(Thank you to the Long Now Blog for the heads up on this incredible find.)

This recent archaeological find near the Syrian Border in Turkey proves that monumental stonework, and therefore civilization itself, has been around many millennia longer than we ever imagined…

History in the Remaking
A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution.

By Patrick Symmes | NEWSWEEK
Published Feb 19, 2010

They call it potbelly hill, after the soft, round contour of this final lookout in southeastern Turkey. To the north are forested mountains. East of the hill lies the biblical plain of Harran, and to the south is the Syrian border, visible 20 miles away, pointing toward the ancient lands of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, the region that gave rise to human civilization. And under our feet, according to archeologist Klaus Schmidt, are the stones that mark the spot—the exact spot—where humans began that ascent.

Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn’t just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture—the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed…

For the complete story, please click here.

Some people say that they have lived past lives on other planets – this of course implies that there are other planets with intelligent life out there. As science becomes more adept at sensing distant “earths”, the prospect of finding evidence of otherworldly life becomes more tangible. I just hope that alien intelligence is discovered in THIS lifetime! Call me impatient, but I don’t want to wait until the next go around for this mystery to be solved…

Scientists spot nearby ‘super-Earth’

By John D. Sutter, CNN

“Astronomers announced this week they found a water-rich and relatively nearby planet that’s similar in size to Earth.

While the planet probably has too thick of an atmosphere and is too hot to support life similar to that found on Earth, the discovery is being heralded as a major breakthrough in humanity’s search for life on other planets.

“The big excitement is that we have found a watery world orbiting a very nearby and very small star,” said David Charbonneau, a Harvard professor of astronomy and lead author of an article on the discovery, which appeared this week in the journal Nature.

The planet, named GJ 1214b, is 2.7 times as large as Earth and orbits a star much smaller and less luminous than our sun. That’s significant, Charbonneau said, because for many years, astronomers assumed that planets only would be found orbiting stars that are similar in size to the sun.

Because of that assumption, researchers didn’t spend much time looking for planets circling small stars, he said. The discovery of this “watery world” helps debunk the notion that Earth-like planets could form only in conditions similar to those in our solar system…”

For the complete article click here.

Please enjoy this treasury of podcasted seminars on long term thinking presented by the thought-provoking folks over at The Long Now Foundation. There is one talk in particular that I think you may really enjoy: the talk given by Daniel Everett on “Endangered languages, lost knowledge and the future”  (scroll down here to find Everett’s podcasted talk) –

Here’s a summary…

“Language Revolution

The Pirahã tribe in the heart of the Amazon numbers only 360, spread in small groups over 300 miles.  An exceptionally cheerful people, they live with a focus on immediacy, empiricism, and physical rigor that has shaped their unique language, claims linguist Daniel Everett.

The Pirahã language has no numbers or concept of counting (only terms for “relatively small” and “relatively large”); no kinship terms beyond immediate children and parents; no “left” and “right” (only “upriver” and “downriver”); no named distinction of past and future (only near time and far time); no creation stories or myths; and—most important for linguists—no recursion.

A recursive sentence like “The boy who was fishing owned the dog” does not occur in the Pirahã language.  They would say, “The boy was fishing” and “The boy owned the dog.”  The eminent linguist Noam Chomsky has declared that recursion is an essential part of human language and is innate.  Chomsky’s former student Everett says that the Pirahã language proves otherwise.  The resultant controversy is profound.

The Pirahã language is the simplest in the world.  Speaking it and singing it are the same, and it can be hummed or even whistled, yet it can convey enormous richness.  Among other things, the wide variety of verb forms are used to account for the directness of evidence for a statement.  Everett originally went to the Pirahã in 1977 as a Christian missionary.  They challenged him to provide evidence for the existence of Jesus, and lost interest when he couldn’t.  Eventually so did he.  The Pirahã made him an atheist.

And the through him the Pirahã revolutionized how we think about language.

Some 40 percent of the world’s 6,912 known languages are endangered, says Everett, and that endangers science.  When we lose a language, we lose a whole way of life, a whole set of solutions to problems, a whole classification system and body of knowledge about the natural world, a whole calendar system, a whole complex of myths, folktales, and songs.

Everett spelled out what it takes to preserve a living language that is endangered.  The land where the speakers live must be preserved, and their health should be protected.  The language needs to be documented in detail.  And you could do worse than make a donation to the Foundation for Endangered Languages .” (S. Brand – The Long Now Foundation)

There are many more talks where this came from, on subjects as varied as “Machines and the Breath of Time” and “The Consequences of Human Life Extension”… Click here to explore.