Gobekli Tepe
Want to know more?
Check out this site. It's pretty neat in that it's the oldest megalithic structure known on Earth and it... Well I'll let the site explain.
Welcome to the presentation of the The World’s First Temple, Gobeklitepe … a pre-historic site, about 15 km away from the city of Sanliurfa, Southeastern Turkiye. What makes Gobeklitepe unique in its class is the date it was built, which is roughly twelve thousand years ago, circa 10,000 BC.
Archaeologically categorised as a site of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Period (c. 9600–7300 BC) Göbeklitepe is a series of mainly circular and oval-shaped structures set on the top of a hill. Excavations began in 1995 by Prof. Klaus Schmidt with the help of the German Archeological Institute. There is archelological proof that these installations were not used for domestic use, but predominantly for ritual or religous purposes. Subsequently it became apparent that Gobeklitepe consists of not only one, but many of such stone age temples. Furthermore, both excavations and geo magnetic results revealed that there are at least 20 installations, which in archeological terms can be called a temple. Based on what has been unearthed so far, the pattern principle seems to be that there are two huge monumental pillars in the center of each installation, surrounded by enclosures and walls, featuring more pillars in those set-ups.
All pillars are T-shaped with heights changing from 3 to 6 meters. Archeologists interpret those T-shapes as stylized human beings, mainly because of the depiction of human extremities that appear on some of the pillars. What also appears on these mystical rock statues, are carvings of animals as well as abstract symbols, sometimes picturing a combination of scenes.
Foxes, snakes, wild boars, cranes, wild ducks are most common. Most of these were carved into the flat surfaces of these pillars. Then again, we also come across some three-dimensional sculptures, in shape of a predator depicting a lion, descending on the side of a T-pillar.
The unique method used for the preservation of Gobeklitepe has really been the key to the survival of this amazing site. Whoever built this magnificent monument, made sure of its survival along thousands of years, by simply backfilling the various sites and burying them deep under, by using an incredible amount of material and all these led to an excellent preservation.
Isnt it a fascinating site. It really sparks a question of how much is burried.
Gobeklitepe is yet another mounded structure. Said to be buried by hand. WTF & Y?
My area in Nth Queenland has Oopart and ancient stories sites that are stepped in shape but severey over grown by jungle. Location kept secret as noone wants to epeat what happend at Gympie Pyramid furter south..that tell of a long trade history with Egypt. More coming to light each week.
Stories also of tribes suviving massive tidal waves by going to the caves. And living underground until the turmoil ceased.
Was GőbekliTepe buried to protect the site? Maybe it was built and covered with a roof and caved in!? 🤔or Was it a Victors attepmt to coverup history? 🤔 or was it buried in mourning?😣
Built in a county littered with Ancient underground cities. 🤔
Was it built to be underground? And crumbled
They have only escavated a tiny portion of the whole complex! I really wanna go there and dig!
Some of the artworks are perplexing, other wow, ..
with the same markings as an Indigenous Australian Medicine mans ancient identifying body paint... Colin Hayter explained the markings....
ill fetch quote from him...
"Old fella is just that last generation of Elders these last several decades.
North Australia this one.
His symbols there are unique to only him.
He holds the knowledge.
The two U’s are the symbol for.
ORIGINAL MAN.
Numeric idio gram writing of Australia’s traditionals.
It’s the Number Ten.
Two people seen there.
Him and the listener.
Between them lays a single message stick.
It’s on those we hold in notches telling the stories.
Being only one.
Means too. The Number One again in traditional writing.
It’s the idio gram ‘MAAL’ The Creator.
Making for a more total telling of these are the creators informations he is teaching.
This is a true account of the image here.
His people still survived into modern day. " Colin Hayter
He is highly reguarded by the Indigenous Community. And recommended by the highest of Elders. He is a story teller who reads pictographs and ancient art.
