Göbekli Tepe Temple in Turkey Predates the Pyramids of Giza
Just caught news of this temple from Newsweek and thought I’d share. I don’t know much about it, in fact this is the first time I read about it. But I am asking my friend and colleague in Turkey about it… so I’ll fill you in with any additional details as they come. The Newsweek article portrays this as a newly discovered finding but in fact research and excavations started in 1994. 
Bottom line, it is 11,500 years old. g That’s 7,000 years before the Pyramids of Giza and 6,000 years before Stonehenge. I’ve posted before how some of the first evidence of animal domestication and pottery occurred in Turkey, but these sophisticated pillars were assembled before those prehistorical landmarks… in fact they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture.
Archaeologist Klaus Schmidt comments on the significance of the site,
“definitive proof that a huge ceremonial site flourished here, a “Rome of the Ice Age,” as he puts it, where hunter-gatherers met to build a complex religious community. Across the hill, he has found carved and polished circles of stone, with terrazzo flooring and double benches. All the circles feature massive T-shaped pillars that evoke the monoliths of Easter Island…
…Schmidt’s thesis is simple and bold: it was the urge to worship that brought mankind together in the very first urban conglomerations. The need to build and maintain this temple, he says, drove the builders to seek stable food sources, like grains and animals that could be domesticated, and then to settle down to guard their new way of life. The temple begat the city….
This theory reverses a standard chronology of human origins, in which primitive man went through a “Neolithic revolution” 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. In the old model, shepherds and farmers appeared first, and then created pottery, villages, cities, specialized labor, kings, writing, art, and—somewhere on the way to the airplane—organized religion.”
Check out the site on Google Maps if you wanna poke around and do some exploring on your own. Have you ever heard of the site before? If so tell me what you know, I’m curious to find out more…
This is fascinating material. I think it reinforces many previous findings that man developed far earlier than the majority of scientists are still contending to this day.
Rod Chilton
February 22, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Hi, Kambiz.
We discussed extensively Göbekli Tepe at Stonepage’s forum in 2008 and I have been re-reading that discussion now in order to recall the details and give an informed opinion.
Most important is that the dates are consistent with the earliest Neolithic: the end of the first construction phase is dated to c. 9000 BCE (9550 BP uncalibrated) and that is approximately the same as the dates for the earliest domesticates in the region (c. 11,000 years ago).
So, yes, it’s extremely old, without doubt the oldest such monumental structure known, but it’s probably already Neolithic.
I even suspect that one of the engravings represents a plough, though guess these are from the later construction period, dated to c. 8000 BCE, i.e. 1000 years after the first works.
And, btw, Urfa is part of Kurdistan. ;-)
Luis
February 23, 2010 at 1:09 am
Can you read maps Luis? Because I couldn’t find Kurdistan on any maps?
Light
August 31, 2010 at 8:09 am
Actually, you can find Kurdistan on the maps! But not as a country because of the British coloni before in Kurdistan, they erased the “land of kurds” from the map. So I think you should check this out more =)
Leon Menmi
November 7, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Sanliurfa is officially in SE Turkey, the site is a few km NE.
I think there are some interesting anomalies with this site. 1. carvings on the stones are partially hidden by the retaining wall, suggesting originally the wall was not there. 2. As props for a roof, just doesn’t ring true for me. 3. Carvings are in relief, not indented, which means the stones were larger before the carvings were done. 5. there are similar symbols to those found in Sumerian carvings. 6. As a site that was added to over time, I think we should be wary of dating it.
Very drawn to visiting there. :)
Avia/Miriam
April 18, 2011 at 11:26 am
I agree dating at this point is premature
SeleukosNicator
May 10, 2011 at 8:06 pm
Smithsonian Magazine ran a story on Gobekli Tepe in November 2008:
http://anthropology.net/2010/02/22/gobekli-tepe-temple-in-turkey-predates-the-pyramids-of-giza/#comment-16517
They put it’s age at 11,000 years old – comparable to 11,500. Fascinating site and subject. It is interesting that, as we view humanity and homo evolution and disbursement patterns, our concepts of ritual centers, monuments and temples change. The recent discovery that an enclosing ring of shrubbery once secluded Stonehenge presents us with another consideration: vegetation as well as earth, timber and stone was in use to mark ceremonial sites. I am looking forward to news of a mammoth tusk temple find!
Clark Chapin
February 23, 2010 at 5:01 am
Some other links :
http://www.archaeology.org/0811/abstracts/turkey.html
German TV :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU2qwoMfq-U z
Constans
February 23, 2010 at 1:42 pm
There’s great footage of Gobekli Tepe in the BBC series the Incredible Human Journey…..
Mags
February 26, 2010 at 1:50 am
That Newsweek article is not exactly great; it has mistakes starting from the fact that this temple complex has nothing to do with human biological evolution, but with cultural evolution; and there’s nothing strange in a temple complex that is older than the Pyramids (Eridu’s earliest temple dates from almost 3000 years before the Pyramids), but the age of this is still staggering, even if the very oldest dates for Göbekli Tepe are assumptions and not yet based on dating.
Raimo Kangasniemi
February 27, 2010 at 7:01 am
An excellent post from Reddit commenter xenofon,
Kambiz Kamrani
February 28, 2010 at 6:16 am
Agree with the above; humans have been around for a long time. A Einstein is reputed to have said if the next war is fought with nuclear weapons, the one after that will be fought with rocks.
If we can view history without the anthropoism, it seems clear that we have achieved in the past much more than we have achieved in this go-round. And it also seems clear that science knows this; what is left to understand? Well, were their any survivors of high tech? Did they get off the planet when survivability was problematic? Where did they go?
The Stupe valley outside of Lima Peru now has a 10,000 year history. Ditto the Harappan civilization in the Indus. The scraps of the Sanxingdui in southern China discovered ritually burnt and buried. The whole world is screaming re-do. Maybe it is too scary to see. Particularly since the guys who had the high tech didn’t manage to avoid the melt down. How can we, the inheritors of the world of the Second Law, do so?
katesisco
November 18, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Let’s see, you don’t have enough resources to keep a group of people together, where you have to disband every year, then rejoin each other. But you can build massive structures with elaborate carvings, all the while trying to figure out where your next meal is coming from. Then after you finish this monumental task, just for fun you bury it under tons of sand. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Nothing worth noting.
Wallace Ordoyne
December 18, 2010 at 4:31 pm
He makes some interesting comments but also says stuff that I would discuss. For example: sure that Europeans of earlier times left widespread evidences of art but that (1) has no comparison with the huge cooperative effort needed to build GT and (2) Australians Aborigines or Bushmen are counter-examples of modern peoples who had lots of artistic expressions and are still considered “backwards” or at least (more objectively) lived all the time on hunter-gathering, some still do.
So art and “civilization” are not strictly related (I’d say they are not related at all). It’s monumentalism what is related with “civilization” in the not too precise sense of being able to gather lots of people to do collaborative work, such as the one expressed at GT, the pyramids or Stonehenge.
Also I have said above that the REAL dates for GT are coincident with the earliest dates of domestication (not of dogs, which were domesticated in the UP, but of plants and livestock). So for me it’s no hunter-gatherer phenomenon nor it could ever be, because HGs can’t muster the numbers for such a feat.
I do agree that farming and herding did not begin overnight but still there was a relatively short transitional period which certainly had its heart at that area of the Zagros-Taurus mountains. When we admire GT we are probably admiring the first cooperative monument of the first farmers, after the economy already allowed them to muster large numbers of people seasonally, as can only happen in Neolithic societies.
