Norte Chico civilization Cotton and food sources Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? Cotton (of the species Gossypium barbadense) likely provided the basis of the dominance of inland over coast (whether development was earlier, later, or contemporaneous).
What was their civilization like?
What was Norte Chico´s civilization like?
Cotton (of the species Gossypium barbadense) likely provided the basis of the dominance of inland over coast (whether development was earlier, later, or contemporaneous). Though not edible, it was the most important product of irrigation in the Norte Chico, vital to the production of fishing nets (that in turn provided maritime resources) as well as to textiles and textile technology. Haas notes that "control over cotton allows a ruling elite to provide the benefit of cloth for clothing, bags, wraps, and adornment". He is willing to admit to a mutual dependency dilemma: "The prehistoric residents of the Norte Chico needed the fish resources for their protein and the fishermen needed the cotton to make the nets to catch the fish." Thus, identifying cotton as a vital resource produced in the inland does not by itself resolve the issue of whether the inland centers were a progenitor for the coast, or vice versa. Moseley argues that successful maritime centers would have moved inland to find cotton. The exact relationship between food resources and political organization remains unresolved. Norte Chico's development is particularly remarkable for the apparent absence of a staple food. However, recent studies increasingly dispute this and point to maize as a dietary backbone of this and later pre-Columbian civilizations. Moseley found a small number of maize cobs in 1973 at Aspero (also seen in site work in the 1940s and 50s) but has since called the find "problematic". However, increasing evidence has emerged about the importance of maize in this period: Archaeological testing at a number of sites in the Norte Chico region of the north central coast provides a broad range of empirical data on the production, processing, and consumption of maize. New data drawn from coprolites, pollen records, and stone tool residues, combined with 126 radiocarbon dates, demonstrate that maize was widely grown, intensively processed, and constituted a primary component of the diet throughout the period from 3000 to 1800 B.C. CANNOTANSWER
Norte Chico's development is particularly remarkable for the apparent absence of a staple food.
Norte Chico (also known as Caral or Caral-Supe) was a complex pre-Columbian-era society that included as many as thirty major population centers in what is now the Caral region of north-central coastal Peru. The civilization flourished between the fourth and second millennia BC, with the formation of the first city generally dated to around 3500 BC, at Huaricanga, in the Fortaleza area. It is from 3100 BC onward that large-scale human settlement and communal construction become clearly apparent, which lasted until a period of decline around 1800 BC. Since the early twenty-first century, it has been established as the oldest-known civilization in the Americas.

This civilization flourished along three rivers, the Fortaleza, the Pativilca, and the Supe. These river valleys each have large clusters of sites. Farther south, there are several associated sites along the Huaura River. The alternative name, Caral-Supe, is derived from the city of Caral in the Supe Valley, a large and well-studied Caral-Supe site. 

Complex society in Caral-Supe arose a millennium after Sumer in Mesopotamia, was contemporaneous with the Egyptian pyramids, and predated the Mesoamerican Olmec by nearly two millennia.

In archaeological nomenclature, Caral-Supe is a pre-ceramic culture of the pre-Columbian Late Archaic; it completely lacked ceramics and apparently had almost no visual art. The most impressive achievement of the civilization was its monumental architecture, including large earthwork platform mounds and sunken circular plazas. Archaeological evidence suggests use of textile technology and, possibly, the worship of common deity symbols, both of which recur in pre-Columbian Andean cultures. Sophisticated government is presumed to have been required to manage the ancient Caral. Questions remain over its organization, particularly the influence of food resources on politics.

Archaeologists have been aware of ancient sites in the area since at least the 1940s; early work occurred at Aspero on the coast, a site identified as early as 1905, and later at Caral, farther inland. In the late 1990s, Peruvian archaeologists, led by Ruth Shady, provided the first extensive documentation of the civilization with work at Caral. A 2001 paper in Science, providing a survey of the Caral research, and a 2004 article in Nature, describing fieldwork and radiocarbon dating across a wider area, revealed Caral-Supe's full significance and led to widespread interest.