Just a portion of his response to who is this medicine man and why did King Uluru share it with me...and why are they all going missing.... maybe displaced by fires, fishy fires on kangaroo island..
I cant add the pic here ill try again diff device...
I am going too meet one.😁 soon thx to a new conversation sparked by BP.
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I don't know why my images aren't uploading( maybe because i didn't add text?) PLZ forgive if there are double ups, at least i'm back on a PC now ill work it out 😀
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This Archaeological Site Is Rewriting Our Entire Understanding of Human History
Göbekli Tepe just doesn’t make sense. The neolithic archaeological ruins were first uncovered in the '60s, but their significance wasn’t truly realized until 1994. The site is located in southeastern Turkey - although it predates the establishment of the country by a significant amount of time. In fact, Göbekli Tepe is so old and complex that it is rewriting our understanding of not just Turkish history, but the entire history of humanity. Based on everything we know about how modern civilization got its start, Göbekli Tepe should not exist. However, exist it does, and has for nearly 12,000 years.
Archaeological study of Göbekli Tepe has been going on for quite some time—even though the modern political climate in Turkey has made matters slightly more difficult. Some sections are even in the process of being restored. The site has become a tourist attraction and a source of local pride, and there are plenty of good reasons for that. Göbekli Tepe is, after all, the oldest site of significance created by human beings, and that makes it one of the most important archaeological discoveries ever made.
Photo: null/Wikimedia Commons/CC-BY
Göbekli Tepe is notable for multiple reasons, but they all tie back in to its excessive ancientness. The construction at Göbekli Tepe dates back almost 12,000 years, placing it in a time period that is generally considered to be pre-civilization. It was built right around the same time that the last ice age ended. Göbekli Tepe then went on to be an active civilization for nearly three millennia before being abandoned under mysterious circumstances around 9,000 years ago.
Göbekli Tepe is a site that practically begs for archaeological study. The structures that make up the site are amazingly well-preserved, allowing archaeologists to study them in something similar to their original state. Part of the reason for the remarkable preservation of Göbekli Tepe is due to the climate in Turkey, but another major factor is the fact that many of the temple sites appear to have been backfilled before being abandoned.
This allowed the structures to remain protected from the elements as the centuries wore on, preserving their history for modern humans to discover.
One of the best ways to comprehend just how ancient Göbekli Tepe is, is to compare it to other things that are considered incredibly ancient. Göbekli Tepe predates Stonehenge, one of the most famous prehistoric construction feats in human history, by over 6,000 years. The site predates the era of Sumer, considered one of the earliest true civilizations, and the invention of writing, by a similar, 6,000-ish year margin.
To really put things in perspective, there was about as much time between the construction of Göbekli Tepe and the construction of Stonehenge as there was between the construction of Stonehenge and today.
The fact that Göbekli Tepe is so old isn’t the only significant thing about it. The skilled architectural style seen in the construction of its many “temples” is seriously impressive, and would be in any era. The combination of the site’s age and construction quality, however, is what makes it such an earth-shaking revelation for the archaeological world. The craftsmanship seen at Göbekli Tepe is thousands of years ahead of its time, and dates back to long before such construction should have been possible.
The manpower, engineering, and project managing required for such an endeavor all seem unfeasible, given where human civilization was understood to be at the time. The very existence of Göbekli Tepe has forced archaeologists to re-think the dawn of civilization.
The sheer effort required to construct Göbekli Tepe made it a gigantic construction project even by modern standards. Hundreds of people would have been needed to erect the massive temples, and it would have taken them quite awhile, requiring the kind of social stability that just wasn’t expected of human life at that time. It also would have required some serious organization, which shouldn’t have been possible without a sophisticated social structure already in place. Humankind may, unfortunately, never know who the brilliant minds behind Göbekli Tepe actually were.