Luis
February 28, 2010 at 6:47 am
Check out this book I recently discovered called Catastrophobia by Barbara Hand Clow- she makes the case that “Civilization” is actually wayyy older than our modern scholars will have you believe, and her arguement is pretty lucid and convincing…worth a look if you find this latest discovery interesting.
Jamila Tazewell
March 25, 2010 at 9:54 am
Göbekli Tepe appears to be the earliest known megalithic site. The interesting question to me is whether the culture that produced this site is in cultural continue with the megalithic tradition that continues until Bronze Age collapse (3200 years BP) in the Atlantic area, with the Minoan palace culture, or with the Sumerian ziggarat cultures, for example.
It wouldn’t have to be. We’ve seen these kind of structures arise independently in Central America, for example. But, if it were, that would suggest that there may be only a single pre-Indo-European cultural layer in the Neolithic.
ohwilleke
May 14, 2010 at 9:31 am
you have a valid point my friend, and I most confess I to would like to know exactly what happened to these people. It is also possible that this culture only flourished for a short time and completely died out, and has no relation to the later civilizations at all. Unfortunately it takes years to answer these questions and its hard to wait that long for the answers
SeleukosNicator
May 10, 2011 at 8:13 pm
I want to find out more.Always been interested in stuff like this. While not a student nor scholar I think this is way cool.
Ya know jus FYI to most all make these discovereies more fun and less academic,my opinion anyway.
Cheers James
jvp_solar
October 4, 2010 at 5:40 pm
…check out some of my entrys on matilda’s
gobekli blog, google, buzzard priests, and
scroll down, or, just put my name in google.
ah, for neander, try my entrys on zme science. matilda is a good site, she pooh-
poohs some of my stuff but publishes it.
she’s a good sort, also expert on haplo
groups which you have to study as it is
the key to migrations of peoples. good luck.
carlos lascoutx
October 10, 2010 at 7:58 am
I don’t know about the above, but I have used Google maps and I found 3 real pyramids in Turkey 1 half submerged on a sandy mountain side (does not look like the above).
John Cee
November 4, 2010 at 7:41 pm
…using the date 2.6k bc for saqqara, first egyptian
pyramid, and, let’s say, 2.2k bc for the mayan
2d coming of quetzalcoatl, keeping in mind the
oldest mayan date, the beginning of the 5th sun,
naui ollin, at 3.3k bc, presumibly before pyramids
and probable date for first quetzalcoatl embassy
to amerindia, what date do you have for these
turkish pyramids and where are they in turkey?
note, 1st quetzalcoatl expedition is at the
level of the solar gnomons, stonehenge and
storonway on lewis/t/lauiz(N)=daw(n) island.
i wonder if your pyramids would be older than
saqqara?
carlos lascoutx
November 5, 2010 at 2:21 pm
…wonder what gobekli’s real name was.
i know the language they were using,
there’s only one, 4waters/4rivers=nau-atl(N),
some partial form of it. belly-button hill
is its name in turkish, coined by the locals.
there are 4 circles=c/kirk/cles=churches,
and 16 more ground radar has found.
that’s 20=the basic unit of fingers and
toes used for body-counting found in the
deer calendar, whose ago began in 40k bc
euro-glaciation when tlaloc greened the
entire sahara/mideast belt, all the
way to the altai(mts)=altia(N)=altar(E).
çatal hüyuk is still to come at 7k bc,
people slowly leaving their caves,
tlaloc no longer raining, nomadism breaks
up but still no cities, so gobekli was the
intermediate stop between nomadism
and urban, horse society not harnassed
until 5k bc.
buzzard priests at gobekli. some sort of slavery
going, sheep, human sacrifices but what
predominates is blackbirds, 40% of all sacrifices
if i read it right. buzzard is the incipient writing
sign later in the tonalamatl, based on fingers
and toes 20.
they ran a hunting preserve,
must have had rules for congregation, aha,
those benches going around the churches,
that’s where the hunters sat with their catch,
then went in to make tax sacrifice?
blood religion all right.
the key may be the blackbirds,
fire worship, e.g., raven=r/l/tlatla-ven/uen-tli=
flame/tlatla-uentli/offering. well, mideast
people are fire worship, their bibles say
so: torah=to-r/l/tlatla(N)=to-/our flame/-tlatla.
tlatla is the old cave goddess, btw, her animal
the ocelotl/ocelome, who is root to Elohim(H).
the Koran=k/co-r/l/tlatla=come to the flame,
the -n is tributary. btw, tribe=tribu(sp)=
tepulli(N)=male member, tepilli(N)=female.
now for a complete wingover, say the letter,
T in your mouth=mo-h/ch/cam(m)ad/t/tl=
camatl(N)=mouth=c/g(r)am(m)ar/l/tl.
priests are in charge of the spirit and spirit
is the word. the little i know of Islam,
they are deft grammarians, text still evolving.
ok. your tongue flattens at the top of the palate
like a cross-bar then the tongue drops straight
down, writing a T, if your tongue were a pencil.
later the Islam says the body is truth=haqq=
tlaca(N)=tlatla-ca(N)=flame being/body.
now the first letter, behind T=TL(N). there’s
lots of kneeling in praying, before, during, and
after hunting. the word=Tlaza(N), which
means to throw down, also, taza(sp)=tax(E),
and forms the word t/plaza(sp) later on.
gobekli also a way-station for the nomadic,
like the caucas-us mts, which is 2 words in
nauatl: cau)htiquiza(N) and cas)xitl(N)=
make a stop/squeeze=quiza(N)=quizá(sp)=
perhaps, in the road to refresh/repair shields/
caxitl(N).
as all good things, this was Eden after all,
before the fall, people flocked to it,
it ended in drought.
a religious government of flame worship
set up, controlled by ritual and
idol=toptli(N)=t/thorp/throp/t/dorf=village
topilli(N)=top toptli ritual police.
idol=odol(basque)=(b)lood(E).
carlos lascoutx
November 13, 2010 at 5:12 pm
…noma/nomatca/nomatzinco(N)=still, always,
forever, spontaneous=nomad(E).
gobek(turk)=hub, belly dance, wild with joy=
gobekli adi(Turk)=name given child after unbilical
is cut. ok. the circles were for dance=d/t/tlatlaca=
flame being(cf., youtube, fire dance, the deer
dancing of scotland and ireland).
let’s look at the word, orgy, with letra:
ol/r-gy/ci=olgau(basque)=play,=organize(pun)
secret rites, dancing and singing=itotia(N)=
dance=itoa/itta(N)=see and say=mitotiani(N)=
dancer=naua(N)=dance giving hand over hand=
reel=rheol(OE)=r/l/teotl(N)=the-other(E)=
teo/theo/deo, also, fishing reel=rod/rood/reed=
rheod(OE)=rh/r/l/teotl/t/d=acatl(N/13 tona)=
ca(n)e(E).
gobek(turk)=navel/belly button, heart, middle,
gadabout, prostitute(sacred then, now scared).
the natick=na/4 tick/white varnish, medicine,
doctors midwifes, indians of nan-tuck-et=
nan/mother-tuck/sowing-et/atl=water,
had round brush enclosures where girls
were penned, bucks visited at night, and
everybody sorted themselves out.
gobel(turk)=mound marker, george gobel, bastard(a belly-button child).
gobelek(turk)=mushroom. aha, the phalloi
at gobekli. deer/tlaloc time was mushroom
time. they like the damp. hallucinogens,
potients=potian(OE)=potia(N)=unite=put(E).
