I am an old woman who couldn't afford to go to college. Channels like yours are invaluable to me. I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am.

As a farmer, I am thinking these guys are missing a big part of the transition. You do NOT need to sow seeds, especially grains like barley or buckwheat. The act of harvesting grains with hand tools will almost always result in self-sowing of the next generation. Grains ripen from the bottom of the stalk to the top, so what this means if you wait until the top of the stalks are dry and ready to harvest, about 25% of the stalk (the bottom part) has already fallen off onto the ground and will reseed the next generation. With grains like Barley and buckwheat which grow very fast, you end up with fields of monocultures as the grains out compete almost all weeds. If you stay in a spot, and you harvest Buckwheat, you will have an entire other harvest available in about 12 weeks or less without sowing seeds.

I think people need to be more mindful of the difference between horticulture and farming, and that horticulture can have extended back quite a bit farther than farming. We have fairly good evidence of horticulture at least two times farther back than Gobekli Tepe. So long before we were farming, hunter gatherers were doing more than just gleaning naturally placed resources. Hunter gatherers are not incapable of planning, and they don't move randomly. They would manage plant resources near their living sites. And humans continued doing this long after Gobekli Tepe into historical times. What I am getting at is that we may be over focusing on individual sites and time periods, when we should be focusing on the forces that cause the mobile to settled transition.

Not even two minutes in, and you include a disclaimer when this information will probably be outdated. I have never seen anyone regardless of the topic, being this transparent about the level of accuracy their video is conveying. Hell, to this day I'm finding so many software tutorials that point to options that aren't even available anymore, and the uploader just refuses to take down the video, and you would have even less incentive to include such a disclaimer, because even when the information gets outdated, for the topic, this video will still remain a valuable "time capsule" of what people used to think. There is one word for this: integrity. And you have my utmost respect for that.

"First came the Temples, than came the city" that would explain why the Mesopotamian early cities were dedicated to particular gods

You must be the hardest working history youtuber. Your output is insane

I like to refer to this period of time as the Long Exhaustive Introduction Period that morphs into The Interesting Topic at Hand Period. I think this was what a lot of viewers were probably expecting. An otherwise well-intended dive into the Gobekli Tepe region is a fascinating discovery, that once reached, provides wonderful new information to absorb.

Years ago I visited a community in Costa Rica. Small, closely spaced houses faced the road on both sides. Behind every house was a long narrow fenced yard, and at the very back of each yard was a latrine/outhouse. When I used the latrine I was appreciating the row of fruit-laden papaya trees which stood all along the back fences of every yard. Later I mentioned to my host how nice I thought those papaya trees were. He laughed and said "We didn't plant them. That's where we put the mierda." And I thought Hmm seeds do get swallowed, and that might be how people learned to garden, waaay back, .

Great report. The whole of the Middle East was much wetter with greater rainfall 12500 years ago. There were forests and plenty of wood. When rainfall diminished and trees were cut down, the area dried out and became semi-desert. The populations had to abandon unviable settlements and they congregated in the Tigris and Euphrates river basins to be near water. Game animals disappeared and so hunting became difficult, so only farming with a reliable water source was sustainable.

This was a nicely laid out mass of information. I particularly liked that you acknowledge right off the bat how much we don't know yet. I always say, people of the past were not a bunch of superstitious idiots - they were survivors in a world where death lurked around every corner. They built stone structures and mastered metallurgy that we still can't understand. I hope these discoveries shed more light on just how amazing these people were... :)

Some points as an archeologist (from a different period and area): It is a common occurance that we cant dig up every part of a site. Göbekli Tepe is in quite a fortunate position, because there are no modern buildings that might interfere, both having destroyed parts in the past and not being able to remove parts of the modern structure (a common occurance at the site I work with currently and where almost all of the digs happened during construction works as so called emergency digs). The other thing is the annoyance with juggling with different papers. This is the result of people not wanting to be redundant and copying, but this often leads to leaving the original reports in a language not that widely spoken and later work only references aspects of these initial reports. A good example is the Parthenon, a highly researched object, but the most important work has been of reconstruction works in the 70s and the report and plans are entirely in greek. Other works reference this one, but if you want an overview of every stone in the building this is the only place you cant get that. Overall very well put together video. Only one grievance: it would be nice if you could link your sources as footnotes directly in the video, so people can look at the information themselves

It's hard to explain how much I love this channel, explaining complex historical processes without losing academic rigour or dumbing things down

Outstanding. I began university courses in Paleoanthropology many years ago, (changed majors soon after)...and this 1/2-hour video is more informational about the Rise of Human Society than any drawn-out course I took.

