**Breaking News** Natufian site in Jordan older than Gobekli Tepe
Posted On: Dec 8th, 2017 at 13:49
Jordan
It wasn’t just a crude dwelling place made from wooden posts, this site near Amman in Jordan contained a carefully put together stone floor and walls, a fire pit, various works of art and stone tools.
Dating to 12600 to 10000 BC, the site known as Shubayqa 1 is stretching the imagination of all concerned. If Gobekli Tepe wasn’t enough of a mind bender, Shubayqa 1 brings the same level of paradigm-shifting data, but once again we find evidence that blows away the age-old theory of human beings running around forests during the time the pyramids were built.
Gobekli Tepe put those ideas to bed long ago, but as it appeared to be a unique site there was nothing to suggest the practice of settled groups was widespread during the ending of the ice age outside of Asia Minor. Now we have that evidence – clearly people were settled in places and practising religious rituals, or at least had formed complex thought patterns linked to the care of the dead. If you are burying your dead, you are clearly concerned about the care of that person in death. But this should be nothing new, for it has been proven that Neanderthals were also burying their dead, or at least caring for their dead, 30,000 years ago. This brings forth the possibility that humans also had such rituals, and therefore religious systems may have been in place far back into antiquity.
The point is while these new sites keep surfacing and shaking our historical foundations, they should no longer have such an effect on us for they are becoming the norm. I am sure more sites will be discovered, and it’s lucky we have carbon dating otherwise these places would be fitted into pre-conceived notions that all sites must be inside the 5,000-year-old time barrier, which is the common date given to most sites when there is no scientific data to prove otherwise. Even the term “hunter-gatherers” is becoming a misnomer.
What we are seeing is an ongoing paradigm shift and a rapid change in our thinking of where we came from, and that is a very good thing for the history we are taught – usually wrapped around Biblical dates – is about as reliable as a politician’s promise.
