Death-linked monumental projects predate and probably triggered settled agriculture
Evidence
Since each of the sculpted pillars weighs between ten and twenty tons, archaeologists think that it would have taken at least five hundred workers to hew the huge pillars, drag them from their quarries, and erect them. How were they able to accomplish this amazing feat of prehistoric construction? Why did these people erect Göbekli Tepe? How could they have been mobilized and fed? What did the pillars and the carved animals mean? What are we to make of this strange place? — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 320
Categorization
- QUESTION: The implication that death rituals mobilized hunter-gatherers into the settled-society bottleneck — i.e., agriculture as a byproduct of monument building — inverts the standard technological-determinist story.
- SEED: Strong speculative essay: death terror as the original driver of civilization, not surplus food.