The potentially world-changing discovery of Göbekli Tepe actually first occurred back in the ‘60s, but nobody recognized its significance at the time. In fact, it was wrongly assessed as being a “medieval graveyard,” and was subsequently ignored for half a century due to its apparent lack of potential. It was only when the site was “rediscovered” in 1994 that Göbekli Tepe’s true significance and most impressive traits - like its age, size, and construction quality - would be fully appreciated.
Klaus Schmidt, a German archaeologist, was the individual who decided to give it another look. Analysis of the site has been going on ever since, but archaeologists remain baffled by it to a large degree.
Most archaeologists believe that Göbekli Tepe was intended to be some sort of religious structure, although some also believe it may have been a burial site. This makes Göbekli Tepe the world’s oldest temple, a title it holds by quite a large margin. That the very first religious construction in the world that we know of is such a massive and elaborate creation seems strange, and only adds to the mystique of the site. The further study of Göbekli Tepe may teach us quite a bit about the origins of all human belief systems.
At the center of the construction of the various temples in Göbekli Tepe are a series of massive pillars topped with heavy stone blocks. The pillars themselves weigh tens of tons, with estimates ranging between 20 and 60 tons - which would have made even bringing them to the central location a Herculean task. That’s to say nothing of placing large stone blocks on top of them.
The blocks themselves weigh up to ten tons, leaving archaeologists scratching their heads as to exactly how the ancient engineers building Göbekli Tepe got the job done.
The pillars, along with their topstones, that make up the temples of Göbekli Tepe might be hiding a design secret - and it’s one that some archaeologists think they have cracked. Some of the stone blocks on top of the pillars have what appear to be human faces carved into them, leading some to theorize that the pillars are actually stylized depictions of human beings.
And, if this is correct, then the covering of the human form with depictions of animals might be a clue into the belief system of the people who constructed Göbekli Tepe.
The stones that make up the Göbekli Tepe temples are impressive both in their size and in the way that they were put together. However, many of the stones have significant artistic value as well. Most of the central pillars are decorated with elaborate drawings of animals, and some even have intricate animal statues carved right onto the pillar’s surface.
Even this quality of art appears to be ahead of its time, and it is certainly a step up from more common cave paintings.
At first, the site of Göbekli Tepe was thought to be a singular temple construction. However, over time, it has been discovered that the site is actually quite large and completely covered with temples. It seemed that everywhere archaeologists dug, another temple popped up. There are more than 20 individual sites that have been uncovered, each of them constructed with a similar design, but with slightly differing qualities.
Some think that the large number of sites suggests some sort of trial-and-error process. On the other hand, the people who built the temples might have just felt the need to construct a couple dozen of them!
Humanity was only able to leave behind a life of hunting and gathering for food when the last major ice age ended. Before that, food was too scarce to allow humans to live anything but a semi-nomadic lifestyle. That’s what makes the fact that Göbekli Tepe was constructed at the time of, or before, the end of the last ice age so remarkable. Mankind was almost certainly still hunting and gathering at that time, which means that a bunch of hunter-gatherers were somehow organized and stable enough to build the massive structures at Göbekli Tepe.
The discovery of Göbekli Tepe has the potential to change much of our understanding of the dawn of civilization, and especially the role that agriculture played. It had previously been assumed that permanent human settlements first arose when humanity gained the ability to farm - which allowed them to live a more stable life than hunting and gathering did. However, the construction of Göbekli Tepe predates the development of agricultural practices by quite some time, suggesting that some humans had created permanent settlements long before they started farming.
One of the most infamous programs on the History Channel is Ancient Aliens - a show that posits about different pieces of “evidence” that prove aliens interfered in humanity’s past. For obvious reasons, Göbekli Tepe is a favorite topic for the Ancient Aliens crew to discuss. Since the construction at Göbekli Tepe is so far ahead of its time, some would have you believe that the only possible answer to the mystery is that extraterrestrial beings had a hand in building it.
Of course, the people on Ancient Aliens feel the same way about every significant advancement in human history.