History and geography

The dating of the Caral-Supe sites has pushed back the estimated beginning date of complex societies in the Peruvian region by more than one thousand years. The Chavín culture, circa 900 BC, had previously been considered the first civilization of the area. Regularly, it still is cited incorrectly as such in general works.

The discovery of Caral-Supe also has shifted the focus of research away from the highland areas of the Andes and lowlands adjacent to the mountains (where the Chavín, and later Inca, had their major centers) to the Peruvian littoral, or coastal regions. Caral is located in a north-central area of the coast, approximately 150 to 200 km north of Lima, roughly bounded by the Lurín Valley on the south and the Casma Valley on the north. It comprises four coastal valleys: the Huaura, Supe, Pativilca, and Fortaleza. Known sites are concentrated in the latter three, which share a common coastal plain. The three principal valleys cover only 1,800 km², and research has emphasized the density of the population centers.

The Peruvian littoral appears an "improbable, even aberrant" candidate for the "pristine" development of civilization, compared to other world centers. It is extremely arid, bounded by two rain shadows (caused by the Andes to the east, and the Pacific trade winds to the west). The region is punctuated by more than 50 rivers that carry Andean snowmelt. The development of widespread irrigation from these water sources is seen as decisive in the emergence of Caral-Supe; since all of the monumental architecture at various sites has been found close to irrigation channels.

The radiocarbon work of Jonathan Haas et al., found that 10 of 95 samples taken in the Pativilca and Fortaleza areas dated from before 3500 BC. The oldest, dating from 9210 BC, provides "limited indication" of human settlement during the Pre-Columbian Early Archaic era. Two dates of 3700 BC are associated with communal architecture, but are likely to be anomalous. It is from 3200 BC onward that large-scale human settlement and communal construction are clearly apparent. Mann, in a survey of the literature in 2005, suggests "sometime before 3200 BC, and possibly before 3500 BC" as the beginning date of the Caral-Supe formative period. He notes that the earliest date securely associated with a city is 3500 BC, at Huaricanga, in the Fortaleza area of the north, based on Haas's dates.

Haas's early-third-millennium dates suggest that the development of coastal and inland sites occurred in parallel. But, from 2500 to 2000 BC, during the period of greatest expansion, the population and development decisively shifted toward the inland sites. All development apparently occurred at large interior sites such as Caral, although they remained dependent on fish and shellfish from the coast. The peak in dates is in keeping with Shady's dates at Caral, which show habitation from 2627 BC to 2020 BC. That coastal and inland sites developed in tandem remains disputed, however (see next section).

Circa 1800 BC, the Caral-Supe civilization began to decline, with more powerful centers appearing to the south and north along the coast, and to the east inside the belt of the Andes. The success of irrigation-based agriculture at Caral-Supe may have contributed to its being eclipsed. Anthropologist Professor Winifred Creamer of Northern Illinois University notes that "when this civilization is in decline, we begin to find extensive canals farther north. People were moving to more fertile ground and taking their knowledge of irrigation with them". It would be a thousand years before the rise of the next great Peruvian culture, the Chavín.

Geographical links 
Cultural links with the highland areas have been noted by archaeologists. In particular, the links with the Kotosh Religious Tradition have been suggested.

Numerous architectural features found among the settlements of Supe, including subterranean circular courts, stepped pyramids and sequential platforms, as well as material remains and their cultural implications, excavated at Aspero and the valley sites we are digging (Caral, Chupacigarro, Lurihuasi, Miraya), are shared with other settlements of the area that participated in what is known as the Kotosh Religious Tradition.Lucy Salazar-Burger, 1985, The early ceremonial center of Huaricoto. In Early Ceremonial Architecture in the Andes, edited by Christopher B. Donnan, pp. 111–138. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C. Most specific among these features include rooms with benches and hearths with subterranean ventilation ducts, wall niches, biconvex beads, and musical flutes.

Maritime coast and agricultural interior 
Research into Caral-Supe continues, with many unsettled questions. Debate is ongoing regarding two related questions: the degree to which the flourishing of the Caral-Supe was based on maritime food resources, and the exact relationship this implies between the coastal and inland sites.

