Göbeklitepe: South-Eastern Turkey's 12,000 Year-Old Obelisks

[balantz]

Source: Archaeologica News

Göbeklitepe: South-Eastern Turkey's 12,000 Year-Old Obelisks

Text by Haldin Aydingün


Challenging commonly held ideas about human history, Haldin Aydingün describes the T-shaped obelisks of Göbeklitepe in south-eastern Turkey - a sanctuary from the 10th millennium BC. Erected 10,000 years before the founding of the Roman Empire, 8,000 years before the appearance of the Hittites and 7,000 years before the building of the Great Pyramids, the hilltop ruins near the town of Urfa was established by hunter-gathers.
I got down from the dig team's minibus and started walking towards the excavation area. The sun wouldn't be up for while, but it was already light. It struck me that the environs had been fixed up since I was here eight years ago. Göbeklitepe has now become a well-known place, both in nearby town of Urfa and in the world at large.


I saunter among the 'T'-shaped obelisks, the largest of which weighs 25 tons, each one boasting reliefs of wild boar, foxes, lions, birds, snakes and insects, seemingly poised to leap out and attack. There are also signs resembling the letters 'H' or 'O'. I had read a few claims that those who built Göbeklitepe had also invented writing, and chuckled. The idea that these people had directly invented the Latin script would make a great subject for a hilarious fantasy film.


A 12,000-Year-Old Complex

The Göbeklitepe monuments were created twelve thousand years ago. In other words, 10,000 years before the founding of the Roman Empire, 8,000 years before the appearance of the Hittites, and 7,000 years before the building of the Great Pyramids.

I am standing amidst evidence that could upset everything we know about our remote past. Imagine such an age that it is still thousands of years to the discovery of metal and that the best cutting tool available is made of a piece of flintstone, with which you will hack 25-ton obelisks out of the bedrock and, carving those frightful animal figures on them, drag them here and erect them. We are talking about a project that required the simultaneous toil of two thousand men, a project so big for its time as to be considered gargantuan. Why did these people feel a need to erect such a complex of buildings? Perhaps we will never learn the answer to this question. It is thought that this was a cult centre since everyone, dig director Prof. Dr. Klaus Schmidt included, are in agreement that it was not a site used for vital needs such as hunting and shelter.

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Read more: http://www.archaeologica.org/NewsPage.htm

[Ian David]

1. That's 5,000 years before Adam & Steve! n/t

[balantz]

2. It sure is!

:7

[Jackpine Radical]

3. And before McCain slew McAbel.

[Trajan]

4. Wow .... This is a stupendous find ...

http://www.balkantravellers.com/en/read/article/1029

Mankind had just entered the agricultural era, or so it was presumed .... And yet these works took significant skill in stone work by capable artisans ....

Just ... Wow ....

Is it possible this is misdated ?

EDIT: More ?

[Trajan]

7. Regarding it's relationship to the Age of Agriculture ...

This community apparently had a hunter-gatherer economy, and may actually represent the very beginnings of the development of agriculture, as described in the following citation from wikipedia ...

Economy

While the site formally belongs to the earliest Neolithic (PPN A), up to now no traces of domesticated plants or animals have been found. The inhabitants were hunters and gatherers. Schmidt speculates that the site played a key function in the transition to agriculture; he assumes that the necessary social organization needed for the creation of these structures went hand-in-hand with the organized exploitation of wild crops.

Recent DNA analysis of modern domesticated wheat compared with wild wheat has shown that its DNA is closest in structure to wild wheat found in a mountain (Karacadag) 20 miles away from the site, leading one to believe that this is where modern wheat was first domesticated.<2>

Chronological context

All statements about the site must be considered preliminary, as only about 1.5% of the site's total area has been excavated as yet; floor levels have only been reached in the second complex (complex B), which also contained a terrazzo-like floor.

Excavations so far have revealed very little evidence for residential use. Through the radiocarbon method, the end of stratum III could be determined at circa 9,000 BC (see above); its beginnings are estimated to 11,000 BC or earlier. Stratum II dates to about 8,000 BC.