bowl-like depressions on pillars used as mortars,
stone picks used for quarrying.
ma(N)=hunt land/water with net=matlatl(N)=
net=no-ma-tzinco(N)=my saintly net=mazatl(N)=
deer(taken by n-et/s-na-re). weaving, also feather
working which has fine netting to hold feathers together, making capes, wings for the priests. wings are a motif in old iranian stone
carvings, dances of simulated flight.
in any case, ecstasy, psychotropic and physical,
dance, song, done in rings with central dancer
too, as in fire dance(you tube). where people
were able to lift out of themselves into the great
sky of being by their use. it’s always there.
at 8k bc, the Finns had reached finland, took
over the neander bear, who descends
and ascends through the pinetree=pinaua(N)=
to redden, be ashamed, the proto-chinese are
breeding dog/pig together in compounds for
the first time, possible at gobekli too, breeding
station for animals and humans. çatal huyuk
had one, also ocelotl/cheetah=chitoni(N)=
spark dances with animals around waist.
at gobekli there would have been all sorts of
opportunity to dress up for the dance as the
mayans used to do in fantastic ways,
cf., mural bonampak. all’s connected,
the current is forever on, dance/singing may go
for days. all this implies ilpia(N)=iluicatl pia=
sky piety=skyknot=hilpan(goth)=help from
sky watching. ilpia(N)=to tie, i.e., the stars
were first charted by knotting their place on
a matrix(the beginning of weaving by neandra,
along with nets).
haqq(arab)=truth=h/th/t/tla-tlaca(N)=flame bee. our truth/troth/trow(E)=believe, =
treow(OE)=teotl(N)=treow(OE)=tree(E),
the intermediary for fire=tletl(N)=t/let/l=
let(a divine word leading to ecstasy)=dejate(sp)=let yourself(what a boy will say to a virgin novia).
tree=qua/cuauitl(N)=cail(NIrish)=Cahill(name)=
ca-il(N)=sky being=ilitl(N)=birch, =kaede(Jap)=
maple,=keadar(basque)=column of smoke=
k/quemar(sp)=burn=chemistry=ke(egytpian)=
cedar(tree)=(qua)-witu(OHG)=wood(E)=
whittle(E), and on it goes, al-qaeda=HQ.
as water/atl begins life, makes altar, provides
tealtia(N)=t/reality, which produces ue altia(N)=
bealte(OE)=beauty and beatitude, so does fire/
tletl(N) give us t/let/l/letter, leer(sp) tl/red/tl
read=t/ler(n)ian(OE)=learning, as does lion=
leon(sp)=leo(r)nian(OE)=learning, one of the
animals at gobekli.
oh, the word for priest, not pitli(N)=older sister=
briton/older sisters of the tona/sun, but,
tlamacazqui(N)=priest, minister, whose ultimate
root, according to rémi simeon/nauatl dicc., =
maca(N)=hand-be/give. however, tlama(N)=
Llama(Dali)/flama(sp)/flame/lambent(E/adj.)=
flame.
it’s obvious that nauatl is history, a continuum,
e.g., na-ua-tl=lang-ua-ge=ua(N)=own=wa(mont
kmer rouge language)=wa(chi-na)=yue=
cantonese=ca(n)tona(N)=sunbeing=tona-lli(N)=
soul=tonatiuh(N)=sungod=jyut/jue=yue=
yuhti(N)=yud’hi=judy=just/justice=yu(r)t=
yuhti the (N)root=from the beginning/cave
time=oztotl=guang(canton)=g-ua(n)-g=ua(N)=
oz time=yeti(nepal)=neander.
the aztec amerindians say we come from
chicomoztoc(N)=the 7 caves=7=mazatl(N)=
red deer, our sustenance in frigid europe
when the 40k bc glaciation drove non-arctic
bodied afro eve’s dna(72k bc) out, but not
neander and his crosses at beginning of
deer time. and i believe it’s the case, at
least 7 interconnected neander hotels=
hostel=host(religious as well)=hostia(sp)=
communion wafer=ua petla(N)=own(stone)
throw(cavebear sacrifice).
gobekli is the last glimmer of dance time.
at 8k bc haplo-group T begins, look up
haplo T(google) to find out where they went.
carlos lascoutx
November 14, 2010 at 8:22 am
Throughly enjoyed comments/speculations. I’m just a novice, but for such large structures(tons) to have been built isn’t necessary to have a stable long term settlement, a large well fed population in order to conduct such a time consuming building project, and technological sophistication. Am I to believe that this was achieved by HG or a nascent flora/fauna domestication great enough for these people to achieve this endeavour? Sans horse, cattle and barely on the edge of fauna domestication.? I agree the structures and dates purported are impressive, but what is the year gap before anything else approaching this accomplishment? Just lost? Again I am just a curious novice, and await cogent replies. THank You.
Diomedes
December 17, 2010 at 3:59 pm
…what precedes gobekli is the upper stone age, 45k-10k bc,
spanning the nomad deer age of tlaloc=t/l/rar/log/c=rarog,
which begins blood religions as we know them by offering=uentli(N)=wendy/venus/venado/venison/venir/windy. we leave the cave
of fire worship and by metaphoric extension, sun=tonatiuh(N)=
anthony worship=tonalli(N)=soul/sol=tone/tune, and follow
the nimbus of a christ figure, tlaloc/rarog, who has disciples of
rain dwarfs, wizards=quia/uiz(tec)at/l/r-d(letra)=wizard, ascends
to heaven evaporating and returns as greening rain in endless cycle.
eurasian population bottlenecks as we nomad, everyone learns
what paradise is, we live off drops from trees(orchard culture)and
sky and mazatl(N)=maz(OHG)=meat(E)=ce uentli(N)=one offering=
se-ven/se(r)ve/cerf/ciervo/(re)ve(r)en/ce=ce-ven. after the
frugality=f(r)/pu/oca/ga-l(letra)=po-poca(N)=smoke of cave
time we are free and grateful, our spirit opens out to blue planet
and its bounty to us.
gobekli is the last celebration of this life, but settled=cetilia(N),
still tribal but circumscribed by a writing or marking system to
keep track of the hunter-gathering going on, the religious rites,
the inner clans/totems=to-/our descent/-temo(N).
once hunter-gatherers are deprived of space, their nomadism,
use has to made of language, number, accounting, calendrics
(the tonalamatl(N)=sunpapers)comes to the fore, sky-watching,
as always, but local=tloc(N)=beside. there is a compression of
talents required for close living, topilli’s, to-police=topol(rus)=
poplar/popular enforcement, form to inform and enforce,
priest-class formalizes and develops it’s tealtia(N)=the altar=
t/theatre=t/reality show, offering the people=pipil-tin(N)
ue altia(N)=bealté(OE)=beauty/beatitude for the price of
their contribution to otli(N)=odos(gk)=o(r)der=idol=odol
(basque)=(b)lood=Odin(Norse)=(W)o(r)din’=wording.
the little red school house/hill of fire worship, the fixed altar
of noma(N)=still, forever, always, spontaneous=nomad life,
its last glow before that energy transfers itself to citys,
manumission of its slaves to build them, e.g., grodi(polish)=
first towns=g(r)/co-tli/ti/di(letra)=tla/cotli(N)=slave=
dakota=la(s)co/ut-x(my basque name), from, coua(N)=to buy.
carlos lascoutx
December 27, 2010 at 8:01 am
(I’m a little late to the Göbekli Tepe party having stumbled upon this and related sites just today so if I’m a wee bit out of date, you now know why.)
