If we were suddenly given a rental time machine, and we went to the times when herds of mammoths roamed Europe, we would hardly recognize the world stretching around.
Having opened a school history textbook, you will learn that Egypt is considered the most ancient state, whose pharaohs built their own tombs as much as 5 thousand years ago. But this is a written history, the events of which are confirmed by documents, papyri with hieroglyphs or tiles with cuneiform writing. And what happened before that?
Architects in animal skins
Funny pictures in the same textbook depict shaggy and lousy Cro-Magnons in scraps of skins chasing mammoths …
And no one will even ask the would-be artist: “But how did the sculptors of the most beautiful statues and builders who piled pyramids grow out of these savages? Why did such a surge of thought and spirit suddenly happen?"
Well, first of all, even mammoth hunters did not wear anything - they wore neat leather pants, sewn together like moccasins, and beautiful suede jackets, embroidered with bone beads, which became fashionable 30 thousand years ago.
And secondly, there is another story that has not yet presented us with its Rosetta Stone, but striking with the depth of the past.
Promotional video:
For example, not so long ago in Göbekli Tepe (this is in Turkey, not too far from our beloved Antalya), archaeologists unearthed the most ancient temple - it is 12 thousand years old!
Just think: before the erection of those same pyramids for another seven thousand years, the inventors of the wheel, the loom and the potter's wheel were not born, and people were already aiming at building a temple!
On the site of the Black Sea, then fresh Novoevksinskoe lake splashed, and where the Baltic is now, Lake Antsilovoe spread. Britain and Ireland, half covered with glaciers, were part of Europe - both the future North Sea and the English Channel were dry land. Forests grew only on the coast of Asia Minor, in southern Italy and Portugal.
To the north stretched the steppes, turning into the tundra steppe - "mammoth prairies", where mammoths, woolly rhinos, and other animals frolicked. The tundra steppe stretched from France and Germany to Siberia, and even further to the north a white glacier wall rose up, reaching modern Vitebsk.
And in this wondrous harsh world they built temples …
Fertile crescent
Apparently, in the Göbekli Tepe area, a whole temple complex is hidden from the eyes - two dozen objects, of which only a few have been excavated. All of them are structures of three-meter columns, similar to the letter "T" and placed in a circle 15-20 meters in diameter. The gaps between the columns are laid with stone. In the center of the mosaic floor, lined with pebbles, there are also columns - five meters high, and low stone benches are located along the walls.
The surface of the columns is densely covered with carvings and skillful bas-reliefs depicting lions, gazelles, bulls, snakes, and wild boars.
By the way, it is not a fact that archaeologists have unearthed a temple, and not an observatory, say, or a meeting house. And that's not the point.
12 thousand years ago - this is the end of the Ice Age, this is the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), which is described as a primitive society of hunter-gatherers, which does not have a social hierarchy and other features characteristic of the state.
However, a construction of such a scale as the one that was unfolding in Göbekli Tepe required state foundations, because each of the columns that were installed in the middle of the round temples weighed 50 tons and required the coordinated work of many hundreds of people. And in the quarry there were “blanks” of massive columns, nine meters long. Here a leader with a shaman will not be enough, a priest and a king are required!
However, one should not think that Göbekli Tepe is unique and inimitable. In the Middle East, an entire region stands out, where people built the world's first houses, domesticated wild cows and raised primitive einkorn wheat. This region stretches from the Nile Valley to Palestine and Phenicia, Syria and Anatolia, Assyria and Mesopotamia. It is shaped like a horseshoe spanning the Arabian Desert and is called the Fertile Crescent.
Whole cultures were born here, flourished and declined. For example, the Natufian culture, which covered the area from Jordan to the Euphrates. She is 12.5 thousand years old.
The houses of the Natufians were uncomplicated - wretched semi-dugouts, often with a stone base, plastered with a mixture of clay and sand. Pillars protruded above the ground, supporting a roof of reeds. The dwellings, like all the first houses, were round in plan, from three to six meters in diameter, with an open hearth in the center. So they lived, building settlements of a hundred or more houses.