Thus, the complexes originated before the so-called Neolithic Revolution, the beginning of agriculture and animal husbandry, which is assumed to begin after 9,000 BC. But the construction of the Göbekli Tepe complex implies organisation of a degree of complexity not hitherto associated with pre-Neolithic societies. The archaeologists estimate that up to 500 persons were required to extract the 10-20 ton pillars (in fact, some weigh up to 50 tons) from local quarries and move them 100 to 500m to the site. <3> For sustenance, wild cereals may have been used more intensely than so far; perhaps they were even deliberately cultivated. Residential buildings have not been discovered as yet, but there are some "special buildings" which may have served for ritual gatherings.

Around the beginning of the 8th millennium BC, "Navel Mountain" lost its importance. The advent of agriculture and animal husbandry brought new circumstances to human life in the area. But the complex was not gradually abandoned and simply forgotten, to be obliterated by the forces of nature over time. Instead, it was deliberately covered with 300 to 500 cubic metres of soil. Why this happened is unknown, but it preserved the monuments for posterity.

At present, the complex raises more questions to archaeology and prehistory than it answers. For example, we cannot tell why more and more walls were gradually added to the interiors while the sanctuary was in use.

Interpretation and Importance

Göbekli Tepe can be seen as an archaeological discovery of the greatest possible importance, since it profoundly changes our understanding of a vital point in the development of human societies. Apparently, the erection of monumental complexes was within the capacities of hunter-gatherers and not only of sedentary farming communities as had been assumed hitherto. In other words, as Klaus Schmidt put it: "First came the temple, then the city". This revolutionary hypothesis will have to be supported or modified by future research. Schmidt considers Göbekli Tepe as a central place serving a cult of the dead. He suggests that the carved animals are there to protect the dead. However, no tombs or graves have been found so far. Schmidt sees the site in connection with the initial stages of an incipient Neolithic. It is one of several neolithic sites in the vicinity of Mount Karaca Dağ, an area where geneticists suspect the origins of at least some of our cultivated grains (see Einkorn). Such scholars suggest that the Neolithic revolution, i.e. the beginnings of grain cultivation, took place here. Schmidt and others believe that mobile groups in the area were forced to cooperate with each other to protect early concentrations of wild cereals from wild animals (herds of gazelles and wild donkeys). This would have led to an early social organization of various groups in the area of Göbekli Tepe. Thus, according to Schmidt, the Neolithic did not begin at a small scale in the form of individual instances of garden cultivation, but started immediately as a large scale social organisation ("a full-scale revolution'"'<4>).

Not only its large dimensions, but the side-by-side existence of multiple pillar shrines makes the complex unique. There are no comparable monumental complexes from its time. Nevalı Çori, a well-known Neolithic settlement also excavated by the German Archaeological Institute, and submerged by the Atatürk Dam since 1992, is 500 years later, its T-shaped pillars are considerably smaller, and its shrine was located inside a village; the roughly contemporary architecture at Jericho is devoid of artistic merit or large-scale sculpture; and Çatalhöyük, perhaps the most famous of all Neolithic villages, is 2,000 years later.

Absolutely fascinating .... THANKS for this thread ...

[14thColony]

17. There is mounting evidence

That there's about to be a titanic ripping sound in archaeology as the "Received Wisdom of the Origins and History of Human Civilization(tm)" comes apart at the seams.

Yes, this could be mis-dated. But it's becoming suspicious how many 'mis-dated anomolies' happen to mis-date to 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, coinciding with the end of Last Glacial Maximum and the last ice age. The Geological Society of America has endorsed research that the Great Sphinx existed in its present form at least 10,000 years ago. India's national maritime archaeology institute is standing by its claim that it has found a 10 sq mile city submerged at a depth of 120ft in the Gulf of Cambay, and dredges have brought up human-made artifacts as well as human bones. Sea level modeling and carbon dating or wooden artifacts both point to the city having been submerged about 9,500 years ago. And the list goes on -- the massive structures on Gozo that date to about 10,000 years ago, the cart tracks on Gozo and other Maltese islands that continue well below modern sea levels onto seabed that was dry land up to about 10,000 years ago, etc., etc.

It strains credulity to believe they are ALL merely mis-dated anomolies.

I am becoming increasingly of the opinion that the emergence of human civilization in the Near East 7-8,000 years ago was actually a re-emergence, and that human civilization has been sent back to square one by Mother Nature at least once in our 250,000 years as Homo Sapiens.