“First came the temple, then the city,” Dr. Klaus Schmidt
Why? Why must this site necessarily be a religious complex? Why is religion the default raison d’etre for this or any ancient structure?
I suppose that all too often, we ‘moderns’ simply assume that ‘primitive’ hunter-gatherers were incapable of anything other that coalescing around mystical beings and gods. Perhaps there are other reasons to build that are practical or communicative. Meeting places can be just that – meetings places. Places to exchange goods and ideas. Places to learn and grow. Places to meet, mingle and broaden the gene pool beyond the shallow confines of a hunter-gatherer tribe.
I would posit the idea that it’s less of a ‘temple’ of worship and more a remarkable meeting place, visible from afar, to gather and exchange food, information, ideas, basic technology, experience and DNA. At some point later, it may have become a religious site but proto-agrarians and hunter-gatherers probably filled too may hours of their day growing plants and searching for game, learning the basics of animal and plant domestication to worry about gathering to worship a distant deity. Religion grows from a societal tendency toward structure and hierarchy and a desperate desire for humans to understand the amazing world and phenomena they see around them daily WHEN THEY HAVE THE LEISURE TIME TO WONDER. There’s precious little leisure time when your existence depends upon a daily search for sustenance. Religion organizes and divides communities into specialized systems. It’s illogical to propose that structure, order and hierarchy predate communal living. Ergo, to assume that Göbekli Tepe was begun as a religious site seems counter-intuitive to me.
Just my opinion (I’m not an archeologist) but I would be interested in other thoughts on the matter.
Curtis
December 28, 2010 at 2:04 pm
There is a 1400+ years book that speaks of great civilizations of past amongst. It even speaks of a pre-human inter dimensional civilization that occupied earth.
Make what you like of it. After all knowledge is better than ignorance.
[40:21] Have they not travelled in the earth and seen how was the end of those who were before them? Mightier than these were they in strength– and in fortifications in the land, but Allah destroyed them for their sins; and there was not for them any defender against Allah.
[11.82] So when Our decree came to pass, We turned them upside down and rained down upon them stones, of what had been decreed, one after another.
[20.128] Is it not a guidance for them (to know) how many a generation We destroyed before them, amid whose dwellings they walk? Lo! therein verily are signs for men of thought.
archy khan
December 31, 2010 at 3:34 pm
…archy=a(r)chy=aci(N)=to concentrate/hacer(sp)=do.
tlamcazque(N)=flame priests are clever.
the first mention of Allah i can find in Nauatl
is the ultimate reverential of water/atl(N)=altia(N)=
Alaua/oalauh(N)=annoint=Alabar(sp), from which words
derived are: allow/hallow/hello/hallelujah, besides
the name of Allah. this leads me to conclude that Allah=atl/altia=tealtia/theatre=t/reality=ue altia(N) =big altar=bealté(OE)=beauty/beatitude=Alaua/oalauh.
other words from Alaua(N)=lavar/lab(r)ar(sp=wash/work,
and, oalauh(N/preterit)=laude(Fr)=praise.
so, when you say, and one can say it, Allah destroyed, it was through water/Allah or lack of
water/Allah, as both rain and drought are linked
conditions of Allah.
carlos lascoutx
February 24, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Great conversation. Here’s what I can add to it: GT was
definitely a religious site and we know this because of the
carvings on the stone: vultures were a symbol of heaven to
primitive shamanists who used excarnation instead of burial; this
practice was widely used in the northern hemiphere 10 to 20,000
years ago. To understand why you have to look at the sky during
that time period, circa 15,000 years ago. There was no good pole
star, instead there was an entire pole constellation- Cygnus, which
we know as the Swan, was seen as a giant, celestial vulture because
it seemed to circle the north pole the same way that vultures will
circle over a carcass. When someone died they would be placed on
one of these platform topped stones so that vultures would come
down from the sky and take them back to heaven. The act of bringing
vultures down was seen as a supernatural ritual act. The reason
Cygnus was once close to the pole (but is not now) is due to the
precession of the equinoxes. The earth wobbles around the pole over
a period of 26,000 years. 15,000 years ago Cygnus circled the pole
like a vulture . The fact that this was no longer true 11,500 years
ago opens the door to it being even older. Radiocarbon dating of
bones from the site are the source of the 11,500 figure and are by
no means limiting; only about 5% of GT has been excavated and older
bones may yet be found. Now that I have become interested in this
site I have many more questions of my own; if anyone knows the
answers to any of these please drop me a line jggii@aol.com. 1.
Does anyone know if usable DNA was found in the human bones dated
to 11,500 years ago? 2. Was this site also a calendar like
Stonehenge? there are tantalizing suggestions that it might be. One
of the platforms has a scorpion on it. 12,000 years ago Scorpio
would have been the constellation that would rise in the spring
(instead of late fall as it does now). Decoding the calendar (if
there is one) would tell when it was actually built, and whether
agriculture was being practiced before the temple was constructed,
or after. 3. Are there any symbols on any of the monoliths? Aside
from the carvings of animals( and probably shamen dressed as
vultures), as far as I can tell there are none, but I’m not
certain.
Jungle Jim
January 2, 2011 at 9:21 pm
…vulture is the writing sign in the tonalamatl,
the circling=ollin(N/17 tonalamatl)=holy/m(o)ve,
which is the reverential in such words as, tetl(N)=
stone=tletl(N/o(ll)in)=fire/letter/red, and, te(o)tl(N/(o)llin)=teo/theo/deo/the-other. note the beginning
for both deity and fire deity=tetl(N)=(s)te-in=in tetl
(N/reversal)=the stone=(s)tone=tona(N)=solar/Tonatiuh.
holy scripture=(s)c(r)ip(ac)t-ure/ole=Cipactli(N/day one tonalamatl). buzzard’s position in the tona=16,
which is 4×4, 4=Naos(gk)=highest greek temple, in
basque=lau=oahlauh(N/preteret of alaua/annoint, and
the annointing was done to uena=big4 directions=the wind/the sun=to-na=our4, we are/=uan(N)=juan=own4).
the early and original basque rite uncovers the verb
from which naui(N)=4 is made=oa-lau-h(N), and that
is sealed in later languages by the, n=4=nauatl.
there had to be writing and calendar at gobekli,
combined with tlatla-uentli(N)=flame offering linked
but outside cave time as the books Torah and Koran=
rah/ra(n)0r/l/tlatla(N)=flame(and deity)=t/l/raven,
the most frequent offering at gobekli, 40%.
excellent point on cumulative building at gobek, meaning we can say it was the first temple
city if it had longevity since 15k bc.
carlos lascoutx
February 24, 2011 at 4:51 pm
Thanks for replying. I have to admit I couldn’t follow most of what you were saying, though. Could you spell it out a little more, for us lay people? Also, an update: there is at least 1 symbol on the ‘liths. It looks something like the letter H. Do you have any insight into its meaning?
