Allan Milne Lees
1 min readFeb 22, 2021

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We need to be very cautious about making general statements with very little data to back them up. First of all, there's plenty of evidence that agriculture had already commenced by the time gobeklitepe was being constructed - DNA shows that wheat and barley had both by then developed the mutation that weakens the attachment of the seed to the stalk, thus permitting threshing. While there have been (so far) no settlements found close to the site, this by no means implies that settlements were not present - most would have been constructed of wood and mud and not survived the passing of the centuries. Furthermore, only settlements of reasonable size could have engendered the social structures necessary for such large-scale collaboration, so we can reasonably infer that we simply haven't yet found evidence of towns. Perhaps with improved ground-penetrating radar we'll detect the vestiges of such settlements in the years to come. Lastly, while increased knowledge of the site will undoubtedly enhance our understanding of the earliest civilizations to emerge after the end of the last Ice-Age, they certainly won't "change all of human history." Hyperbole is best left for commentaries on sporting events, not used in articles about serious matters of importance.

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Allan Milne Lees
Allan Milne Lees

Written by Allan Milne Lees

Anyone who enjoys my articles here on Medium may be interested in my books Why Democracy Failed and The Praying Ape, both available from Amazon.

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