A sensational find by a German archaeologist in 1994 in Anatolia provides a fresh look at the ancient history of human civilization. On a mountainside in Southeast Turkey, near the Syrian border, an expedition led by Klaus Schmidt dug up a magnificent ancient temple that is 12 thousand years old.
Ancient Stonehenge
Klaus Schmidt, assistant professor at the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin, is studying the ancient history of mankind. When Schmidt began excavations at Gobekli Tepe in 1994, he was confident that these excavations would become the main business of his life. The archaeological complex in this area can be compared with Stonehenge in England, with the only difference that the ruins in Anatolia are 6 thousand years older.
As a child, Klaus Schmidt did not crawl out of the caves in his native Germany, hoping to find prehistoric drawings there. Thirty years later, already representing the German Archaeological Institute, he discovered something infinitely more important - a temple complex, almost twice as old as all similar structures on the planet.
“This place is a supernova,” Schmidt says, standing under a lone tree on a windswept hill 55 kilometers north of Turkey's border with Syria. “Already in the first minute after its discovery, I knew that I had two ways: either to leave here without saying a word to anyone, or to spend the rest of my life here, at these excavations.”
The first curves of the Anatolian plateau open behind him. Hundreds of miles ahead to Baghdad and farther south is the Mesopotamian Plain, like a sea of dust. Directly ahead, hidden behind a ledge of a hill, are the stone circles of Gobekli Tepe. In those days, when people did not yet build permanent dwellings for themselves, did not know how to make the simplest clay bowl, and earned their food by hunting and gathering, the inhabitants of South-Eastern Anatolia erected a monumental sanctuary for their gods.
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Compared to Stonehenge - the most famous prehistoric monument in the UK - they are not impressive in scale. None of the excavated circular structures (and there are currently four out of twenty of them) exceed 30 meters in diameter. What makes these finds completely unique is the images of wild boars, foxes, lions, birds, snakes and scorpions carved on them, as well as the age of the finds themselves. They were created in 9.5 thousand years BC. They are 5.5 thousand years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia and 7 thousand years older than Stonehenge.
Almost like Jericho
In Gobekli Tepe, archaeologists have discovered on a hill a gigantic complex of round buildings and stone pillars with carved reliefs. At present, only a small part of the buildings have been excavated, but if you take into account the age of the ruins, it immediately becomes clear that this is a unique archaeological site.
The ancient ruins of Nevali-Keri, which have been at the bottom of the Ataturk reservoir since 1992, are almost as old as Gobekli Tepe, their age is 10,500 years. But the pillars are much smaller, and the decoration is more modest. With the temples of Gobekli Tepe can compete at the age of Jericho, but there are no large sculptures, no architectural decorations.
All other ancient archaeological sites belong to a different era - they arose about 2 thousand years later. The people who created these rounded monuments and stone bas-reliefs, this whole complex, did not even have pottery and did not grow cereals. They lived in settlements. But they were hunters, not farmers.
Judging by the age of the Gobekli-Tepe complex, it was in this area that hunters and gatherers switched to a sedentary lifestyle. In Gobekli Tepe, first of all, the intellectual abilities of the people of the Stone Age, their hard work and knowledge of construction are amazed. But until now, scientists were sure that the implementation of such gigantic projects as the construction of a temple presupposes a sedentary lifestyle and a high degree of organization.
“It has always been assumed that only complex societies with a hierarchical structure could build such monumental structures, and that they only appeared with the advent of tillage,” says Ian Hodder, professor of anthropology at Stanford University, who has been leading the excavation since 1993. in Chatal Hoyuk - the most famous of the Neolithic settlements in Turkey. - Gobekli turned all representations. This is a complex structure and dates back to the era before the birth of agriculture. This fact alone puts him among the most important archaeological finds for a very long period of time."
Why was the sanctuary covered with earth?
The archaeological site at Gobekli Tepe was first surveyed in 1963. However, then archaeologists underestimated its importance, and for a long time they did not work there at all. On the hill, in the thickness of which the temple complex is located, there was a field of oats. The peasants now and then removed the bulky stones that interfered with them from the fields, so that the upper part of the temple was destroyed before scientists examined it.
Based on the excavated sites, it can be concluded that people stayed here for a very long time. Several smaller buildings were found near the circular building of the sanctuary, in which, apparently, some kind of ritual gatherings were held. But in all these buildings there is not the slightest sign of human habitation.