Jungle Jim
February 27, 2011 at 9:55 am
Further thoughts on GT: The timing of construction doesn’t
sound right to me. The astronomical configuration that generated
the illusion of the circling vulture was unique to the time period
centered around 15,000 years ago and would not have been visible
11,500 years ago. While it is not unreasonable to suggest that the
practices were still in use at that time, they were fading away-
other cultures were already beginning to bury or cremate their
dead, as we do, still today. It seems unlikely, therefore, that the
temple was built near the end of the practice, and not while at its
height. My own evolving hypothesis: This temple was very well
built, which suggests that this isn’t the first one they built. And
we already know it wasn’t the only one. Whover built GT had done
this before as evidenced by the terrazzo floors and the general
lack of mistakes. Mistakes tell us a lot about the people who built
ancient structures- the first time you do something you make a lot
of simple mistakes that are not easily corrected. Learning from
these early errors allowed them to design better structures. GT
unmistakably shows its builders were too sophisticated to be first
timers. The terrazzo floors are the clincher. Until now we thought
they were invented in ancient Rome- some 9000 years later. If they
knew how to make hardened, fired clay floor tile, they almost
certainly knew how to make pottery, which is much simpler, and in
fact is the root technology that terrazzo comes from. All this
makes me wonder if these people were indiginous to this region, or
new comers. This period of time, as well as the preceding 6000
years was one of global climate change. As the ice caps melted
away, starting 18000 years ago, rain patterns changed as areas that
were once covered with ice now provided lots of fresh water lakes,
marshes and swamps that fed other areas with increased rainfall.
This area in Turkey would have been a lush new habitat created, and
then later wiped away, by climate change. The other pressure on
people of that time would have been of course, rising sea levels;
which brings us back to terrazzo floors. If the builders of GT were
forced to move by rising sea levels their earlier efforts may be
lost beneath the waters of the Mediterranian or Red Sea. If I’m
correct so far there are 3 times that would have been candidates
for settlement and they would give us a clue about whether they
were locals, or the first refugees of climate change.
Jungle Jim
January 3, 2011 at 12:06 am
For a site (GT) that’s only been 5% excavated, people sure have a lot of theories about it. Ten thousand B.C. Think about it, 10,000 B.C.! The discovery of GB makes people, like Dr. Robert Schoch, NOT look so crazy. I’m a life long student of Hebrew Biblical Theology. For many of us (those that truly study Theology), the discovery of GB is no surprise. It just verifies what we’ve always known about pre-Adamic civilizations. To understand what I’m saying, you must exhaustively study Bereshit (Genesis) chapters 1 & 2. And (Yirmeyahu) Jeremiah 4:23-29. And to do that, you need to learn the Hebrew language. Not teying to be “preachy”…but this whole “a time before Ada” thing is old and boring. But the discovery of GT is still exciting.
Hallel Smith
January 13, 2011 at 3:02 am
…ada=ad/t/lamati(letra)=atlamati(Nauatl)=presume one has the protection of a powerful person=
ad/t/lam-ati(letra)=Adam(Eden).
yes, Hebrew would be a good language to know,
but Hebrew’s root language, Nauatl, is indispensible.
carlos lascoutx
February 24, 2011 at 5:24 pm
For my previous post, please replace “GB” with “GT”. For some reason I had the letters “GB” stuck in my brain as I was typing.
Hallel Smith
January 13, 2011 at 3:05 am
[...] I stumbled upon this news piece in The Times regarding archaeology in Saudia Arabia. I wanted to share it with you all because of last week’s discussion of handaxes from the neighboring UAE. The article describes how archaeologists have been using Google Earth to survey for sites and have identified possibly 2,000 or so potential ones in Saudia Arabia. Now using Google Earth to do some armchair archaeology is nothing new really, there are examples from 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2010. [...]
The Fate of Arabian Archaeology | Anthropology.net
February 4, 2011 at 4:57 pm
I would love to see what is hiding in Arabia…
Avia
June 26, 2011 at 4:55 am
…from what i can tell of words for language, e.g.,
waa(china(khmer rouge)=wa(japanese)=circle/unity/harmony=lang-ua/waa/wa-ge/ce=t/la(n)c/g=
tlacatl(N)=body, i.e., language comes from the body,
is ua(N)/wa(J)/waa(china/khmer=own(E), is owned/ua(N)
by the body, and is, -ge/ce(N)=one, or, language one
body is owned/owed?, to which, language(is)one body=
na-ua-tl. isbn 968-23-0573–x=nauatl dicc., rémi
simeon, siglo xx1. for the tonalamatl, aztecs of mexico, vaillant, george, penguin pb, chap. on ritual religion. the 2 key books, simeon is in spanish but that’s good as it’s closer to nauatl than english in
some ways.
from what we know of fire worship, it begins with
the solstice bear cult of neander. iueli(N)=powerful=
iberia/hibernate hibernia inverness invierno hiver
ivery/ivory ember/e/i(m)b/vel/r=iueli(N)=iv/be(a)r/l,
solstice cave bear to push the sun/Tona-tiuh around
on its weakest day.
let us pass through the nauatl words for gens and
language that refer to cave bear worship:
first let’s establish neander: yuhti(N)=from the beginning=just justice=yuh’di(Hebrew)=yu(r)t(deer
time upper stone age 45k-10k bc)=yeti(nepalese)=neandertal. hebrew=h/th/tep/b(r)ewa/ua=tepeua(N)=
mountain/tepee/temple owners=neander habitat=mountain.
now, from east to west: ca(n)ton-ese=ca tona(N)=sun being=calli(s)to(gk/myth)=calli tona(N)=sunbeing=
ka(r)th/tunen(Finnish first bear clan)=ka/ca tona(N)=
sunbeing=katonah(new york state)=ka/ca tona(N)=sunbeing. now to link up cantonese with yuhti(N)=
cantonese=yue=jyut/jyu=juh’di(hebrew)=judy. i am not saying cantonese=hebrew, what i am saying is that
cave bear worship, ca tona(N), links them all.
what this link=wa(japanese) means to gobekli tepe
is that the fire worship probably has come from the east, certainly that they spoke nauatl, as i have
the rémi simeon version of nauatl intact at 3309bc,
nauatl pie stayed together that long, reached its
peak so to (s)peak, then as the rope age of metis,
first deity of wisdom, mother of athena, matured
and the globe laced together by trade and spread of
nauatl into every corner, the Babel/babble began,
with sumer, japanese, omotic(ethiopia).
H is an aspirant, can be any consonant, e.g.,
c/ch/h p/ph/h t/th/h. it has become a sound symbol,
but very much doubt it was in use before the decay of
nauatl i mention, e.g., he(ar)t=h/th/te(ar)tl/t=
tetl(N)=stone, better, h/th/t/tle(ar)tl=tletl(N)=fire,
hell=h/th/tetl, or, hel(germ)=h/th/t/tletl(N)=fire.
note, heart=hearth=hear(stone deaf/burning ears).
wouldn’t mind seeing letter(H)in question, not a gammadion is it? as the cross=symbol for 4/naui.
otzi, tyrolean man/3k bc, had one on his leg=
naui ollin(5th age).
from the Oera Linda book, misused in many ways,
come the idea that egyptians were from the orient,
certainly they were deer tribe(we all went through
that bottle neck). the egyptian deer tribe proof
is the scarab, whose habits became their funeral rites. scarab=caribou
carlos lascoutx
February 27, 2011 at 11:10 am
This is mindblowing: not only are there several symbols on the ‘liths, the more you delve into it, the clearer it becomes that the animal carvings themselves have specific meaning that we are just beginning to understand! I wonder why no one is talking about this? Think about it. How could hunter gatherers have symbols that communicate whole concepts, and where would they learn them, at HGU? Check out these two sites: http://www.timothystephany.com/gobekli.html
http://www.seshat.ch/home/lascaux3.htm
The 1st one has some very intriguing info that suggests that the animal carvings are representations of how these people saw groupings of stars- in other words, their version of the constellations. The 2nd will be of particular interest to you, Carlos, as it gives a detailed breakdown of how the symbols evolved into later languages that we already know!