Confirmed diet 
A broad outline of the Caral-Supe diet has been suggested. At Caral, the edible domesticated plants noted by Shady are squash, beans, lúcuma, guava, pacay (Inga feuilleei), and sweet potato. Haas et al. noted the same foods in their survey farther north, while adding avocado and achira. In 2013, good evidence for maize also was documented by Haas et al. (see below).

There was also a significant seafood component at both coastal and inland sites. Shady notes that "animal remains are almost exclusively marine" at Caral, including clams and mussels, and large amounts of anchovies and sardines. That the anchovy fish reached inland is clear, although Haas suggests that "shellfish [which would include clams and mussels], sea mammals, and seaweed do not appear to have been significant portions of the diet in the inland, non-maritime sites".

Theory of a maritime foundation for Andean civilization 

The role of seafood in the Caral-Supe diet has aroused debate. Much early fieldwork was conducted in the region of Aspero on the coast, before the full scope and inter-connectedness of the several sites of the civilization were realized. In a 1973 paper, Michael E. Moseley contended that a maritime subsistence (seafood) economy had been the basis of the society and its remarkably early flourishing, a theory later elaborated as a "maritime foundation of Andean civilization" (MFAC). He confirmed a previously observed lack of ceramics at Aspero, and he deduced that "hummocks" on the site constituted the remains of artificial platform mounds.

This thesis of a maritime foundation was contrary to the general scholarly consensus that the rise of civilization was based on intensive agriculture, particularly of at least one cereal. The production of agricultural surpluses had long been seen as essential in promoting population density and the emergence of complex society. Moseley's ideas would be debated and challenged (that maritime remains and their caloric contribution were overestimated, for example), but have been treated as plausible as late as 2005, when Mann conducted a summary of the literature.

Concomitant to the maritime subsistence hypothesis was an implied dominance of sites immediately adjacent to the coast over other centers. This idea was shaken by the realization of the magnitude of Caral, an inland site. Supplemental to a 1997 article by Shady dating Caral, a 2001 Science news article emphasized the dominance of agriculture and also suggested that Caral was the oldest urban center in Peru (and the entire Americas). It rejected the idea that civilization might have begun adjacent to the coast and then moved inland. One archaeologist was quoted as suggesting that "rather than coastal antecedents to monumental inland sites, what we have now are coastal satellite villages to monumental inland sites".

These assertions were quickly challenged by Sandweiss and Moseley, who observed that Caral, although being the largest and most complex preceramic site, it is not the oldest. They admitted the importance of agriculture to industry and to augment diet, while broadly affirming "the formative role of marine resources in early Andean civilization". Scholars now agree that the inland sites did have significantly greater populations, and that there were "so many more people along the four rivers than on the shore that they had to have been dominant".

The remaining question is which of the areas developed first and created a template for subsequent development. Haas rejects suggestions that maritime development at sites immediately adjacent to the coast was initial, pointing to contemporaneous development based on his dating. Moseley remains convinced that coastal Aspero is the oldest site, and that its maritime subsistence served as a basis for the civilization.

Cotton and food sources 
It is likely that cotton (of the species Gossypium barbadense) provided the basis of the dominance of inland over coastal (whether development was earlier, later, or contemporaneous). Although not edible, cotton was the most important product of irrigation in the Caral-Supe culture, vital to the production of fishing nets (that in turn provided maritime resources) as well as to textiles and textile technology. Haas notes that "control over cotton allows a ruling elite to provide the benefit of cloth for clothing, bags, wraps, and adornment". He is willing to admit to a mutual dependency dilemma: "The prehistoric residents of the Norte Chico needed the fish resources for their protein and the fishermen needed the cotton to make the nets to catch the fish." Thus, identifying cotton as a vital resource produced in the inland does not by itself resolve the issue of whether the inland centers were a progenitor for those on the coast, or vice versa. Moseley argues that successful maritime centers would have moved inland to find cotton. The exact relationship between food resources and political organization remains unresolved.

