This Discovery Is a Huge Problem for Historians (Michael Button)

For decades, we’ve been told civilization began around 6,000 years ago.

First came farming. Then cities. Then religion, monuments, hierarchy, and organized society.

But in southeastern Turkey, archaeologists uncovered something that completely disrupts that story.

Massive stone temples.
Advanced symbolic systems.
Regional coordination.
Monumental architecture.

Built 12,000 years ago.

And yet… many archaeologists still refuse to call it a civilization.

So what exactly is civilization?
And what happens if the standard definition is wrong?



Officially the first villages in this region are admitted to be 9 to 10 thousand years old, but they were never claimed to represent a high end civilisation capable of building megalithic structures.  

[Posted at the SpookyWeather2 blog, May 28, 2026.]