Göbekli Tepe has quickly become one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world, and that’s led to a decision to restore a portion of it. This will help draw in more tourists, as well as give a clearer picture of what the site would have looked like in its prime. Turkey’s modern political climate suggests that it might not be the best place to visit for most Westerners for now, but it should still be on any history fan’s bucket list. Few discoveries have proven more important to our overall understanding of human history than Göbekli Tepe.
Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?
Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years, Turkey’s stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization
NOVEMBER 2008
Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple.
"Guten Morgen," he says at 5:20 a.m. when his van picks me up at my hotel in Urfa. Thirty minutes later, the van reaches the foot of a grassy hill and parks next to strands of barbed wire. We follow a knot of workmen up the hill to rectangular pits shaded by a corrugated steel roof—the main excavation site. In the pits, standing stones, or pillars, are arranged in circles. Beyond, on the hillside, are four other rings of partially excavated pillars. Each ring has a roughly similar layout: in the center are two large stone T-shaped pillars encircled by slightly smaller stones facing inward. The tallest pillars tower 16 feet and, Schmidt says, weigh between seven and ten tons. As we walk among them, I see that some are blank, while others are elaborately carved: foxes, lions, scorpions and vultures abound, twisting and crawling on the pillars' broad sides.
Schmidt points to the great stone rings, one of them 65 feet across. "This is the first human-built holy place," he says.
From this perch 1,000 feet above the valley, we can see to the horizon in nearly every direction. Schmidt, 53, asks me to imagine what the landscape would have looked like 11,000 years ago, before centuries of intensive farming and settlement turned it into the nearly featureless brown expanse it is today.
Prehistoric people would have gazed upon herds of gazelle and other wild animals; gently flowing rivers, which attracted migrating geese and ducks; fruit and nut trees; and rippling fields of wild barley and wild wheat varieties such as emmer and einkorn. "This area was like a paradise," says Schmidt, a member of the German Archaeological Institute. Indeed, Gobekli Tepe sits at the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent—an arc of mild climate and arable land from the Persian Gulf to present-day Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Egypt—and would have attracted hunter-gatherers from Africa and the Levant. And partly because Schmidt has found no evidence that people permanently resided on the summit of Gobekli Tepe itself, he believes this was a place of worship on an unprecedented scale—humanity's first "cathedral on a hill."
With the sun higher in the sky, Schmidt ties a white scarf around his balding head, turban-style, and deftly picks his way down the hill among the relics. In rapid-fire German he explains that he has mapped the entire summit using ground-penetrating radar and geomagnetic surveys, charting where at least 16 other megalith rings remain buried across 22 acres. The one-acre excavation covers less than 5 percent of the site. He says archaeologists could dig here for another 50 years and barely scratch the surface.
Gobekli Tepe was first examined—and dismissed—by University of Chicago and Istanbul University anthropologists in the 1960s. As part of a sweeping survey of the region, they visited the hill, saw some broken slabs of limestone and assumed the mound was nothing more than an abandoned medieval cemetery. In 1994, Schmidt was working on his own survey of prehistoric sites in the region. After reading a brief mention of the stone-littered hilltop in the University of Chicago researchers' report, he decided to go there himself. From the moment he first saw it, he knew the place was extraordinary.
Unlike the stark plateaus nearby, Gobekli Tepe (the name means "belly hill" in Turkish) has a gently rounded top that rises 50 feet above the surrounding landscape. To Schmidt's eye, the shape stood out. "Only man could have created something like this," he says. "It was clear right away this was a gigantic Stone Age site." The broken pieces of limestone that earlier surveyors had mistaken for gravestones suddenly took on a different meaning.