The development of Caral-Supe is particularly remarkable for the apparent absence of an agricultural staple food. However, recent studies increasingly dispute this and point to maize as a dietary backbone of this and later pre-Columbian civilizations. Moseley found a small number of maize cobs in 1973 at Aspero (also seen in site work in the 1940s and 1950s) but has since called the find "problematic". However, increasing evidence has emerged about the importance of maize in this period:

Social organization

Government 

The degree of centralized authority is difficult to ascertain, but architectural construction patterns are indicative, at least in certain places at certain times, of an elite population who wielded considerable power: while some of the monumental architecture was constructed incrementally, other buildings, such as the two main platform mounds at Caral, appear to have been constructed in one or two intense construction phases. As further evidence of centralized control, Haas points to remains of large stone warehouses found at Upaca, on the Pativilca, as emblematic of authorities able to control vital resources such as cotton.

Haas suggests that the labour mobilization patterns revealed by the archaeological evidence, point to a unique emergence of human government, one of two alongside Sumer (or three, if Mesoamerica is included as a separate case). While in other cases, the idea of government would have been borrowed or copied, in this small group, government was invented. Other archaeologists have rejected such claims as hyperbolic.

In exploring the basis of possible government, Haas suggests three broad bases of power for early complex societies:
 economic,
 ideology, and
 physical.
He finds the first two present in ancient Caral-Supe.

Economic 
Economic authority would have rested on the control of cotton, edible plants, and associated trade relationships, with power centered on the inland sites. Haas tentatively suggests that the scope of this economic power base may have extended widely: there are only two confirmed shore sites in the Caral-Supe (Aspero and Bandurria) and possibly two more, but cotton fishing nets and domesticated plants have been found up and down the Peruvian coast. It is possible that the major inland centers of Caral-Supe, were at the center of a broad regional trade network centered on these resources.

Citing Shady, a 2005 article in Discover magazine suggests a rich and varied trade life: "[Caral] exported its own products and those of Aspero to distant communities in exchange for exotic imports: Spondylus shells from the coast of Ecuador, rich dyes from the Andean highlands, hallucinogenic snuff from the Amazon." (Given the still limited extent of Caral-Supe research, such claims should be treated circumspectly.) Other reports on Shady's work indicate Caral traded with communities in the jungle farther inland and, possibly, with people from the mountains.

Ideology 
Haas postulates that ideological power exercised by leadership was based on apparent access to deities and the supernatural. Evidence regarding Caral-Supe religion is limited: in 2003, an image of the Staff God, a leering figure with a hood and fangs, was found on a gourd that dated to 2250 BC. The Staff God is a major deity of later Andean cultures, and Winifred Creamer suggests the find points to worship of common symbols of deities. As with much other research at Caral-Supe, the nature and significance of the find has been disputed by other researchers.

Mann postulates that the act of architectural construction and maintenance at Caral-Supe may have been a spiritual or religious experience: a process of communal exaltation and ceremony. Shady has called Caral "the sacred city" (la ciudad sagrada) and reports that socio-economic and political focus was on the temples, which were periodically remodeled, with major burnt offerings associated with the remodeling.

Physical 
Haas notes the absence of any suggestion of physical bases of power, that is, defensive construction, at Caral-Supe. There is no evidence of warfare "of any kind or at any level during the Preceramic Period". Mutilated bodies, burned buildings, and other tell-tale signs of violence are absent and settlement patterns are completely non-defensive. The evidence of the development of complex government in the absence of warfare contrasts markedly to archaeological theory, which suggests that human beings move away from kin-based groups to larger units resembling "states" for mutual defense of often scarce resources. In Caral-Supe, a vital resource was present: arable land generally, and the cotton crop specifically, but Mann noted that apparently, the move to greater complexity by the culture was not driven by the need for defense or warfare.

Sites and architecture 

Caral-Supe sites are known for their density of large sites with immense architecture. Haas argues that the density of sites in such a small area is globally unique for a nascent civilization. During the third millennium BC, Caral-Supe may have been the most densely populated area of the world (excepting, possibly, Northern China). The Supe, Pativilca, Fortaleza, and Huaura River valleys of Caral-Supe each have several related sites.

