7,500 or 4,000 years – just how old is this Armenian site?
Posted On: Mar 8th, 2018 at 15:24
Armenia
First of all I’d like to punch squarely on the face those that make comparisons with Stonehenge. How many more times do we have to see this ridiculous and continuous comparison, and how many more times do I have to start my reports with such complaints? Every site that is discovered is labelled as that particular country’s “Stonehenge”. It’s nothing more than media hype, but it also clouds sensible judgement and it’s good to see some scholars are finally getting annoyed with the connotations.
The majority of this article argues not only the comparison with Britain’s stunning monument but also the name of the site, which just goes to show some people have better things to do than actually being concerned with the implications of the discovery. Despite the site being known about for many years it may be extremely old in comparison with many other megalithic sites of a similar style (places like Carnac or Avebury, but not Stonehenge, which only shows how stupid the comparison actually is). The date of 5500 BC is quite astounding, and with some scholars agreeing with that date we do have to take a serious look at this place, for it would pre-date the huge site of Avebury by 2,500 years. That places the Armenian site in the mesolithic, not the neolithic. The reason I myself make a comparison is because Avebury can be considered a benchmark in megalithic building – it’s the largest stone circle in the world and a thousand years older than, dare I say it, Stonehenge. However, we do have the same problem with all megalithic sites – you cannot date stone, and this means dates are produced from two methods, both of which are flawed. First of all dates are concluded after testing carbon-based materials found in or around the megalithic sites, and secondly if there are no items to carbon test then it’s simply a case of a best guess based on traditional dates for similar sites. Scientifically speaking you wouldn’t want to stand in court and suggest any evidence “beyond reasonable doubt” in either of those cases. What we are left with is a climate of preconceived ideas based on what’s possible and what is not, and anything outside of the perceived possibility is ridiculed and dismissed by the peer-review process. Archaeology, in that sense, is not a science, it is a controlled discipline with people keeping newly trained professionals within a framework that they dare not step outside of. What is happening now, however, is that sites are being discovered all over the world that are finally blasting out of the stratosphere those dates which have been applied to sites using the methods listed above. One only has to look at Gobekli Tepe to understand the massive paradigm shift that is occurring in the archaeological world.
I don’t know about you but this site looks pretty old to me. I would certainly head towards the older date of 5500 BC than than the younger date of 2000 BC. What do you think?