Schmidt returned a year later with five colleagues and they uncovered the first megaliths, a few buried so close to the surface they were scarred by plows. As the archaeologists dug deeper, they unearthed pillars arranged in circles. Schmidt's team, however, found none of the telltale signs of a settlement: no cooking hearths, houses or trash pits, and none of the clay fertility figurines that litter nearby sites of about the same age. The archaeologists did find evidence of tool use, including stone hammers and blades. And because those artifacts closely resemble others from nearby sites previously carbon-dated to about 9000 B.C., Schmidt and co-workers estimate that Gobekli Tepe's stone structures are the same age. Limited carbon dating undertaken by Schmidt at the site confirms this assessment.
The way Schmidt sees it, Gobekli Tepe's sloping, rocky ground is a stonecutter's dream. Even without metal chisels or hammers, prehistoric masons wielding flint tools could have chipped away at softer limestone outcrops, shaping them into pillars on the spot before carrying them a few hundred yards to the summit and lifting them upright. Then, Schmidt says, once the stone rings were finished, the ancient builders covered them over with dirt. Eventually, they placed another ring nearby or on top of the old one. Over centuries, these layers created the hilltop.
Today, Schmidt oversees a team of more than a dozen German archaeologists, 50 local laborers and a steady stream of enthusiastic students. He typically excavates at the site for two months in the spring and two in the fall. (Summer temperatures reach 115 degrees, too hot to dig; in the winter the area is deluged by rain.) In 1995, he bought a traditional Ottoman house with a courtyard in Urfa, a city of nearly a half-million people, to use as a base of operations.
On the day I visit, a bespectacled Belgian man sits at one end of a long table in front of a pile of bones. Joris Peters, an archaeozoologist from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, specializes in the analysis of animal remains. Since 1998, he has examined more than 100,000 bone fragments from Gobekli Tepe. Peters has often found cut marks and splintered edges on them—signs that the animals from which they came were butchered and cooked. The bones, stored in dozens of plastic crates stacked in a storeroom at the house, are the best clue to how people who created Gobekli Tepe lived. Peters has identified tens of thousands of gazelle bones, which make up more than 60 percent of the total, plus those of other wild game such as boar, sheep and red deer. He's also found bones of a dozen different bird species, including vultures, cranes, ducks and geese. "The first year, we went through 15,000 pieces of animal bone, all of them wild. It was pretty clear we were dealing with a hunter-gatherer site," Peters says. "It's been the same every year since." The abundant remnants of wild game indicate that the people who lived here had not yet domesticated animals or farmed.
But, Peters and Schmidt say, Gobekli Tepe's builders were on the verge of a major change in how they lived, thanks to an environment that held the raw materials for farming. "They had wild sheep, wild grains that could be domesticated—and the people with the potential to do it," Schmidt says. In fact, research at other sites in the region has shown that within 1,000 years of Gobekli Tepe's construction, settlers had corralled sheep, cattle and pigs. And, at a prehistoric village just 20 miles away, geneticists found evidence of the world's oldest domesticated strains of wheat; radiocarbon dating indicates agriculture developed there around 10,500 years ago, or just five centuries after Gobekli Tepe's construction.
To Schmidt and others, these new findings suggest a novel theory of civilization. Scholars have long believed that only after people learned to farm and live in settled communities did they have the time, organization and resources to construct temples and support complicated social structures. But Schmidt argues it was the other way around: the extensive, coordinated effort to build the monoliths literally laid the groundwork for the development of complex societies.
The immensity of the undertaking at Gobekli Tepe reinforces that view. Schmidt says the monuments could not have been built by ragged bands of hunter-gatherers. To carve, erect and bury rings of seven-ton stone pillars would have required hundreds of workers, all needing to be fed and housed. Hence the eventual emergence of settled communities in the area around 10,000 years ago. "This shows sociocultural changes come first, agriculture comes later," says Stanford University archaeologist Ian Hodder, who excavated Catalhoyuk, a prehistoric settlement 300 miles from Gobekli Tepe. "You can make a good case this area is the real origin of complex Neolithic societies."
