The grandiose megalithic temple complex of Portasar, located in the south of the Armenian Highlands, was discovered in 1994 during excavations on the Göbekli Tepe hill (tur. Göbekli Tepe - "Pot-bellied hill"). The Armenian name of this hill is Portasar (Armenian Պորտասար - Umbilical Mountain).
Excavations on a mountain slope 2.5 kilometers from the village of Orendzhik in southeastern Turkey, 55 km from the Syrian border, were led by an expedition of the Istanbul branch of the German Archaeological Institute under the leadership of Klaus Schmidt, assistant professor of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin.
German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt dated his find in ancient Anatolia to the 9th millennium BC, which allows a fresh look at the ancient history of human civilization.
When in 1994 Schmidt Klaus Schmidt began excavations on the Göbekli Tepe hill, he was sure that these excavations would become the main business of his life. The temple structure is the oldest of the largest megalithic structures in the world.
Stonehenge.
The archaeological temple complex on the Partasar hill (or Göbekle Tepe) is 12,000 years old, it can be compared with the English Stonehenge, with the only difference that the ruins of the Partasar (or Göbekle Tepe) temple in Anatolia are 6 thousand years older than Stonehenge.
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Archaeological and geomagnetic studies (2003) showed that the Portasar Temple complex, about 300 meters in diameter, was deliberately covered with a 15-meter layer of earth in the 8th millennium BC. e.
The construction of the megalithic temple began back in the Mesolithic era (ancient Greek μέσος - middle + λίθος - stone) and lasted several thousand years. In the Mesolithic era, people did not yet build permanent dwellings for themselves, and earned their food by hunting and gathering, the inhabitants of Southeast Anatolia erected a monumental sanctuary for their gods.
The temple complex consists of 20 concentric structures, of 12 sculptural pillars, and two T-shaped pillars protruding in the center of the circle - round temples. The diameter of some of the temple circles reaches 30 meters.
The builders built the Porthazar Temple Complex from about 10,000 to 8500 BC. and reflected the position of the constellation Orion-Taurus-Pleiades, visible before dawn on the vernal equinox from the direction of the T-shaped pillars in the center of each circular temple.
Temples have been identified as A, B, C, D.
The common feature of the four open temples is two T-shaped pillars located in the center of the temples and 10 or 12 pillars surrounding them. Pole heights range from 3 to 6 meters (10 and 20 feet).
The surface of some 3-meter T-shaped columns is covered with relief images of animals and pictograms, made in the technique of stone carving. The moon is in the form of a crescent, and the sun is depicted as a circle with a cavity in the center.
Among the images on the columns you can see animals - lions, bulls, wild boars, foxes, gazelles, snakes, scorpions, insects, spiders, birds, but most often the image of vultures and waterfowl.
The astronomical meaning of these symbols is indisputable, the meaning of these symbolic images is in indicating their position in the sky. Perhaps the temple complex on the Göbekli Tepe hill was built as an observatory for the purpose of observing celestial objects, the movement of planets and constellations.
In the book The Cygnus Mystery, Andrew Collins described the ancient temple on the hill, Portasar (or Göbekli Tepe), is the most ancient temple of our civilization.
Andrew Collins carried out astronomical calculations, and came to the conclusion that the stone structures of the temple are navigationally precisely oriented to the constellation Cygnus. According to Andrew Collins, the monument dates back to 17,000 BC, when Deneb, the brightest star in the constellation Cygnus, was the Pole Star.
Persia-Girofta 5000 BC - southeast of Iran.
Italian astronomer Giuglio Mali from the Polytechnic University of Milan also puts forward the theory that Göbekli Tepe temples may have been built to observe Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky.
According to Giuglio Malia, the builders of the ancient structure could celebrate the birth of a new bright star in the sky.
The Porthazar temple complex contains a stone slab with constellation symbols that accurately represent a well-recognized part of the starry sky. One of the embossed symbols - the Vulture with asymmetrical wings fits into the astronomical arrangement of the stars of the Cygnus constellation.
On one of the stone slabs of the archaeological monument, among the symbols of the celestial constellations, there is an image of Scorpio, a constellation located in the opposite part of the starry sky to the Cygnus constellation.
Researchers suggested that the Scorpio symbol means that the stone slab depicts part of the starry sky during the Scorpio era. As a result of calculations, scientists managed to get the position of the Cygnus-Vulture constellation, which it occupied in the sky 18.5 thousand years ago.
The ancient creators of this archaeological site, apparently, wanted to convey to their distant descendants, after many millennia, information about the location of the constellations during the construction of the structure - in the era of Scorpio.
It seems incredible that the ancient builders of this megalithic structure in the Neolithic era knew about the ecliptic, about precession, about the movement of stars and constellations in the sky.
In addition to the easily recognizable images of animals, many abstract signs were found, carved in relief on the stone in lines, perhaps these are the first letters.
The central pillars, which depict longitudinal reliefs in the form of the letter "H" and the signs of the Sun and the Moon, have stylized signs of the human body, on both sides of the pillar there are hands closed on the stomach, in the place of the navel (omphal - ancient Greek ὀμφαλός - navel). It is likely that high stone pillars symbolize the gods or goddesses of the Neolithic, the deity has no face.
Scythian idols of the Northern Black Sea region.
The position of the closed hands can be considered special or even sacred, such a position of the hands is found in the stone Scythian idols standing on the Scythian mounds throughout the Northern Black Sea region and in the Crimea.
The Sumerian goddess Inanna was depicted standing and with folded arms, the same images on the central stone pillars found on the Göbekli Tepe hill. Similarly, the position of the hands is depicted on the stone giant statues of Easter Island. Some researchers suggest that the position of the hands folded at the navel symbolizes "birth" or "rebirth".
Compared to Stonehenge - the most famous prehistoric monument in Great Britain - the ancient structures of Anatolia amaze with the grandeur of the scale of construction. Twenty round stone structures, in the form of vertically installed stone pillars, in a circle with a diameter of 30 meters, decorated with stone carvings depicting animals and birds, were created in 9.5 thousand years BC. e.
The Neolithic temples of ancient Anatolia are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia and 7,000 years older than English Stonehenge.
Archaeologists believe that the research of the temple complex on the Göbekli Tepe hill will continue for about 50 more years, today archaeologists have excavated only four temples out of twenty.