Evidence from the ground-breaking work during 1973 at Aspero, at the mouth of the Supe Valley, suggested a site of approximately . Surveying of the midden suggested extensive prehistoric construction activity. Small-scale terracing was noted, along with more sophisticated platform mound masonry. As many as eleven artificial mounds were estimated to exist at the site. Moseley calls these "Corporate Labor Platforms", given that their size, layout, and construction materials and techniques would have required an organized workforce.

The survey of the northern rivers found sites between ; between one and seven large platform mounds—rectangular, terraced pyramids—were discovered, ranging in size from  to more than . Shady notes that the central zone of Caral, with monumental architecture, covers an area of just greater than . Also, six platform mounds, numerous smaller mounds, two sunken circular plazas, and a variety of residential architecture were discovered at this site.

The monumental architecture was constructed with quarried stone and river cobbles. Using reed "shicra-bags", some of which have been preserved, laborers would have hauled the material to sites by hand. Roger Atwood of Archaeology magazine describes the process:

Armies of workers would gather a long, durable grass known as shicra in the highlands above the city, tie the grass strands into loosely meshed bags, fill the bags with boulders, and then pack the trenches behind each successive retaining wall of the step pyramids with the stone-filled bags.

In this way, the people of Norte Chico achieved formidable architectural success. The largest of the platforms mounds at Caral, the Piramide Mayor, measures  and rises  high. In its summation of the 2001 Shady paper, the BBC suggests workers would have been "paid or compelled" to work on centralized projects of this sort, with dried anchovies possibly serving as a form of currency. Mann points to "ideology, charisma, and skilfully timed reinforcement" from leaders.

Development and absent technologies 

When compared to the common Eurasian models of the development of civilization, Caral-Supe's differences are striking. In Caral-Supe, a total lack of ceramics persists across the period. Crops were cooked by roasting. The lack of pottery was accompanied by a lack of archaeologically apparent art. In conversation with Mann, Alvaro Ruiz observes: "In the Norte Chico we see almost no visual arts. No sculpture, no carving or bas-relief, almost no painting or drawing—the interiors are completely bare. What we do see are these huge mounds—and textiles."

While the absence of ceramics appears anomalous, Mann notes that the presence of textiles is intriguing. Quipu (or khipu), string-based recording devices, have been found at Caral, suggesting a writing, or proto-writing, system at Caral-Supe. (The discovery was reported by Mann in Science in 2005, but has not been formally published or described by Shady.) The exact use of quipu in this and later Andean cultures has been widely debated. Originally, it was believed to be a simple mnemonic technique used to record numeric information, such as a count of items bought and sold. Evidence has emerged, however, that the quipu also may have recorded logographic information in the same way writing does. Research has focused on the much larger sample of a few hundred quipu dating to Inca times. The Caral-Supe discovery remains singular and undeciphered.

Other finds at Caral-Supe have proved suggestive. While visual arts appear absent, the people may have played instrumental music: thirty-two flutes, crafted from pelican bone, have been discovered.

The oldest known depiction of the Staff God was found in 2003 on some broken gourd fragments in a burial site in the Pativilca River valley and the gourd was carbon dated to 2250 BCE. While still fragmentary, such archaeological evidence corresponds to the patterns of later Andean civilization and may indicate that Caral-Supe served as a template. Along with the specific finds, Mann highlights 
"the primacy of exchange over a wide area, the penchant for collective, festive civic work projects, [and] the high valuation of textiles and textile technology" within Norte Chico as patterns that would recur later in the Peruvian cradle of civilization."

Research 

The magnitude of the Caral-Supe discovery has generated academic controversy among researchers. The "monumental feud", as described by Archaeology, has included "public insults, a charge of plagiarism, ethics inquiries in both Peru and the United States, and complaints by Peruvian officials to the U.S. government". The lead author of the seminal paper of April 2001  was a Peruvian, Ruth Shady, with co-authors Jonathan Haas and Winifred Creamer, a married United States team; the coauthoring was reportedly suggested by Haas, in the hopes that the involvement of United States researchers would help secure funds for carbon dating as well as future research funding. Later, Shady charged the couple with plagiarism and insufficient attribution, suggesting the pair had received credit for her research, which had begun in 1994.

