Famed Archaeologist 'Discovered' His Own Fakes at 9,000-Year-Old Settlement

Live Science ^ | March 12, 2018 | Owen Jarus

[MarvinStinson]

bmp

[Unam Sanctam]

I’ve always been fascinated by the antiquity of Catal Huyuk. Now I wonder how much of what I’ve read about it is trustworthy.

[mairdie]

Thank you for the bump. This was a wonderful article. Horrible. But wonderful.

[SunkenCiv]

I think they've got no clue about languages spoken at either site, and it will probably remain that way. Imagine what it would take -- there would have to be a body of inscriptions contemporary with a site; a bilingual text, both unreadable, but one a later successor tongue, which also has some sort of body of inscriptions at some site or sites; then another bilingual inscription with a third successor; and this sequence would have to repeat until the newer language on the bilingual were one someone knows how to read.

Here's one of my favorite clippings for reprise -- there are short inscriptions in the European cave paintings:

In her Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5000 B.C. Myth, Religion, Archaeology, Mary Settegast reproduces a table which shows four runic character sets; a is Upper Paleolithic (found among the cave paintings), b is Indus Valley script, c is Greek (western branch), and d is the Scandinavian runic alphabet.

[SunkenCiv]

Nothing like them. AGW / global warming is entirely political in origin, and entirely sustained by political demagoguery and manufactured consent.

[SunkenCiv]

The Dorak Affair is the scandal that got Mellaart kicked out of Turkey for a while -- and it was a total humbug.

The Dorak Affair's Final Chapter
Opinion: Suzan Mazur
Monday, 10 October 2005

There were drawings of an ancient comb with a dolphin motif, of jewel boxes again decorated with dolphins, of a vase in the shape of a bird of gold and silver; there were sketches of the gold leaf covering which was said to have extended over the surface of the wooden throne which could have been a present from Egypt, details of the rug which had disintegrated when the tombs had been opened, and even rubbings of the sword blade etched with ships and of a sherd of alabaster which had been marked with hieroglyphics. And every one of these drawings had been annotated in Mellaart's hand... Earlier this week in phone conversations I had with David Stronach, Professor of Near East Archaeology at the University of California - Berkeley, Stronach disclosed that Jimmie Mellaart invented Dorak. He called it a "dream-like episode"... But most important of all in relation to the Dorak mystery, Stronach's was the other handwriting Pearson & Connor refer to above in Mellart's memoirs.

[SunkenCiv]

LOL!

[SunkenCiv]

The dating of the site is good. The famous volcano mural (which actually could be the painting of an animal skin), which is often called the world's first news story, was photographed at the time of discovery (still dusty, and partially unexcavated), and so is considered legit. The mural *may* show the eruption of Hasan Dag, a volcano about 80 miles east, and possibly the destruction of a neighboring town in the shadow of the volcano, possibly called Asikli Höyük (not sure the best way to straighten out the characters the browser is showing me)..

[SunkenCiv]

And he wanted to be my latex salesman.

[fieldmarshaldj]

[Bob Ireland]

Geeeese... I have been reviewing my material on Çatalhöyük - about 6 years old - and it makes me wonder if any of Mellaart's work is trustworthy. Later excavations question many of Mellaart's conclusions, including his interpretation of a female goddess fixation and a possible matriarchal society... also his interpretation of the structural layout of the living space. Yikes!

Thanks for the followup on my question re: language. A written language would likely be revolutionary.

On the subject of cave paintings here is a bit of an editorial of mine about the archaeological history of that {near the bottom of the page}.

My views on hunter-gatherers taking two millennia to build Göbekli Tepe can be read here. I have compared such to the building of the British Parliament building in the time of Julius Caesar and being finished about WWII; think of all the changes that took place over that period.

[SunkenCiv]

See message #10, this is also one of *those* topics. Mellaart is one of the gibbering "experts" consulted by Michael Wood in his classic documentary on the Trojan War.

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[SunkenCiv]

Eberhard Zangger (see the above posts) has put his entire book “The Future of the Past” [2001] online at Academia.

https://www.academia.edu/25590386/The_Future_of_the_Past_Archaeology_in_the_21st_Century?auto=download&email_work_card=download-paper

[SunkenCiv]

https://www.academia.edu/40182290/James_Mellaart_s_Fantasies

[SunkenCiv]

One of *those* topics.

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[SunkenCiv]