[alfredo]

20. It is indeed very old. They found depictions of Larry King's Senior Prom.

[AnnieBW]

5. Did they ride dinosaurs, too?

That's what the Creation Museum says!

[Bolo Boffin]

6. We really have no clue of what happened in prehistory

There was a recent show on something like the History Channel. It was about how our structures would crumble away if humans just disappeared. Watching that show, it made me really aware of just how easy it would be for earlier civilazations to simply disappear if they were there.

We owe it to the human species to maintain as much information as we can about the past and about ourselves. We at least owe it to ourselves to try.

[L. Coyote]

13. There is an awesome amount of evidence. It is the interprtation that is clueless.

There are mounds, pyramids, earthworks, stone circles, monoliths, etc. almost everywhere.
European Dark Age Culture do not know how to read all this.
That does not mean that traditional cultures are equally ignorant!

I recommend learning a Native language and spending a few years in another culture before you speak for the whole world.

[Seldona]

8. Very cool article.

Thanks for posting. Bookmarked Archaeological News as well.

Seems to me if the structures have been around for 12k years the civilization that built them would have been around for some time before they were made. This does change the way we look at ancient man. Amazing.

[ananda]

9. The monuments are fantastic to behold but..

.. why they're called "obelisks" is totally beyond me.

[Wilms]

10. South Eastern Turkey?

ie: Armenia

But that's another story.

[KakistocracyHater]

11. Egyptian/Kametion pyramids built in Age of Leo

But it is interesting that the T-Shape is ALSO in central/south America, only there they used it as a doorway.

But we are talking about southeast Turkey-is it in the area where there are natural blondes & redheads? Near where Medea lived? Hunter-gatherers may be collapsing our modern ocean fisheries but I highly doubt it was that group that built these T-Shaped things; it seems more likely that it was built by those who were already farming & cultivating fig trees. Recently they found very old campfire/cooking pits-I think it was in the Israel area; they found grain seeds & other foodstuffs.

http://forums.skadi.net/archive/index.php/t-58936.html
"Bar-Ilan University researchers have found a cache of 120,000 wild oat and 260,000 wild barley grains at the Gilgal archaeological site near Jericho that date back 11,000 years - providing evidence of cultivation during the Neolithic Period.

The research, performed by Drs. Ehud Weiss and Anat Hartmann of BIU's department of Land of Israel studies and Prof. Mordechai Kislev of the faculty of life sciences, appears in the June 16 edition of the prestigious journal Science.(2006)

It is the second time in two weeks that Kislev and Hartmann have had an article in Science. They recently wrote about their discovery of 10,000-year-old cultivated figs at the same Jordan Valley site."....

http://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/sci.anthropology.paleo/2006-06/msg00305.html
......."According to the researchers, the newest find shows that the transition
from nomadic food gathering and the beginning of agriculture were quite
different than previously thought. Until now, the general assumption
has been that agriculture was begun by a single line of human efforts
in one specific area. But the BIU researchers found a much more
complicated effort undertaken by different human populations in
different regions, drawing a completely new picture of the origins of
agriculture."......

[14thColony]

18. Don't underestimate hunter-gatherer cultures

The Jōmon culture of prehistoric Japan only began limited agriculture relatively late it its existance, well after the Jōmon had become sedentary town-dwelling hunter-gatherers. The same applies to certain Native American tribes of the Pacific NW, who were sedentary while still being H-Gs. Jarred Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel points out that in naturally very productive areas like parts of Japan and the Pacific NW, the H-G lifestyle often out-produces the domestic crop/domestic animal lifestyle, resulting in more leisure time available to the hunter-gatherers and often longer lifespans. So not impossible that this was a sedentary H-G culture that had time to make monuments.

[No Elephants]

12. Totally cool thread. Thanks, Balantz and other posters.

[L. Coyote]

14. Google 'Göbekli Tepe observatory' and follow the link to some videos.

It should be Göbekli Tepe and not one word, to get good search results.

2008.04.25 - When is a "moon temple" an observatory? .......

[Thothmes]

15. Wonder what dating technology was used to determine

the 10K date?

[pleah]

16. K&R This is so fascinating.

I love reading about this. Thanks.:)

[ihavenobias]

22. Agreed.

:)

[waiting for hope]

19. Thanks balantz -

Great find - K&R!

[balantz]

21. Kick