At issue is credit for the discovery of the civilization, naming it, and developing the theoretical models to explain it. That Shady was describing a civilization is clear in 1997 ("Los albores de la civilización en el Perú"). While locating it on the Supe River, with Caral at its center, she suggested a larger geographic base for the society: 

In 2004, Haas et al. wrote that "Our recent work in the neighboring Pativilca and Fortaleza has revealed that Caral and Aspero were but two of a much larger number of major Late Archaic sites in the Norte Chico", while noting Shady only in footnotes. Attribution of this type is what has angered Shady and her supporters. Shady's position has been hampered by a lack of funding for archaeological research in her native Peru, as well as the media advantages of North American researchers in disputes of this type.

Haas and Creamer were cleared of the plagiarism charge by their institutions. The science advisory council of the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History rebuked Haas for press releases and web pages that gave too little credit to Shady and inflated the American couple's role as discoverers. As of 2005, the dispute remains heated. Scholars have concerns that it could make it more difficult for United States archaeologists to gain permission to work in Peru.

See also 

 Andean preceramic
 Iperú, Peru tourist information
 List of Norte Chico archaeological sites
 Supe Puerto

Notes

References

Further reading

External links 

 Caral-Supe at Google Maps
 Northern Illinois University press kit photos
 Press kit photos and video of Caral

 
4th-millennium BC establishments
2nd-millennium BC disestablishments
Andean civilizations
Andean preceramic
Archaeology of Peru
Indigenous peoples in Peru
Pre-Columbian cultures
Mehmed Âtıf Hoca () was an Islamist. He was born in the village of Toyhane, in the district of Bayat, Çorum Province, in the Ottoman Empire (present-day Turkey) and went to school there. After a couple of years as a imam in İskilip (hence "İskilipli" meaning "from İskilip") in 1893 he went to Istanbul to continue his education, first at a madrasah and from 1902 at Darü'l-fünun Faculty of Divinity. He graduated in 1903 and took a job teaching as Ders-i Amm (Ulama), at the madrasah in the Fatih Mosque, Istanbul. He was later arrested and jailed several times, but freed. He and Mustafa Sabri were the founding members of Cemiyet-i Müderrisin, an Islamic group that supported the government of Damat Ferid Pasha and advocated the British mandate for Turkey and the Greek invasion of Turkey. They were fiercely against the national government in Ankara which led the Turks to the Turkish War of Independence.

In 1924, before the westernization movement in Turkey, he wrote a book titled Frenk Mukallitliği ve Şapka (Westernization and the [European] Hat). In it he advocated Sharia law and opposed what he called western influences, such as "Alcohol, Prostitution, Theater, Dance" and the "western hat". From his viewpoint, the western hat was a symbol of the infidels, and wearing a hat would make Muslims lose their Islamic identity. After the passing of "The Hat Act" on 25 November 1925, which ordered that no other headgear except the western hat was allowed thus banning wearing the fez; violent rebellion broke out in some provinces, which the government suppressed.

He was arrested and sent to Ankara on 26 December 1925, where he stood trial on 26 January 1926. The prosecutor demanded three years imprisonment, but the court postponed the trial to the next day. The next day, the Hoca declared that he no longer desired to defend himself. He was sentenced to death and hanged on 4 February 1926.

