gobekli tepe - genesis of the gods by andrew collins

as Mary Settegast realized, the fact that a great many tanged points strikingly similar to those manufactured in Europe have been found at Epipaleolithic and early Neolithic sites across the Near East. Indeed, if they had been found on European soil, archaeologists would have had no qualms in identifying them as belonging to one or another of the North European reindeer-hunting traditions.
    Clearly, there are certain differences in style. Sometimes the tang is trapezoid in shape, or with a slight barb. Alternatively, notches are made on either side of the blade, making it easier to haft onto an arrow shaft. Despite these variations, there are enough similarities to suggest that the Swiderian reindeer hunters were somewhere in the background. Indeed, leaf-shaped tanged points that easily compare with those created as part of the Swiderian tradition have been found at Göbekli Tepe (see figure 20.1 on p. 174). 11 This opens up the possibility that the European reindeer hunters, or at least their direct descendants, really were present in southeast Anatolia and might well have influenced the development of its earliest Neolithic cultures, something they certainly did in other parts of the ancient world.
    POST-SWIDERIAN CULTURES
    Having established many hundreds of settlement sites as far east as the Don and Upper Volga rivers of Central Russia, Swiderian groups spread into new territories, where they created post-Swiderian cultures, such as the Kunda and Butovo, which thrived between the middle of the tenth millennium and the end of the seventh millennium BC in Estonia, Belarus, Latvia, and northwest Russia. 12 Here they adopted an advanced toolmaking technique known as surface pressure flaking, a process so unique that when discovered at a Mesolithic site in north or northeast Europe it is seen as clear evidence of a Swiderian presence there.
    Pressure flaking is a process whereby a bone tool or antler is used to trim a biface (an implement shaped on both faces) by very carefully applying pressure to its edges in order to prize off rows of tiny flakes. This produces equally spaced, concave troughs, each one generally overlapping the next in line, which can reach as far as the center of the implement, giving it a perfect geometric finish.

    Figure 20.1. Comparison of tanged points found in the fill at Göbekli Tepe (A and C) against two examples (B and D) from the Swiderian culture.
    Although stone tools dating back seventy-five thousand years found at the Blombos Cave in South Africa show evidence of having been finished using pressure flaking, it is a technique not usually associated with European cultures at the end of the Paleolithic age. This said, pressure flaking was being used in eastern Anatolia to process obsidian (see chapter 22) during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period, ca. 8700 BC and 6000 BC, and was present at the Neolithic city of Çatal Höyük by 7000 BC. 13
    FINNO-UGRIC PEOPLES
    There is firm evidence also that post-Swiderian groups entered Finland and established key settlements during the ninth millennium BC. Here their traditions are associated with the country’s Finno-Ugric speaking peoples, including the Sámi, a shamanic-based, reindeer-herding culture that exists to this day. 14 Additionally, newly discovered settlement sites in Norway, dating to roughly the same age as those in neighboring Finland, have revealed evidence of a blade technology identified as post-Swiderian in nature. 15 Similar tools have been found at a Mesolithic site in Lapland, northern Sweden, dated to ca. 6600 BC. 16 What is more, extraordinarily accomplished stone tools finished using pressure flaking techniques were manufactured during the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age, ca. 3000–2500 BC, in parts of Scandinavia (Denmark in particular), and this can be put down to the presence of technologically advanced cultures deriving from the post-Swiderian tradition.
    All this implies that some of the earliest influences on Finnish,