What was so important to these early people that they gathered to build (and bury) the stone rings? The gulf that separates us from Gobekli Tepe's builders is almost unimaginable. Indeed, though I stood among the looming megaliths eager to take in their meaning, they didn't speak to me. They were utterly foreign, placed there by people who saw the world in a way I will never comprehend. There are no sources to explain what the symbols might mean. Schmidt agrees. "We're 6,000 years before the invention of writing here," he says.
"There's more time between Gobekli Tepe and the Sumerian clay tablets [etched in 3300 B.C.] than from Sumer to today," says Gary Rollefson, an archaeologist at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, who is familiar with Schmidt's work. "Trying to pick out symbolism from prehistoric context is an exercise in futility."
Still, archaeologists have their theories—evidence, perhaps, of the irresistible human urge to explain the unexplainable. The surprising lack of evidence that people lived right there, researchers say, argues against its use as a settlement or even a place where, for instance, clan leaders gathered. Hodder is fascinated that Gobekli Tepe's pillar carvings are dominated not by edible prey like deer and cattle but by menacing creatures such as lions, spiders, snakes and scorpions. "It's a scary, fantastic world of nasty-looking beasts," he muses. While later cultures were more concerned with farming and fertility, he suggests, perhaps these hunters were trying to master their fears by building this complex, which is a good distance from where they lived.
Danielle Stordeur, an archaeologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in France, emphasizes the significance of the vulture carvings. Some cultures have long believed the high-flying carrion birds transported the flesh of the dead up to the heavens. Stordeur has found similar symbols at sites from the same era as Gobekli Tepe just 50 miles away in Syria. "You can really see it's the same culture," she says. "All the most important symbols are the same."
For his part, Schmidt is certain the secret is right beneath his feet. Over the years, his team has found fragments of human bone in the layers of dirt that filled the complex. Deep test pits have shown that the floors of the rings are made of hardened limestone. Schmidt is betting that beneath the floors he'll find the structures' true purpose: a final resting place for a society of hunters.
Perhaps, Schmidt says, the site was a burial ground or the center of a death cult, the dead laid out on the hillside among the stylized gods and spirits of the afterlife. If so, Gobekli Tepe's location was no accident. "From here the dead are looking out at the ideal view," Schmidt says as the sun casts long shadows over the half-buried pillars. "They're looking out over a hunter's dream."
A Monumental Cover Up? Why did Gobekli Tepe End Up in the Dirt?
In the farmlands of southeastern Turkey there is a hill that rises out of the landscape. Unlike the surrounding plateaus, it has a gentle slope like a mound. At its top is a depression which looks like a belly button, hence the name Gobekli Tepe which means “potbelly hill.” Potbelly Hill looks unnatural to the landscape and it is. The depression has been found to be artificial by archaeologists. It is in fact a monumental structure complete with T-shaped pillars and artwork consisting of a variety of predator and prey animals. It was built around 9,000 BC, well before the rise of agriculture and it is this age that has brought its fame, as archaeologists believe that it represents the earliest temple in the world. The temple was mysteriously abandoned around 8,000 BC and filled in with dirt containing scattered human bones. One of the many mysteries regarding the site is why it was abandoned and whether it was buried by nature or by humans.
Massive megaliths of Enclosure D. Credit: Alistair Coombs
The ‘World’s Oldest Temple’ Conclusion
When the site was first surveyed by archaeologists from Istanbul, it was thought to be little more than an abandoned Medieval cemetery. In 1994, the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt re-examined the site and found that it was more extraordinary. He discovered a series of limestone pillars in a circle containing artistic depictions of lions, bulls, spiders, scorpions, snakes, gazelles, and donkeys among other creatures. He also found an abundance of stone tools and crushed bones from animals and humans. Based on comparison between artifacts at the site and artifacts found at other sites with known radiocarbon dates, he determined that it was built during the late Paleolithic, when the region was still inhabited by hunter-gatherers.