Views on Western civilization
In his book Medeniyet-i Şer'iyye ve Terakkiyat-ı Diniyye (The Civilization of the Sharia and Religious Progress), he presents his views on what is beneficial and what is not in Western civilization:Materially and spiritually, the Western civilization has two aspects, one of which is useful and one of which is harmful to humanity. The hadiths of our Prophet clearly allow and encourage the adoption of useful innovations of Western civilization by Muslims: “If one person invents something beautiful and this invention becomes useful to the people, this inventor would be blessed by God until the Day of Judgment," and, “You (people) know better the worldly matters.“ These hadiths clearly show that the Islamic religion does not forbid good and utilitarian inventions that will benefit the Muslim community and ensure its progress. The use of all tools and skills – from the sewing needle to railroads, artillery, iron-clad warships and dreadnoughts, airplanes, and instruments of communication, land and sea trade, various arts and crafts, factories, agricultural tools and any other useful invention – is condoned and recommended in Islam. To prepare the ground for these inventions, Islam in fact orders the education of every individual, male and female. As understood from the works of European sociologist Gustave Le Bon, industry, like other aspects of civilization, was first instituted six or seven thousand years ago in Asia by the Assyrians, later moving to Egypt. The development of early Greek art is due to the influence of the civilizations of the Tigris and the Nile. Thanks to this favorable attitude towards science and scholarship, Muslims adopted the scientific discoveries of the earlier civilizations of Egypt and Greece, and later surpassed these civilizations by excelling in the arts and sciences.

As a consequence of crusades to Muslim countries, [European] Crusaders brought Islamic arts to Europe. This prepared the ground for the rise and blossoming of European art. Europeans marvelled at the radiant splendor of the Andalusian civilization in Iberia [Spain and Portugal]. In these ages [early Middle Ages], western Europeans had languished in a miserable condition, living in savagery, ignorance, and darkness. The origins of Western civilization are, therefore, found in Eastern civilization.

Despite this, Islam inaugurated a new era for the development of the useful aspects of progress and created a wonderful civilization. One could wonder why today's Muslims are deprived of these high values. We believe that the most obvious answer is because they neglected one of the important requirements of the Muslim religion: to work in order to earn. Muslims could benefit from their religion only by living their life, conducting their business and acting according to the high principles of Islam and applying them faithfully. If Muslims keep these principles only in books and other documents and do not actually apply them to their daily life, they cannot benefit from them. The Prophet Muhammad said: “some knowledge is like ignorance.“ Knowledge that is not put into practice is no different from the lack of knowledge. The learned person who does not use this knowledge cannot distance himself from the common people. It is clear that the Islamic religion allows and encourages the good and beneficial aspects of Western civilization, and forbids the decadent, immoral, vice-prone and ugly side of it (such as unbelief [atheism], oppression, prostitution, gambling, drinking alcohol, or dancing). Islam prohibits the immoral aspects of Western civilization, such as bars, theatres, brothels and gambling dens. Therefore, it is strictly forbidden in Islam to imitate the Western lifestyle and live like non-Muslims. In fact, Western civilization is far from being a model civilization for humanity to adopt, since it does not take an interest in the moral aspects and spiritual happiness of humanity, but focuses only on material gains and encourages mankind's animal instincts.

Memorial and film 
There is a small memorial in İskilip and in 1993 a film about him, İskilipli Atıf Hoca / Kelebekler Sonsuza Uçar (Turkish), was released.

References

External links

1875 births
1926 deaths
People from İskilip
Turkish Sunni Muslim scholars of Islam
Turkish Islamists
Executed Turkish people
People executed by Turkey by hanging
20th-century executions by Turkey An isotropic beacon is a hypothetical type of transmission beacon that emits a uniform EM signal in all directions for the purposes of communication with extraterrestrial intelligence.

Isotropic beacons and their relation to SETI 
An isotropic beacon can be any transmitter that emits a uniform electromagnetic field. However, the term is most commonly used to describe a transmitter used by a civilization to call attention to itself over interstellar distances to extraterrestrial creatures. The isotropic beacon uses the Kardashev scale. The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it is able to use. The measure was proposed by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev in 1964. The Kardashev scale has three designated categories, which are a Type I civilization, also called a planetary civilization, that can use and store all of the energy available on its planet. A Type II civilization, also called a stellar civilization, can use and control energy at the scale of its planetary system. A Type III civilization, also called a galactic civilization, can control energy at the scale of its entire host galaxy.  Project Cyclops is and was one of the first looks at the theoretical framework of what it would take to create such a device.

References 

Exploratory engineering
Hypothetical astronomical objects
Search for extraterrestrial intelligence
Astronomy projects
Hypothetical technology