The Potbelly Hill – Is it really where it all started?

Some years ago, I remember listening to Klaus Schmidt in the annual Turkish Archaeology Symposium.  His talk was a series of descriptions of artifacts as the organizers required the people to present the material findings, rather than the theory.  Hence, I was not paying that much attention.  However, something was odd about that talk.  I remember thinking to myself, well, these artifacts cannot be that old.  Apparently, they were.  Anatolia remains a fascinating place for anthropologists and archaeologists alike.  It is a land where the history, recent and ancient, is yet to be written.

As for the tantalizing structures in Gobekli Tepe, one possibility emerges.  In Dr. Schmidt’s words:

It was the urge to worship that brought mankind together in the very first urban conglomerations.

This brings to mind two questions:

1.  Does that mean that worshiping is essential to formation of complex societies?

2.  Then, is it not the case, if, as argued in “Breaking the Spell” by Dennett, religion is in fact an artifact of evolution, then our society exist because of this ‘anomaly’.

Another question remains.  Regardless of religion’s factual/logical basis, what would the humanity have been like without it?

To read more, check out the Newsweek article about this site.

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