe itself, and hopefully in the next podcast, we will be saying lots more about it from the actual site itself, if not that, at least after having been there in person. So there's probably quite a few shockers for many people about what Gebekli Tepe really is from...

Rupert (: 01:07:12

Yes.

Michael Bott (: 01:07:27

that fact that it was a settlement site, a domesticated site, and there we say there is a question mark over being dogmatic about the use of the special area in the middle, which is beautifully decorated, or the special buildings, the several special buildings, being dogmatic about their use as ritual centres.

Rupert (: 01:07:33

Yes.

Rupert (: 01:07:56

Hmm.

Michael Bott (: 01:07:57

You know, that jury is still out and there's a lot to discuss about that.

Rupert (: 01:08:02

There's a huge amount to discuss about that and yes, we won't start that one now because .. excuse me... because it's a big conversation, isn't it, in itself.

Michael Bott (: 01:08:07

Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 01:08:11

Yeah, it is, as is the conversation about hierarchical structures. Do these larger settlements, you know, as we've moved from the Younger Dryas and we've moved from the Epipaleolithic into the pre-Potterly Neolithic A and these larger sites, does that bring into question, you know, the questions of hierarchies and the organisation of...

of larger communities and the necessity of that is that an emergent property of groups of people once they become above a certain number. So many more. We've skimmed across the surface of this whole subject. I hope you've found that interesting. We've got so much more to talk about as far as Gobekli Tepe is concerned and I hope that you'll stick with us as we

Rupert (: 01:08:59

Yes.

Michael Bott (: 01:09:12

over time, also filling the gaps between Gebekli Tepe and Stonehenge as we move across Europe. You got anything to add to that, Rupert?

Rupert (: 01:09:18

Indeed. No, I think just to reinforce the point, there are going to be an awful lot of surprises along the way because there's, well, there's just an astonishing amount of stuff that is not generally known. And there are places that we'll be visiting, and I can think of one place in particular in Bulgaria. I'm just going to leave it there as a tease.

Michael Bott (: 01:09:28

I'm going to go to bed.

Michael Bott (: 01:09:37

Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 01:09:43

Yeah.

Rupert (: 01:09:46

But just in your face, you're looking at so much history. So yeah, there's some fascinating things along the way.

Michael Bott (: 01:09:46

What was that?

a

Yeah.

Michael Bott (: 01:09:57

Yeah, I mean we could have name dropped site names, you know, till Kingdom Come, couldn't we? But we didn't. Anyway folks, thanks for listening, thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed that and I hope you find much food for thought and we look forward to the next time and seeing you again. Till then, bye for now.

Rupert (: 01:10:20

See you soon!