Jungle Jim
February 28, 2011 at 4:26 pm
…ah, post script: let me say that ca tona(N)=
cave dwelling sun worship links them all and
is the one (source of) language, Nauatl, i.e.,
which is to say hebrew and cantonese derive
from Nauatl, as does every other language on the planet, therefore, hebrew=cantonese, as shown in
the yuhti(N)=yuh’di(H)=yue/jyut/jyu(cantonese)
wordstring.
carlos lascoutx
February 28, 2011 at 6:47 am
Does anyone know what Carlos Lascoutx is on? If he’s not taking his meds, his doctors should be informed. If he’s self-medicating, perhaps someone should send him something a little more soothing to dampen the manic behaviour evident in his writing.
Gareth Jones
March 6, 2011 at 12:12 pm
At first I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but after doing some research on “Nauatl” I don’t think he has anything to add to the conversation. In this case first impressions are probably correct.
Jungle Jim
March 7, 2011 at 4:39 am
I believed Robert Bauval, Graham Hancock, John Anthony West, and Dr. Scoch the whole time. And they went through some serious BS because of the “establishment”. Must feel good for those guys to finally be proven to be correct. It must really piss off Zahi Hawass to be shown as the stooge that he is. Well…this bell can never be unrung so I look forward to watching professors (all over the world) in: Egyptology, Archeology, Anthropology, and History squirm. My daughter will be starting college in a few years. Had to tell her that I’ll be paying for classes that are teaching her the wrong information. But at least she knows about Gobekli Tepe and she’ll be applying the “Gobekli Tepe Rule” whenever her teachers start spewing out nonsense. If “the world” has only known about Gobekli Tepe for the past two or three years, you can bet that it won’t change the textbooks for many MANY years to come. Thanks, Guys, for all your work and sacrifices. It was not in vain.
Chris Smith
March 6, 2011 at 8:52 am
Hi Chris, re: Hancock, Bauvall et all, whilst they do present some interesting ides and bring to light anomalous data to be ex[lained , be careful in swallowing the lot whiole. There are some issues with their allegedly ironclad theories, based mainly on physical evidence. A good entry level precie of this is the Stargate conspiracy (I know, I know but get past the title and the reasearchers will have saved you significant time and point to easily checkable references)Likewise some of the wor4k by the new egyptologist ie Rohl, uhndermines prior theory. That GT is so old and so organised nicely shakes up what is “Known” and hopefully will force scholars to stop being so lazy. For what its worth there is no reason I can see why it shouldnt be religious in nature and research has shown the one universal characteristic of man is the ability to try to form patterns of understanding from observation, which would reinforce the thoughts that this served a “religious” purpos-depending on how you define religion, which as a christian I am very careful about!
Daniel Ingles
July 4, 2011 at 2:58 am
…i’m not on anything, it’s the material talking,
heady stuff. language believes everything is connected
and it’s got me convinced too. i would be interested to know what sort of research you did on nauatl as
i’ve gotten pretty far with it. is there anything wrong with believing there is one language for the planet? it certainly is a lot of work, but rewarding
as it will solve many problems in education and
communication. i don’t think i’ll abandon it just
because in your consdered opinion you think i’m crazy, that’s such an easy slur for the research
challenged. enjoyed the forum or whatever it was.
i don’t think you’ll get much further than where you
are, however, as breaking words in the one language,
nauatl is the key to the past, a comparison between
it and derivative languages is like lifting the invisible ink of history off the page. i wish you luck in the consensus approach to knowledge, you’ll end up with a great-looking camel. off i go on my
arabian thoroughbred, happy trails.
carlos lascoutx
March 7, 2011 at 7:52 am
Carlos,
While I appreciate commenting, I don’t appreciate this sort of nonsense. I don’t understand a fraction of what you are saying nor do the majority of the people in this thread.
Please write coherently and on topic. I’ve asked you before and you continue to comment in a incomprehensible manner.
Kambiz
Kambiz Kamrani
March 7, 2011 at 8:07 pm
I think the discussion on root words is valid as all peoples would have started with the same principles. Have you tried making just all the possible noises with your mouth or counting in ones (1) to accumulate 2, 3, 4 etc. then creating simple shapes like a triangle, square and circle? It is just this lateral observation that can get into the minds of people from so long ago.
Le’s not rule out the obvious. The T-shape is one of the earliest forms of a cross – the ‘tau’ – and animals have always been used to represent the psychology of Nature. Sacred geometry and numerology became sacred because it came from the ‘sacred’ world of Nature.
Avia
June 26, 2011 at 6:23 am
…well, my grand objective in commenting is to show
by inter-idiom wordstrings, such as the yuhti(Nauatl)
wordstring, that we are dealing with only one language
on blue planet, that it was the language of gobekli
tepe=tepetl(N)=tepee=hebrew=herb=te(m)ple=trepar(sp)=
trip, however fragmented, cf., my post on Omotic, etc.
this discovery opens the door to the other side of
archeology, the linguistic. already i have discovered
the tlaloc deer age, or at least given it more definition, then opened up the rope age with Metis,
connected her to the japanese nawa(j)=rope=nauatl,
discovered they were the olmec, the wizards are first
water wizards, that the britons were the older sisters
of the sun. sure it’s unsettling to realize that the
story of jesus existed before he did as japanese
vaudeville, the Allah is water/alaua/annoint, but
for a scholar to say he is a scholar and then cling to
the mainland rather to swim in the chop of knowledge
is cowardly, i guess cows swim, but when someone
reports he’s checked out nauatl, why he doesn’t even
know report=tepotia(N)=the uniting, from, potia(N)=
potian(OE)=put, then the noun, potli(N); which is
the last half of djibouti=saintly Punt(we’ve found the
land of Punt)=potli(N)=both. a report is put, involves
both sides, and is not a unilateral veto.
i am not talking out of thin air or a cloud of
smoke, i am using a new discipline for knowledge
which radiates to archeology, comms, teaching, myth,
religion, you name it. the medium of language itself
has the key to past and will mold the future in a more
positive way than present. knowledge is not just at
the tip of the shovel, it’s in the 2d envelope of air
called language. letters are not just letters, the are
the reverential of stone called fire which becomes learning.
the whole idea of education is based on received
knowledge, skinning a cat only one way as old testbooks way out of date would have it. let’s
break our addiction to stale knowledge and move
into that something new called reality, break the
intellectual fantasy that has us in thrall to the
past like almonds in aspic and find new ways.
Nauatl is the highway to all that, wa(J)=peace,
harmony, unity, link, circle. away with the old
perceptions handed down to us over the backs of
generation after generation of bored teachers.
religion needs an update also, and the language
we use needs a good shake to get the dust and mold
out of it. if you don’t believe me, cast a glance at
the us congress or the world at large.
i’m not a savior. i’m just as challenged by this
new material as you are, how to use it, but i have
made the leap forward and can break any word back
to nauatl, struggling like laocoon to save his
children from wise?snakes is the metaphor that come
to mind. the real struggle is to separate knowledge
from politics, and i’m afraid that’s not done in
countrys with strong political bent, which steers
them off course to follow the ersatz charts of
their selfish cultural fantasy.
carlos lascoutx
March 8, 2011 at 6:26 am
I’ve written a short story about Göbekli Tepe almost as soon as I’ve heard of it – in 2008. I’ve translated it to English for a literary event, and since there is no other venue for me to publish it that would have so many readers, I just put it up on the internet.