Gobekli Tepe is one of my favorite topic in (pre)history, because it shows how one find can change the established view one a certain topic.

Interesting parallels between Golbekli tepe and The Mississippi pyramid/mounding building culture Specifically non sedentary hunter gatherers building monuments

This was very enlightening. Usually this topic is presented with myths, legends, and aliens, but few facts. Thank you for this fascinating look at history.

Thank you for mentioning its one of multiple cradles of civilization.it drives me insane to no end when people ignore the others:)

As a geologist, I’m so pleased that you gave this overview of recent geologic time with respect to the human time scale. Please note that there is no R sound in the first syllable of Quaternary, it’s pronounced Kwah-TER-ne-ree. I know it looks like Quarter, but it doesn’t have that first R. Love your channel🙂

Thank you for this concise explanation of wetland gardening and the progression to agriculture, which makes much more sense to me than the neolithic revolution as it was taught to us entry-level archaeology students back in the 90s. Gobekli Tepe and its neighbors are among the most fascinating sites on the planet, and I really appreciate this breakdown. Well done!

Great video, loved the end. I can just imagine generations of people coming to gobekli tepe to participate in the ritual and practice of cereal cultivation, coupled with feasting and creating social bonds, spreading the knowledge of cereal food to people all over. I wonder how far people traveled to go there, how they heard about it.

You’re whole channel is a gift to the historic community, very hard working researcher and historian

Gobekli Tepe did not necessarily have a single purpose. It could have been a regular meeting place for trade between hunter-gatherer groups--a stone age trade show. You could trade things you have for things you need. You could maybe even trade things for food if your group had a bad year. Then, as long as people were showing up anyway, they could have simultaneously engaged in many other kinds of activities: spiritual/religious practices, sharing innovations and news about nearby ecologies, mingling to find marriage partners from other groups, news about births and deaths, storytelling and music, resolving disputes between groups or individuals that emerged since the last gathering, games and competitions, and teaching the next generations about the other groups in the region and how to get along with them. Maybe Gobekli Tepe was none of these things. But we should not prematurely fixate on the idea that Gobekli Tepe is a temple complex analogous to modern buildings dedicated to spiritual/religious practices.

Thank you to your patrons, I love this stuff. I can’t help but I’m grateful.

Thank you so much! Since first reading about Klaus Schmitt's work, and seeing the then available images, it struck me that in none of those, nor in his comments was any sign of violence'/warfare. I found that unique. The manner in which you present your videos is refreshing. Down to earth, not pretentious or forced "I'm an expert". That is so rare!

I walked through GT before the nicely done covering. Subsequently, more Tepes have been located all over the region. From there to Cappadocia to the west, aka, the real town of Bedrock

As always a fascinating, well researched and thought-provoking video. Whenever I engage in speculation of our preliterate ancestors, I remember a book, The Motel of the Mysteries, which is a humorous and sarcastic send up of our tendency to project our own notions back onto our ancestors. This is no less a problem than the false narratives of people like Donnelly and his later acolytes von Daniken and Hancock. Thanks for providing a factual and well thought out presentation.

Your video lectures bring me back to my days in college. Didn't know I missed lectures so much until I ran into your channel

One particular site with a short overlap with Göbekli is named Asikli Höyük and I would like to add it to this specific conversation. Asikli's earliest period of settlement aside (round clay buildings, hardly dug into at this point), we can see a kind of small town emerging from about 8.500 BC lasting for about 1.100 years. It was a dense and organized settlement with new buildings strictly adhering to their predecessor's outer supporting walls leaving a gap between the outer walls to the house next to it. The administration of whatever kind made sure this was perpetuated over the entirety of the later ca. 1-millennium- period. Asikli had small paved/plastered roads leading to the small quaters and likely two buildings substantially larger and different in use to the other houses. The proximity to a natural volcanic source of Obsidian, a very useful glass to make blades and tools from, albeit brittle and often to be replaced, was the likely reason trade in Asikli was abundant. And trade meaning materials like Turquoise and sea shells present, originating hundreds if not thousands of miles away from the site. What connects it to this video is that for the first half of the later settlement, so roughly 500 years or so, domesticated plants and animals seem to not have played a significant role in people's diet. Whilst only in the later periods we see the domesticated forms overtake in quantity. To me personally this seemed puzzling at first. Unless of course human behavior is considered as part of the equation. I also understand it to be unlikely humans developed farming when all of a sudden food was scarce. There are better understood, previously reported and easier to implement measures humans can resort to. Namely restrict marriage age while looking for better roaming grounds. I don't quite like to throw ideas of demand and supply into the mix when talking about the earliest complex human structures. However it's as you said, temples predated farming. And I would like to add that towns and (small scale) global trade predated it as well. Some farming being around for a long time, yes, but not as a food growing source of nutrition for virtually all people. It was but one of the behaviors humans had added to their wheelhouse at the the time, contemporary with complex belief systems, trade and societal administration spanning greater areas and multiple groups of people.

