User Reviews

not so severely.

Slowly, slowly anthropologists are beginning to realize that the Neolithic Revolution was no revolution at all. Just a logical extension of an already ancient life style - living in more or less permanent settlements supported by very benign environments. Plenty of wild grains and game extant locally to provide year-long plenty without the need to follow the food.

One of the things this show does well is describing some of the unintended consequences of settling into ever-growing villages and mini-cities but then begins to trip all over itself, returning to the same old and now discredited Neolithic models of social development. And it's those models that need serious realignment.

So what could have been a serious examination of what we know about about Gobekli Tepe is drowned in uneducated speculation.

And that is what bugs me about this show: instead of examining the site as a game changer it keeps slipping into Gee Wiz Mode(how could stone age people make such things without agriculture!) and then tries to bury the site with those same-old Neolithic models, claiming that once agriculture emerged, those models emerged with it. No understanding that those models need to be modified at best and dumped at worst.

So - a disappointment, with its Neolithic apologia but a good example of why the whole question of cultural development needs to go back to square one.

I agree with the other reviews...what gets me most is they keep saying it was built before we discovered this or that...the wheel pottery and writing they say. However the earliest known pottery dates to around 29000-25000BC so that is one assumption that is wrong right there. With this as well, how do they know...they have ideas and theories for sure bit how do they know when the first wheel was?

I made this account just to make this review. It lacks total common sense. The T like structures didn't dipict human being above animals, it was so they could make a roof. A covered structure. It really boggles my mind that they couldn't figure that out. They did all the work in carving but wouldn't put a roof on it?? It's cool that it's so old but the top part being wider is obviously to adhere debris to the top to protect from the elements. Not everything has to be spiritual either. Nor do I believe they buried it back up. They took so long to make it,now let's cover it back up? It's thousands of years old, it easily could.of been buried over time. The 'researchers' need to take a step back and really not put so much thought into it.

Very interested and grateful to see the findings in Turkey, *but* really did not like the way they rushed to find answers as to what it all meant. Felt like they were blindly reaching for explanations as to the nature of these people, the reason for the constructions, their role in that group and even their role in the development of the human race. Perhaps there is supporting evidence for some of these theories, but without seeing/hearing it, it all smacks of fanciful ham-fisted conjecture For me, a documentary just showing/describing what they've found there with no attempt at neatly resolving it all would've been much more interesting.