Here it is, as a google document.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Y4kfWNXjXaJ2d-ljUDiJ5v9h3k8cV6a83e1QVyyfywA/edit?hl=en&authkey=CJGU_JMH&pli=1#
It’s a bit more on the philosophical side – investigating the discord between instinctual practices and the recognition of the symbolic form, and it also touches the Schmidt aspect of the new interpretation of standard marxist staple – first came the city, then the temple. It really seems that it was the other way around, which is all kinds of amazing in my eyes :) The superstructure drives the economic base forward – that makes art the most important of human practices.
Thanks for your time!
JBF
DiscoVampire
April 5, 2011 at 1:43 am
I just watched a program about ancient structures that featured this site. I found it interesting that they mentioned “The Great Flood” and said that there were at least a thousand myths/legends about the flood, including the biblical myth and they opined that the animals on these pillars may have been an attempt to tell the tale. If that’s so, then the biblical flood happened long before the time in which it is represented in the bible. Of course, there could be lots of reasons why these pillars are decorated with detailed etchings of animals…but I thought that was an interesting seque.
Mei Breu
April 14, 2011 at 7:37 am
While it’s all good and well to quote by how many years this site predates the Pyramids of Giza, surely no one on this thread is suggesting that this complex is even in the same league as the Pyramids. The manpower, coordinaton of supplies, management of workers/slaves and design of the Pyramids is mind boggling when you consider the lack of powered machinery. If the Pyramids are to be considered the greatest construction ever by humanity, which I consider them to be, then surely this site is just a steeping stone on the way to such a construction. yes, these are cool, and yes it make us rethink what was exaclty going on back then, but it all fits into a timeline, and considering this timeline has only really been given serious global thought for the past 100 odd years, then the timeline itself is in a state of flux. There is no archeological conspiracy here and there was no advanced civilisation that left the planet either. Give enough people a task and enough time and generally it will be accomplished.
Stu
June 20, 2011 at 6:15 pm
I think you’re missing the point, Stu. At the time the pyramids were built, 4500 years ago, this site was already 7000 years old. In other words, when the pyramids were built this site was already much older than the pyramids are now. The comparison is one of age, not scope.
Jungle Jim
June 26, 2011 at 8:12 am
I love Gobekli Tepe – because it is challenging us again, and that is good for pushing us away from the old accepted ‘facts’ and making us search for new paradigms. First up, we have not necessarily progressed upward or forward. Second, it is hard to imagine the unimaginable, but we could stretch our imaginations to take in something more interesting than ‘slaves’, ‘lifting stones by hand’, and ‘political hierarchy’ or ‘pagan worship’. Is it conceivable that the ancients actually agreed, willingly, with knowledge of what and why they did something? That they actually knew what they were doing and that it was for some benefit for more than the selfish few, as today? To solve a problem, one has to get outside the known way of doing something and imagine the easiest, as opposed to the longest and most tiresome way of doing it. It is possible that the benefit outweighed the effort involved, as motive and incentive are the two main drivers of intent. As Stu says – ‘give enough people a task and enough time, it will be accomplished.’
Imagine, in the meantime, chiseling out a relief figure of a reptile, of a possible depth of (ball park figure) 6 inches, from a slab of stone. That is, removing all the stone around the figure to a depth of 6 inches. In a slab of stone 10 feet tall and 3 feet wide, that would be….? (more than a weekends worth, between coffee breaks.) Unless… they knew how to grind stone into a ‘cement’ and mould it into a figure and adhere it onto the stone invisibly :)
Is anyone going there?
Avia
June 26, 2011 at 4:53 am
For your consideration. The latest news regarding this fascinating site.
The current issue of NatGeo has a cover story on the Gobekli Tepe(GT). It is very well done and updates the discovery and places it in perspective regarding the other discoveries/excavations in Anatolia/Mesopotamia. “Revolution of symbols”, speculation(that organized religion came before agriculture) about these hunter-gatherers, foragers, and nascent farming communities. Checkout the video and photo array. There’s a caption below each photo. Unfortunately the excellent map presentation is not available here. I saw it in the current NatGeo ‘zine at the bookstore. GT is a work in progress with much excavation yet to be done since its discovery 17 yrs. ago. It has energized the searches in the entire region, and is dated at 9600BCE. The speculation is that it ceased approx. 8200BCE. Major megalithic structures begin to reappear(Malta & Western European) approx. 4K yrs. later(see link below for list).
Archeo Diomedes
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/06/gobekli-tepe/mann-text > NatGeo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalith > History and list.
Diomedes
June 26, 2011 at 1:48 pm
The T shaped monuments: stele, derived from ancestral cave/quarry rituals including the resemblance of stalactites with mammae, dripping “milky” water, note similarity of galact-ose & stalact-tit-e.
Note the similarity between the 2 images, the early G. Tepe and the much later (4xT & bench steps) Egyptian Djed: http://the-arc-ddeden.blogspot.com/2011/06/steps.html
wherein the single T unit (cumulated ringwise around a pair of mammae) has accumulated vertically into the central vertebral column.
DDeden
June 27, 2011 at 7:28 am
Who filled in the whole system with dirt and small rocks, and why? I don’t think it was filled in by outside conquerors because those pillars would have been knocked down by enemies. So, that would leave the people who built them to have filled them in. And they weren’t just filled in, they were camoflaged and the entire landscape was changed and smoothed over to conceal its location. Why would somebody do that? What a great mystery for modern man.
By the way, Edgar Cayce predicted that the Atlantis civilization would be found in the 1960′s. He didn’t say it would be excavated, just discovered. This was found, when??
JMPotratz
July 1, 2011 at 2:00 pm
It is important to note, from what I have read, there are no depictions of Gods or deities or any “Leaders”. Most if not all the art depicts animals. This would kind of rule out a religous motive, unless they were worshiping nature for natures sake. Isn’t it just as likely that they were honoring the wildlife that made their lives so rich? Perhaps this is nothing more or less than a grand nature park? Just a thought.
Eric Lindahl (The artist not the actor or the scientist or the economist)
July 19, 2011 at 9:49 am
Most of the Zodiac is animals as well. Animals were (or embodied) the gods of the Egyptians as well.
I suspect the structure could be a Zodiac, hence an astronomic observatory, hence a temple. But I do not know enough of the disposition and drawn animals to tell.
Also I’d like to emphasize that not all religions worship (totally submit to gods), many just venerate (respect them without becoming their slave).
“Isn’t it just as likely that they were honoring the wildlife that made their lives so rich?”
Also, probably also, but they were honoring it by using it to represent some sort of cosmology. Animals, spirits, symbols, constellations, gods… all these categories are very fluid and overlap with each other. Have you ever heard of shamanism?
Maju
July 31, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Eric:
Look again at the figures of vultures. You will notice that their knees bend , not like birds, but like human beings. These are interpreted to be shamin performing a ritual excarnation, while wearing a vulture costume. Since we already knew that excarnation was practised at this time and at this place, and the significance of vultures to the practice, it was an easy leap to to conclude that this is a religious site.
JMP:
Edgar Cayce specifically said that Atlantis would reemerge in the Carribean.
Jungle Jim
August 27, 2011 at 8:26 pm
Still awaiting comments on my earlier posting. Some of the recent comments dance around my points.
“First came the temple, then the city,” Dr. Klaus Schmidt
Why? Why must this site necessarily be a religious complex? Why is religion the default raison d’etre for this or any ancient structure?
I suppose that all too often, we ‘moderns’ simply assume that ‘primitive’ hunter-gatherers were incapable of anything other than coalescing around mystical beings and gods. Perhaps there are other reasons to build that are practical or communicative. Meeting places can be just that—meetings places. Places to exchange goods and ideas. Places to learn and grow. Places to meet, mingle and broaden the gene pool beyond the shallow confines of a nomadic, hunter-gatherer tribe.