I tend to think herding, especially on a large scale, and animal domestication went hand in hand with agriculture in turning hunter gatherers into settled agriculturalists. This is especially true when you consider that before the domestication of textile crops and animal wool a lot of things, most importantly clothes, was made from animal skins. I don’t think you have settled agricultural societies without both agriculture and animal husbandry.

This was very interesting. Glad I found your channel.

This was superb. And thank you for no annoying background music

OK, now this video is one excellent piece of work! Very thorough, yet not tedious for even one second. It illustrates a very clear picture of the relevant time period - both on the large scale (at the beginning of the video), and in a more focused perspective. Thank you!

I know that when an Historian’s Craft video emerges, that I will be illuminated and elevated. I have listened to multiple lectures or podcasts on the subject, but none which situated the site within its context as adeptly, and none which explored the different layers. Keep up the great work, Mike!

Thank you for putting this together! This is the most comprehensive & detailed video I've seen/paper I've ever come across on Younger Dryas or Gobleki!! Thank you thank you!!

This is my new fave channel for history.

"We did not domesticate grains. Grains domesticated us."

Fascinating! Thanks for a well-presented video. My parents were both avid armchair archaeologists and we had lots of books and magazines about archaeology in the Middle East. They would have been just astonished by the discoveries you presented.

Imagine how lush and bountiful that area must have been to support that kind of activity in the region. Imagine the manpower required to conceive, organize, and execute all of this.

Thanks a very nice video. I first found out about Gubekli tape in David Graeber and David Wengrow and their description of the place was fascinating. You mentioned most texts on the site are highly technical but this book has been written for the common person like me who wants to know more about history and start of the civilization. Highly recommend 👌

By far the most interesting thing I've watched, in a long time.

I love your work, thank you sincerely for all you do on this channel!

Fantastic video! Gobleki Tepe really is fascinating.

Well done! And fascinating conclusion. Makes so much sense!

Great stuff. Thank you. I will think on these matters.

Well narrated and well researched. Cannot thank you enough.

Very interesting and informative video. There's a good point about the lack of accessible media, whether popular books or TV documentaries, by archaeologists leading to others (like Hancock who isn't mentioned in the video) creating fringe ideas about these sites. It's sad that so much of this information is locked behind obscure & expensive academic articles and books. This video at least gives a great introduction to this topic to a wider audience.

That graph at 3:00 brought me a rush of memories. Going to the museums in DC at like 4 with huge plaques like this covered with the millions and millions of years. Thanks for the vid

Excellent synopsis of complex issues…thx

My Grandfather was a farmer. He'd farm someplace for awhile, get feed up, Buckaroo for awhile. But I never saw him hunt much, which was unusual, because most farmers think they can survive on hunting if they had to. But other than that, he would fit into a neolithic society pretty good I think.

Humankind ,in my opinion , is maritime almost the whole way back alongside all the hunters but we know so little that it is barely mentioned in our collective history and was probably a massive part of life , we have always lived around the coasts and waterways our maritime history needs connecting to our hunter gatherer history in a way that shows how much more we relied on the sea than the land .

Excellent overviee. Many thanks.

*I LOVE GOBEKLI TEPE* cos unlike most poeple I LOVE being wrong - being wrong menas I get to learn a new thing and as a slighlty autisic person a new fact is like the best thing ever... And G/T totally upends our previous understanding of history and civilisation - semi nomadic hunter gatherers made a temple BEFORE they made a city, so coming togehter to worship may its self be the foundation on which citeis were built, and they were carving amazing things 8,000 years before some guys in Briton put some stones on top of som stones and we think its cool.

Fascinating video! So well done and really helpful when trying to understand this stuff. Hope you do one on the current state of thinking regarding aDNA/Yamnaya problem with all the pros and cons

Loving your videos on pre-history. Very under-covered topic by history youtube

Very well done.

Absolutely great video. Thank you!

Great video. I haven't read anything about Gobleki Tepe so it's nice to have the rundown. I wasn't aware before that Klaus Schmidt had such far out ideas.

Great video, love the topic.

Such a great, comprehensive video. I really appreciate the way you set things up first before the main point you wanted to discuss.

Farming is a fabulous discovery. Free food just outside your kitchen window.

I came here for "why did we start farming" and stayed for Gobekli Tepe, too. I like this take on the origins of farming, because it agrees with my preconceived ideas about how these things work. The part about Gobekli Tepe was completely new to me. I expect I'll be spending a lot of time with this channel.

