6000 Year Old Temple Unearthed In Ukraine

Quote:A 6,000-year-old temple holding humanlike figurines and sacrificed animal remains has been discovered within a massive prehistoric settlement in Ukraine.

Any sign of Adam and Eve or their kids?

Seriously though, I love reading up on these findings.

I check Archaeologica every couple of days for anything new.

Not to pour cold water on this, but when this 6000 year old temple in Ukraine was new, comparable temples with bass relic figure carvings at Gobekli Tepe on the other side of the Black Sea were already 6000 years old.

Incidentally, some archeologists seem to see some of the Hittite animal dieties in the iconography found in the 12,000 year old temple at gobekli tepe. This suggests Anatolia had something of a continuous religious tradition that stretched at least an amazing 9000 years from before start of Neolithic revolution to after the start of the Iron Age.

(October 22, 2014 at 5:00 pm)Chuck Wrote: Not to pour cold water on this, but when this 6000 year old temple in Ukraine was new, comparable temples with bass relic figure carvings at Gebekli Tepe on the other side of the Black Sea were already 6000 years old.

Lol I was thinking the same thing, but it's still important for the settled age.

(October 22, 2014 at 5:00 pm)Chuck Wrote: Not to pour cold water on this, but when this 6000 year old temple in Ukraine was new, comparable temples with bass relic figure carvings at Gobekli Tepe on the other side of the Black Sea were already 6000 years old.

Sure. Still a neat find, and still important to get a better picture of Neolithic cultures.

(October 22, 2014 at 5:00 pm)Chuck Wrote: Not to pour cold water on this, but when this 6000 year old temple in Ukraine was new, comparable temples with bass relic figure carvings at Gobekli Tepe on the other side of the Black Sea were already 6000 years old.

Very true but also indicative of when different regions reached a similar stage of development. That is the big surprise in Ukraine.

There were indications (Jericho, for one) of civic organization in the Levant.

(October 22, 2014 at 5:12 pm)Minimalist Wrote:

(October 22, 2014 at 5:00 pm)Chuck Wrote: Not to pour cold water on this, but when this 6000 year old temple in Ukraine was new, comparable temples with bass relic figure carvings at Gobekli Tepe on the other side of the Black Sea were already 6000 years old.

Very true but also indicative of when different regions reached a similar stage of development. That is the big surprise in Ukraine.

There were indications (Jericho, for one) of civic organization in the Levant.

There is considerable evidence of interconnected trade network which extended throughout Europe and the Near east during Neolithic. This suggests differences between regions is partially analogous to the differences between town and country, and not all differences of level of development.

I've seen some of those studies and they are difficult to date very precisely. However, we have found lapis lazuli in Old Kingdom Egyptian tombs and we know that lapis lazuli comes from Afghanistan. For the time, Early Bronze Age, that certainly qualifies as a long-distance trade route with Mesopotamia probably serving as one of the middlemen along with the Harappa in India.

If you ever get the chance read Eric Cline's 1177 BC. He is fascinated by the Late Bronze Age trade networks - and we have textual evidence for much of what he talks about - and of course those include many of the same areas which made up the EBA trade networks.

But you don't need a full-blown kingdom to conduct trade. I think it is a natural human trait to want to trade a familiar item for an exotic item. So whenever two groups come together an exchange of goods via bartering seems quite natural. The importance of even this low-level form of commerce in the spread of human civilization is crucial.