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Article Source: Science NewsThe remains of a couple of nearly 20,000-year-old huts, excavated in a Jordanian desert basin, add to evidence that hunter-gatherers built long-term dwellings 10,000 years before farming villages debuted in the Middle East.
These new discoveries come from a time of social transition, when mobile hunter-gatherers hunkered down for months at a time in spots that featured rivers, lakes and plentiful game, say archaeologist Lisa Maher of the University of California, Berkeley and her colleagues.
The ancient huts at Ohalo II were probably occupied year-round, based on extensive plant and animal finds at that site, says Harvard University archaeologist Ofer Bar-Yosef. In his view, those huts — but not the Kharaneh IV huts — were precursors of 14,500-year-old oval structures with stone foundations built at several Middle Eastern locations by the Natufians, the first foraging society known to inhabit permanent settlements
I could definitely envision some kind of similar sequence of events taking place at Gobekli Tepe.
#1 - Wed Feb 22, 2012 8:37 PM ESTIt is interesting that the older generations were buried under the floors of the hut, just as was the case 10,000 years later in the land between the rivers (Tigris/Euphrates) basin.
That's a helluva long time for continuity (if such it is, and not just coincidental) of funerary traditions.
It was EXTREMELY common in pre Sumerian villiages/towns. Don't know of anywhere else in the world that this was ever common.
I always thought it extremely weird is why I remembered it. In Early Egypt (predynastic), they buried their relatives in big jars and put them under the floor.
There was actually very little progress as such until about 6500 years ago. Interesting that is for a plethora of reasons......
Don't know of anywhere else in the world that this was ever common.
Mimbres Indians did the same thing, they buried grandma in the floor, many South West Indians buried family in the floor .
Agreeing with Space-guy, it's cool.
A lot of people might think it's creepy or wrong, but I can kind of see a sweet sentimentality to it. Not like a Norman-Bates where he keeps the mummified remains in the attic and thinks that it talks to him (from what I understand of the movie, I haven't seen it) -- but a rather detached and non-psychotic benevolent quality.
Coloarado, you do....but that suggests that these huts were not seasonal dwellings, but permanent....which leads to the conclusion that these pre-Agricultural Revolution folks had no need to be nomadic in order to follow a hunter-gatherer existence.
To me, this brings up Gobekli Tepe again, because there we're talking about pre-agricultural monumental architecture, which used to be even more unlikely than a pre-agricultural permanent village.
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