(The Oswald Spengler Society, 2020) Zimmermann, Thomas
The following contribution attempts to reconcile aspects of Cultural Morphology as outlined by Oswald Spengler in his seminal Decline of the West and Man & Technics with archaeological observations dating to the transitional period from the Epipalaeolithic to the Early Holocene in the so-called Fertile Crescent (ca. 10.000 BC). The finds and features of Göbeklitepe and related sites of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) in Upper Mesopotamia are reevaluated, to allow a different reading of the emergence of monumental architecture as the cultural climax of a then declining hunter-and-gatherer tradition, and not the prelude for a new era shaped by animal husbandry and agriculture.