I would posit the idea that it’s less of a ‘temple’ of worship and more a remarkable meeting place, visible from afar, to gather and exchange food, information, ideas, basic technology, experience and DNA. At some point later, it may have become a religious site but proto-agrarians and hunter-gatherers probably filled too may hours of their day learning the basics of horticulture and searching for game, and learning the basics of animal husbandry to worry about gathering to worship a distant deity. Religion grows from a societal tendency toward structure and hierarchy and a desperate desire for humans to understand the amazing world and phenomena they see around them daily WHEN THEY HAVE THE LEISURE TIME TO WONDER. There’s precious little leisure time when your existence depends upon a daily search for sustenance. Religion organizes and divides communities into specialized systems. It’s illogical to propose that structure, order and hierarchy predate communal living. Ergo, to assume that Göbekli Tepe was begun as a religious site seems counter-intuitive to me.
Just my opinion (I’m not an archeologist) but I would be interested in other thoughts on the matter.
CuJoYYC
July 31, 2011 at 2:33 pm
Well firsty let me just comment from personal expeirence. This season while I excavated at the Moorehead circle inside Fort Ancient south of Oregonia south west Ohio we saw signs of the decomision of the site everywhere. The Hopewell for whatever reason decided that the site was no longer useful or a part of their belief system, so they pulled every post and pulled down what may be a structure in the circle filled in the posts covered it all with gravel brought two hundred and forty feet below the plateau from the river, and never built anything there again. There is no sign of stress or warfare, no invasion by a foriegn power, it appears that they live ways changed and the structure was no longer a part of it. You don’t need something catastrophic to explain what happend there, it may merely be a change in belief and the site was ritually decomissioned.
SeleukosNicator
July 31, 2011 at 7:15 pm
Re-read my post from June 26 and visit the NatGeo link to find out the latest news regarding GT.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/06/gobekli-tepe/mann-text
mayogalway
July 31, 2011 at 9:21 pm
Imagining that these ancient people were worshipping formal religious gods is a bit premature; more likely it is a typical hunting & gathering (& fishing and scavenging etc.) totemism at a significant seasonal gathering & crossing place. Totem poles (upright carved logs, stone pillars) are common among pre-agriculture peoples, just as later monuments and stele signs and statues appeared with early agricultural towns and cities.
Why bury? Social form changes require signaling changes, the later temples were more square-based, just like the housing and town plans, due to increased concentrations.
DDeden
August 1, 2011 at 1:03 pm
You are just throwing your sectarian and ideological prejudices here. I understand that primitive peoples can have spiritual lives at least as full as modern people, not the least because they are immersed in nature and not in artificial cities and towns.
Maju
August 1, 2011 at 1:25 pm
Who are you referring to Maju? (Which comment is your response to?) I said nothing about “spiritual lives”. Formal = artificial = highly derived ritualised social behaviours.
DDeden
August 9, 2011 at 5:41 am
You said: “Imagining that these ancient people were worshipping formal religious gods is a bit premature; more likely it is a typical hunting & gathering (& fishing and scavenging etc.) totemism”.
You are defining here what these people can believe or not. You seem to have preconceptions about the timeline of religious evolution and these “totems” (????) do not match your scheme. That is what I am criticizing.
“Totem poles (upright carved logs, stone pillars) are common among pre-agriculture peoples”…
AFAIK they are/were only common in some areas of North America, specifically among the Chinook and culturally related peoples. There are no totem poles among any other know culture anywhere on Earth.
Maju
August 9, 2011 at 6:03 am
Maju, please insert a better word than ‘totem pole’ to describe common pre-agric. or proto-agric. semi-sedentary societal traditional upright pillars (wood/stone/ceramic/metallic) containing carvings/drawings of animals/humans in ritual postures. The Chinook totem poles were simply one example.
DDeden
September 24, 2011 at 10:18 am
Menhir, standing stone, column, pillar…
Wikipedia of sorts maybe? I can imagine that, somehow their collective knowledge was gathered in such images. Why not? At least to some extent it is probably correct.
I do not know why these megaliths would have anything to do with other expressions that you happily clump together into the category “totem pole”.
I question your notion that these decorated pillars are better compared to Native American totem poles than to carved columns in a Gothic cathedral or whatever else you may compare with. Should we also consider cathedral pillars as totem poles or should we consider that a gargoyle and an eagle head may symbolize very different things? Is a pantocrator the same as a hieroglyph? Is the Venus of Mile the same as the Venus of Lespulgues?
Totem poles are specific of NW North American Natives, shamanism is specific of Siberian peoples and other practices that only vaguely resemble them cannot use the name at risk of extreme confusion.
Maju
September 24, 2011 at 10:50 am
The t-shape could well be a mere pillar. It could be symbolic but I’m personally suspicious that those Ts held ceilings and were not just isolated pillars.
Anyhow the swastika or lauburu is probably older and I remember being it mentioned already in Gravettian contexts and appears again in Samarra culture platters soon after, where the arms of the cross are antelopes, maybe orices. The regular, static, cross appears also in the Neolithic of that area, in Tell Halaf culture (same area as GT, but some time later). T shapes in symbols appear later in the Aegean either as speculated “anchors” or as the famous double axe. But I would not say that T symbols and + symbols are the same concept, at least not necessarily so and I know of no reason to think so (except the Christian hybrid variant, which is just a peculiar late development but is probably what brought you to make that association, Avia, right?)
Maju
August 27, 2011 at 7:58 pm
Amazing hos many thoughts and ideas that exist around GT, I wonder, have any of you been there?
I have, in march 2010, and there is no doubt that it is a religious site. The pilars, The carvings and The main complex at least give some hope for explanation as to their function and usage. But noone seems to be able to give any clue as to The many football sized round carvings in The ground at The bottom, or entrance, to The complex. To The large basins(?) That are at The same location. And The Even more mysterious carvings with an appearant altar and flowing grooves also in The rockface some hundred meters lower than The temple!
I have been to several of The historic cultural gathering sites in western europe, in egypt, greece, England, turkey and Syria, but no place can compare to GT. After leaving there we really felt like we’d visited or taken part in something significant.
The city of sanliurfa, urfa, closest to GT claims after Local traditions to be The place where Abraham was born, there is a large abrahamittic cultus in The area, absolutly facinating! You would recognize so many of The myths/stories from The old testament. Even Local tales tell that after The flood Noah ended his journey here, that GT is mount arrarat. Thus explaining, in This tradition The presens of The extencive fauna reliefs on GT.
And The mulbery tree…. Epic!
Anne Mette
September 22, 2011 at 9:35 am
There’s nothing like an eye-witness report – thanks Anne.
“no place can compare to GT. After leaving there we really felt like we’d visited or taken part in something significant”
– sometimes feelings are more important than conjecture.
There is obviously far more to this site than has been mentioned in the official reports.
And there seems to be much more yet to be excavated.
PS I don’t think ‘tau’ cross can be applied to these pillars, as the ‘tau’ was essentially a Greek symbol of a much later date and was tapered, not square? So any pre-conceived ideas about ‘crosses’ need to be put to one side, I think.
Avia
September 23, 2011 at 11:41 pm
“… there is no doubt that it is a religious site”
In the absence of knowledge and understanding of the true religious practises and traditions of the people who built Göbekli Tepe, how can you say there is no doubt? Until facts indicate otherwise, there is always doubt. ‘Feeling’ that it’s a religious site is one thing. Knowing it is quite another.
CuJoYYC
September 24, 2011 at 7:17 am