During the excavation, Schmidt and his collaborators did not find any evidence of regular habitation. There were no hearths, trash pits or other features indicating that people were living there long-term. Based on this evidence, he and other archaeologists have concluded that the site was not a regular habitation site but that it had a special, perhaps religious function. Schmidt in fact believes it was a temple.
- The Secret of Gobekli Tepe: Cosmic Equinox and Sacred Marriage - Part 1
- Göbekli Tepe Shamans and their Cosmic Symbols – Part I
- The Vulture Stone of Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Pictogram?
The whole area was filled with stones and dirt ( CC BY-SA 3.0 )
The Pre-Agriculture Temple Anomaly
If it is a temple, it is a very interesting site because it appears to go against the archaeological convention that temples and other monumental structures were built after the rise of agriculture. According to archaeological consensus, hunter-gatherer societies did not have the time and resources to build monumental structures. Temples, palaces, and similar institutions did not appear until after the rise of agriculture when a food surplus allowed enough people to leave food production and take to other full-time professions such as construction, masonry, and priesthood.
The ‘Vulture-Stone’. Credit: Alistair Coombs
The age of Gobekli Tepe suggests that agriculture is not required for the emergence of complex societies. Archaeologists Klaus Schmidt and Ian Hodder even go as far as to say that “all our theories are wrong.” Hodder and Schmidt suggest that rather than social complexity being a response to a change in subsistence patterns (ie. foraging to farming), subsistence patterns could have changed to accommodate emerging social complexity. The argument goes that people wanted to build temples, so they eventually developed agriculture to feed the builders.
Besides the fact that this is difficult to prove scientifically, since we can’t get inside the heads of the people who built the Gobleki Tepe complex, the suggestion of there being temples before agriculture might not be such a radical step for archaeology as the above scholars suppose. Archaeologists have known for decades that there were large settlements built by hunter-gatherers who harvested wild grain and hunted wild sheep, goats, and gazelles at places such as Jericho and Ain Ghazal. It has been proposed that these settlements were possible because of the extraordinary abundance of the Fertile Crescent during the late Paleolithic. There was enough wild grain and game that the food surplus necessary to facilitate social complexity could be created without agriculture.
Golbekli Tepe, Stone pillar with animal relief ( CC BY SA 3.0 )
This is not to say that human ideas could not have played a greater role than previously believed in the rise of civilization, but it is not necessary to completely abandon current archaeological theories regarding the relation between social complexity and subsistence patterns.
Why Was Gobekli Tepe Abandoned and Buried?
If we accept the argument that the area was some kind of religious center, it seems likely to have been abandoned due to a change in beliefs. For hitherto unfathomable changes in thinking, the monuments had lost their relevance.
The next mystery is why the entire site was buried. It is possible that the site was buried naturally after being abandoned but its position makes this unlikely. Sediment does not usually collect on hilltops, which tend to be zones of erosion not deposition. As a result, it is likely that the monuments atop Gobleki Tepe were intentionally buried. Having determined this, the tricky question of why remains, for which explanations are mainly theoretical.
- The Mysterious Gobekli Tepe in Turkey
- Evidence of the Earliest ‘Skull Cult’ Activity: Drilled and Carved Skulls Found at the World’s Oldest Temple
- World's oldest temple, Göbekli Tepe, built to worship Sirius?
All of the temple areas were buried ( CC BY-SA 3.0 )
It is possible that it was buried to be preserved for future generations. It may also have been buried because a new religion emerged in the area and the sanctuary of an old religion needed to be destroyed. Another reason might have been because after a while, it was considered a taboo place.
Another possible reason that seems sensible if the site was a religious sanctuary, is that the burial was a part of some sort of de-sanctification process. There are examples in many cultures where objects or buildings considered to have supernatural or divine power must be destroyed or otherwise neutralized if they are no longer in use. In many Christian traditions, the alter of a church that is about to be abandoned or repurposed must be ritually de-sanctified lest someone accidentally use a sacred table for mundane use and be guilty of sacrilege.
