One of the first mental obstacles to overcome is the consideration that we are not the pinnacle of evolution and that surface life / constructs may have been rebooted /changed / wiped periodically...

I will bump an older thread for full context (comet strike 12K years ago...)

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium-israeli-archaeologists-find-hidden-pattern-at-gobekli-tepe-1.8799837

quote:
Israeli Archaeologists Find Hidden Pattern at ‘World’s Oldest Temple’ Göbekli Tepe

Neolithic hunter-gatherers who erected massive monoliths in central Turkey 11,500 years ago had command of geometry and a much more complex society than previously thought, archaeologists say

Ariel David SendSend me email alerts
Apr 28, 2020 12:12 PM

quote:
The enigmatic monoliths built some 11,500 years ago at Göbekli Tepe have been puzzling archaeologists and challenging preconceptions about prehistoric culture since their discovery in the 1990s. Chiefly, how could hunter-gatherers with a supposedly primitive societal structure build such monumental stone circles on this barren hilltop in what is today southeastern Turkey? How could a largely nomadic society at the dawn of agriculture marshal the resources and know-how to create what its discoverers have dubbed the oldest known temple in the world?
If anything, a discovery by Israeli archaeologists suggests the Göbekli Tepe construction project was even more complex than previously thought, and required an amount of planning and resources thought to be impossible for those times. Their study of the three oldest stone enclosures at Göbekli Tepe has revealed a hidden geometric pattern, specifically an equilateral triangle, underlying the entire architectural plan of these structures.

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Thus, thousands of years before the invention of writing or the wheel, the builders of Göbekli Tepe evidently had some understanding of geometric principles and could apply them to their construction plans, concludes the study published in January in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal.
“The initial discovery of the site was a big surprise and we are now showing that its construction was even more complex than we thought,” says Haklay, an Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist and a PhD candidate at Tel Aviv University.

quote:
An unexpected pattern
The new study focused on enclosures B,C, and D, which are known to be slightly older than A. Based on the assumption that such a massive construction project would have been beyond the capacities of the small, non-sedentary groups that usually comprise hunter-gatherer societies, most scholars have assumed that all the circles at Göbekli Tepe had to have been built gradually over a long period of time.
“There is a lot of speculation that the structures were built successively, possibly by different groups of people, and that one was covered up while the next one was being built. But there is no evidence that they are not contemporaneous,” Haklay tells Haaretz.

Argues againsts the gradualists

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The new world order
How and why Neolithic hunter-gatherers would mobilize the massive resources needed to build Göbekli Tepe and other sites like it is the subject of much speculation. While some researchers have interpreted the structures as residential spaces, most archaeologists see little evidence of this and consider the sheer monumentality of the complex and the richness of its iconography as evidence of a ritual purpose.

quote:
This suggests that the builders understood and wished to represent the idea of a hierarchy, perhaps intending to crystalize the new order of a less equal and more stratified society, Haklay and Gopher maintain.
The stratification was not limited to human relations: it suggests a change in the perceived relationship between humans and nature, the archaeologists suggest. That’s because of what is found at the top of the triangle, at the center of enclosure D.

quote:
“In Paleolithic art humans are rare, and this is true here as well, but you start to see change, the beginning of an anthropocentric world view in which animals and plants are no longer equal to humans but are subordinated to them,” Gopher tells Haaretz.
In other words, Göbekli Tepe may have been designed, consciously or unconsciously, to represent and perhaps explain humanity’s growing ability to manipulate its environment, which, in the coming centuries, would lead to the first domesticated crops in this very region, the researchers say.
"The end of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is more of an ideological transformation than an economic or technological one,” Gopher maintains. “Hunter-gatherers cannot domesticate anything, it’s against their world view, which is based on equality and trust. Once that ideology changes, the entire structure of society is transformed and a new world is born.”

This is when we "left the garden" for better or worse...