Interestingly, the analysis of organic matter in stone mortars of the Natufians showed that they brewed beer more than ten thousand years ago from wheat and barley - even before they learned how to bake bread! True, the Natufiyskoye beer looked more like porridge than a foamy drink.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing among the Natufians or among the builders of Göbekli Tepe is that they were hunters and the population of their large settlements was fed by hunting, fishing, and gathering. Before the Neolithic revolution, when farmers and pastoralists, potters and weavers appeared, it was still very far away. But people had enough - in their area the climate was blessed, and millions of herbivores "supplied" the hunters with meat at any time of the year. No wonder it was in the area of the Fertile Crescent that the biblical Eden, an earthly paradise, where abundance was the rule, was located.
Well, where heaven is, there is hell - the time of civilizational split was approaching. The adherents of agriculture, those who plowed, sowed and grazed livestock, did not want to have anything to do with those who cleverly took the "gifts of nature."
Farmers vs. Hunters
The transition from “takers” to “creators” did not happen abruptly, overnight - it was a gradual process. Archeology shows that in the beginning people domesticated goats and sheep, but cows and horses grazed semi-wild ones. The same with agriculture - they sowed grain and gathered it in the meadows, without disdaining. The god of the hunt was inferior to the god of cultivation.
A good illustration of this process is Catal-Huyuk, one of the oldest settlements, founded in 7.5 thousand years BC.
If in Jericho (8 thousand years BC) there were stone towers and walls, then Chatal Huyuk looked more like a pueblo - the villages of the Indians of Arizona and Utah. The houses, rectangular in plan, did not have common walls, but they stood so close that it was impossible to squeeze between them - they walked along the roofs of buildings. There were no doors in Chatal-Huyuk either, they fell home from the roof through a hatch, where ladders in the form of logs with notches were attached. At night, these "ladders" were removed, and everything - no unauthorized entry is allowed.
Not to say that these were houses with all the conveniences - through a hole in the roof they entered, and ventilated, and removed the smoke from the hearths.
Between the houses, however, there were open spaces - they were used as garbage dumps, and at the same time as public toilets. One can imagine what a stench there was in the settlement! This is not counting the fact that the dead were often buried under the floor …
Houses were built from adobe bricks, covering the walls with wooden beams. The stove and the entrance on the roof were made on the south side of the house, but there was also an opening in the wall that led to a small storage room. The walls of the main room were often decorated with paintings, in addition to the stove and fireplace, there were benches, low couches and boxes for supplies.
Returning to Göbekli Tepe, it is imperative to say about the fate of the temples. They were not destroyed, but rather carefully buried, applying hundreds of tons of earth. At the same time, some of the images on the columns were cut off. It happened about 7.5 thousand years BC, and it is very likely that the descendants of the builders of the temples thus parted with the old gods - the farmers replaced the hunters. If the ancestors were part of nature, lived according to its precepts and honored its laws, then the descendants embarked on the technological path of development, severing ties with nature, opposing it and subjugating it. This is how civilization advanced.
There are enough riddles in Göbekli Tepe, but the most amazing thing is the discovery of the first … let's call them proto-hieroglyphs.
This is how you can characterize images on T-shaped columns. Not all scientists recognize them as the rudiments of writing, however, not only “portraits” of animals are carved in Göbekli Tepe, but also abstract icons: the letter “H” and the same “H”, but lying “on its side”. And also - a circle, a crescent moon, a wavy lattice, a row of crawling snakes, a six-legged spider. Often these signs are closed in a semblance of lines - for sure they mean something, and the then visitors to the temples understood the meaning of what was written out by stonecutters. But for us it is dark.
About 16 temples of Göbekli Tepe are still under a thick layer of soil, and excavations will take at least 50 years. Maybe at least in the future we will have to find out what the ancient stones are silent about?
And then the school textbooks will be edited.
Valery BOLSHAKOV