Great Video 8:30 only issue I have with the way you are covering this is bringing up the German volcano. Although some volcanic activity can certainly have significant climate effects and is worth investigating as either a cause or contributor, The German volcano by itself is simply far far too small to cause a global disruption that lasts more than a year or 2. 20:10 The info on this has changed in the last couple of years it now appears there was indeed permanent settlement of Gobekli Tepe(though not at the earliest layers of the site), the sheer amount of grinding stones and other domestic materials found especially in the square and rectangular stone buildings is pointing very strongly that way.

Excellent, excellent video! Well done!

Loved this! Thank you! Watched the whole thing. Very cool.

Great topic choice again

Perhaps sites such as these only seem unusual because they were made of a durable material--stone. There may be many other late Pleistocene temples constructed of wood or situated on the coast that would have eroded or been swallowed up by changing sea levels.

Outstanding job. With all the misinformation about Göbekli Tepe this is vital information summarized just right for people to get a proper introduction. Wonderful history tying the Pleistocene cultures like the Natufian Culture through Göbekli Tepe all the way to ancient Sumer in a logical science based breakdown. Excited to see what's next for a topic !

Thanks so much for the video and info

CO2 levels and how well wild wheat and barley grow. C3 plants (like wheat and barley, trees, bushes, rice) just don't grow well enough when CO2 levels are low like in ice age conditions. The first pop of CO2 at 14,000 years ago led to the Natufians and the second jump after the younger dryas kicked off the agricultural revolution. Before that, it wasn't profitable enough to gather wheat and barley, let alone grow it in fields. It is the same story for almost all of our agricultural products. What did grow well enough in ice age CO2 levels is C4 grasses. And what did we mostly eat in those times - Grass-eating herbivore animals because that is all there was.

How wonderful to have actual grow-up history and information--no dramatic "Hollywood" music, no aliens, no "magic" technologies mentioned. Thank you.

What a great video. Thank you.

Very well done and informative

9:30 It took me way too long to figure out why the Younger Dryas was to the left of the Older Dryas on the timeline.

Why they could not leave domesticated graines for longer period of time?Can you clarify that a bit?Great video,very informative 😊

Well-thought-out and informative.

I needed that video. Thanks

Great video, not only for the information it offers but also for the well-founded interpretive proposal. As someone who reads Oswald Spengler these days, I found this presentation as a confirmation of some of his views on history.

What were people cooking in before pottery???

Excellent video as always, thank you

My Great Uncle carries a Y-haplogroup connected to the Natufian culture. It’s wild to think that one of my far distant ancestors likely walked at a site similar to Gobekli Tepe.

Excellent video!!

An excellent presentation - thank you!

Australian Aboriginal peoples did this kind of mixed gardening and hunting where it was available. Unfortunately, a lot of the history was lost with the genocide of the native peoples of this land. Though the domestication of Australia's animals were not suitable some plants were for the type of use described in this video.

*Go impact go!* I thought ancient architects, notably just an amateur YT enthusiast, covered some papers suggesting the were covered by subsidence and not intentional backfill? Perhaps I’m misremembering.

excellent presentation...thank you

Excellent video, thanks.

Lovely video but as an Ontarian the way you say Ontario gets me 😂. Love your videos, here’s too a good 2023 mate.

Mmmmm, beer. 🍺😋

That was quite interesting. Well done!

Beautifully crafted, compelling and awe inspiring 👏👍👌

Thank you for the interesting video on this important archaeological site. I've heard of a hypothesized Holocene impact in North America. I would be interested in a future video on that topic! Thanks again for this one! God be with you out there everybody! ✝️ :)

I find the impactor hypothesis surrounding the younger dryas to be fascinating. I've heard a few different ideas and such. It's a shame that some of the biggest names out there sharing these ideas are also kinda crazy as well. But then certain aspects of the theory have been validated by other finds since the idea was put forward. I'm more in the camp of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Someone can have a good idea and their other ideas can be less good. We don't always have to reject everything because ideas can have merit outside of authorship. It just makes it harder for academics to take certain ideas as seriously as they might do if those putting them forward were less... Bizarre.

Fascinating!

Excellent content.

One word: BOOZE!!! And if safely ergotised, even more reason to plant!

I dunno. The alien hypothesis seems much more plausible to me. /s

Great video. Just want to say thanks.

Wow so clear and concise.

And then there was beer…

175k years ago in Poland Nearthdals were (farming) the arced around the cave they lived in was total bare of trees. reasons wood for fire and see enemy's/food coming. also privative farming of moss (edibale) might have been found in France by nearthdals