Drawing Some Comparisons
In the end, searching for answers concerning motives and reasons from such an ancient time involves a great deal of speculation, since we cannot go back in time and probe the perpetrators. Where we might find some firmer ground is by using our knowledge of de-sanctification processes in known cultures such as the Olmec culture or Medieval Christendom. By looking at cultures that we know well and have written records to inform us, we might identify telling similarities.
A possible comparison of this de-sanctification might be made with the case of intentionally mutilated and buried Olmec heads. Many archaeologists who study the Olmec believe that the giant stone heads that they built served a religious function such as protecting a village or city from harm. Interestingly, many Olmec Heads have been found defaced and buried a good distance away from Olmec settlements.
A Olmec Colossal Head found buried and defaced near San Lorenzo, Mexcico (Pre- 900 BC) ( CC BY 2.0 )
One suggested reason for their defacement and burial was to deactivate the power in them. If they were not disenchanted they might be dangerous to someone who unwarily stumbled upon them without knowing the power they held. It would be similar someone accidentally stepping into the Holy of Holies in the ancient Jewish Temple.
In the same way, Gobekli Tepe may have been considered so sacred that it was thought necessary to bury it so that no one accidentally did something that would be sacrilegious to whatever spirits, gods, or cosmic powers dwelt there.
If the cross-cultural comparison holds then this could be a good explanation but ultimately, without further proof, the speculation on the monumental cover-up continues.
Top image: Stone reliefs found at Göbekli Tepe. Credit: Vincent J Musi/National Geographic
The site seems to have been buried shortly after construction, in geologic terms. The lack of erosion has been remarke upon.
There are caves in France that have been dated to over 30,000 years old that bear a lot of similarity with the artwork in these few pictures shown. Lots of semi-fantastical animals posturing in strange ways, as well as humanlike figures. But it also could nearly be called a standing stone site like Stonehenge.
According to Bernie Taylor, the cave art appears to be depicting a sort of heroes journey through the zodiac. It would have been at once a depiction of something mystical, as well as a map of the heavens.
This site could be something similar. A ritual (perhaps initiation) site, and a physical representation of the universe.
It's also worth asking how many different ways and what kinds of information could be stored there.
I love this discussion. We are a species with amnesia. It's ever so apparent worldwide. There must have been several advanced civilizations before us. Why are we so egotistical? To think everyone before us had to be dumber. Ridiculous. All the myths of the Gods who came down from the sky. Was that worldwide insanity? Did they all eat bad berries? Hell no. Where did we get the idea we are the only intelligent life in the universe? OMG. First of all mythology could teach us if we would listen. I mean really listen intelligently. Why do all the cultures speak of a return? Are we listening? Why can't we except the paranormal as part of normal? How about if they are telepathic is that why we can't find them with all our massive radio antennas? If you haven't noticed I don't give answers only questions. I don't have the answers but will never stop looking. To end with all these great stone monuments are information left for us to understand what they knew. We need to listen
- A friend Vanessa Barklay shares a bit of insight about it she said it was ok to copy her posts over here. Will try n get her to come into share more...
This was posted late 2018
Gobekli Tepe in Turkey is right near ISIL in militant Syria areas but it’s a designated protected area, not that that has stopped them in the past...hopefully the archaeology of this most ancient place can continue regardless of their insane wars. Built in hunter-gatherer times, circa 9600BC, the earliest structure of its kind, called a Temple, it’s an enigma of today’s archaeological world. Creatures abound on the T-shaped pillars, many in relief, showing advanced skills, with two large pillars as seen in this picture adorning the centre of each enclosure with arms and loincloths etched on some. Maybe a precursor to the Pillars of Heracles, it’s odd the constellation of Heracles was sitting on the Pole Star position at the time. 💕
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10212918712551573&id=1503226587&sfnsn=mo