The excavations have been going on for ten years. As a result, only a small part has been cleared so far, but the purpose of Gobekli Tepe for the people who built it remains unclear. Some believe that this place was intended for fertility rituals, and the two tall stones in the center of each circle symbolize a man and a woman.
But Schmidt is skeptical about the theory of fertility. He shares the opinion that Gobekli Tepe could be "the last flourishing of a semi-nomadic society, which was about to be destroyed by the coming age of agriculture." He points out that if today this place has been preserved in almost perfect condition, it is only because its builders soon buried their creation under tons of earth, as if their world, rich in wild animals, had lost all its significance.
But it lacks the fertility symbols found in other Neolithic excavations, and the T-pillars, while clearly semi-human, are asexual. “I think this is where we came across the earliest depictions of gods,” Schmidt says, stroking one of the largest boulders with his hand. “They have no eyes, no mouths, no faces. But they have hands and they have palms. These are the creators."
“From my point of view, the people who carved them were asking the greatest questions of all,” the scientist continues. - What is the universe? Why are we here?"
Perhaps the most interesting thing in Gobekli Tepe is its last days. The buildings are undoubtedly filled up, and this explains their good preservation. All ancient religious buildings were simply abandoned, abandoned, but the temple on the Anatolian hill was literally buried in the ground. A massive building with monolithic giant pillars covered with magnificent reliefs, filled to the brim with stones and soil, so that it literally disappeared underground.
"Portraits" of wild animals
Although archaeologists have freed only a part of Gobekli Tepe from under the embankment, it is already possible to estimate the unusually large size of the sanctuary. It consists of four different temples, surrounded by a low stone fence. T-shaped monoliths with partially preserved reliefs are especially interesting. They depict birds, gazelles, bulls in a very naturalistic way. Next to the image of a donkey and a snake, you can distinguish the head of a fox. There are even spiders and a three-dimensional wild boar with a frowning blunt muzzle.
The fact that the builders of the temple attached great importance to the animal world is in itself not surprising. But they portrayed wild animals, and this confirms the assumption that the creators of the sanctuary were not sedentary farmers. Another thing is interesting: in the vicinity of Gobekli Tepe, all kinds of wild-growing cereals are presented, which were later cultivated as cereals.
Mysterious pictograms
Perhaps Gobekli Tepe is the missing link in the chain - a connecting element between the primitive nomadic hunter-gatherers and sedentary farmers. The production of monolithic stone pillars with reliefs requires certain professional skills - this requires masons. This means that other people supplied the artisans-stonecutters with everything necessary for life, that is, they had a society based on the division of labor.
Some of the pillars have pictograms. Some archaeologists speculate that these icons may have influenced systems of signs that arose at a later time, but it is difficult to trace whether there is a connection between them. Hieroglyphs were not common in neighboring Mesopotamia, but in Ancient Egypt, that is, far from Gobekli Tepe. In addition, the time interval between Ancient Egypt and the Gobekli Tepe culture is very long.
The end of the Gobekli Tepe sanctuary fell on the beginning of the 8th millennium BC. At this time, agriculture spread to neighboring Mesopotamia. The soil in the vicinity of Gobekli Tepe is scarce, perhaps for this very reason the sanctuary has lost its significance. The most important centers were formed much further south, on fertile plains, in river valleys. At least, this can partly explain why people left the temple, where for hundreds of years their ancestors worshiped the gods. They covered the sanctuary with stones and left there forever.
The lessons of Gobekli Tepe encourage us to reconsider the idea of the so-called Neolithic revolution. Until now, historians thought that the transition of nomadic tribes to a sedentary lifestyle created the preconditions for the construction of large urban centers and huge temples. But the experience of Gobekli Tepe proves that, in all likelihood, it was just the opposite: the very existence of a grandiose sanctuary, where the main rituals took place, prompted people not to move away from it, but to stay close to the holy place and make permanent dwellings for themselves. So, at first there was a temple, and then a house, a village and a city.
There is another very interesting moment connecting Gobekle Tepe with Easter Island. The fact is that the images of bird-headed creatures on the steles in Gobekle Tepe are very similar to the images of the same creatures carved on the stones of Easter Island.
"Birds" with Gobekle Tepe
"Birds" from Easter Island