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Comment by itsnowandnever | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't call these guys civilization. the Tepe sites are more like an ancient UN for semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers than a settlement. they visited seasonally for a feast and then left. the only evidence we have is that they were partying. but they had no social organization at all

funnily enough, the lack of neolithic culture, social hierarchy, or permanent sedentary lifestyle (all hallmarks of "civilization") and all archeological evidence suggests they were much healthier and more peaceful than neolithic humans. that's why people link "Garden of Eden" mythology originating in ancient Sumeria to the ancient peoples' observation that people became "civilized" but at what cost since it made humans less healthy, more violent, and presumably less happy due to the novel concept of social inequality

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I find it hard to believe that these peoples had no social organization at all, and even harder to believe that you could state that with such conviction given how little we know about these sites. I’m definitely curious though! Can you share any links or reading recommendations?

I learned about it in school, I took some anthropology and archeology electives. and what I was told was since there were no defensive structures nor evidence of any security apparatus at all (such as an army) there isn't any evidence of a means to enforce a hierarchy

That sounds like a Childe-esque checklist. In general, we wouldn't expect a strongly hierarchical social organization in this time period, in upper mesopotamia. That's more characteristic of lower Mesopotamian early societies a few thousand years later when cities like Eridu appeared. What we see in upper Mesopotamia is a pretty strong continuity with PPN sites like GT all the way through the Ubaid period, both in terms of architecture and infant burials and they're thought to reflect socially egalitarian societies. Many people (myself included) consider upper and lower Mesopotamia two largely separate cultural areas throughout the PPN because they're so different and argue that the traditional definitions derived from southern cities (like Childe's) are inappropriate to apply to northern urbanism.

Absence of evidence doesn't mean you can conclude that there was no hierarchy or social organization though. For that you would need evidence that there wasn't.

There seems to be an issue with how archeology is taught at schools, where these conclusions are stated as facts, or theories with a high amount of proof, when in reality, they have very little evidence supporting them.

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