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| Aerial view of the Gobekli Tepe site |
The stone age temples dug into a hill near Sanliurfa in Turkey are
causing a storm. It’s not often we find something that overturns everything we
know, but Gobekli Tepe is a genuine mystery. Archaeology and history are being
rewritten.
Not that you’d know about it. The discoveries haven’t been
suppressed, they’re just not being reported – much.
I came across Gobekli Tepe while doing research for my second novel,
The Shining Ones. I was looking into
shamanism and ancient history, trying to ferret out the earliest languages and
cultural developments, and up popped these mysterious temples. The stone
circles are like nothing else I’d ever seen. The people who built them lived in
a world we can hardly imagine.
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| Twin pillars of Gobekli Tepe |
The temples were built around 10,000 BCE using nothing but flint
tools. The T-shaped pillars stand up to 18 feet high, and many are carved with
beautiful depictions of animals and abstract symbols. Each temple has two
massive T-shaped pillars standing side by side in the centre, and these have
anthropomorphic carvings of hands, as well as what looks like a belt and
buckle. There are no faces, and the lead archaeologist Klaus Schmidt thinks
they represent the earliest gods:
“They have no eyes, no mouths, no faces. But they have arms and they have hands. They are makers. In my opinion, the people who carved them were asking themselves the biggest questions of all. What is this universe? Why are we here?” – from article: 7,000 years older than Stonehenge
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| Note the elaborate belt and buckle, plus animal pelt - possibly a fox. You can clearly see its little toes! |
What makes Gobekli Tepe such a rich source of new and baffling
information is that the temples were buried around 8,000 BCE. Nobody knows why
– perhaps they had outlived their usefulness, or the religion had changed
rendering them obsolete. But it does mean the temples were perfectly preserved.
Some of the carvings look like they could’ve been made last week!
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| These carvings may represent various constellations. Note the headless man at the base - a shamanic symbol, plus the vulture carrying a 'ball' or sun disk. There's a lot of debate about the symbols at the top - handbags?! Some say they represent a shaman's drug pouch. Remember - these were carved with flint tools! |
With the discovery of Gobekli Tepe our ideas and beliefs about the
stone age world of hunter gathers were demolished. We didn’t believe the people
of 12,000 years ago were organised enough to build something this complex. They
must have had a well-defined hierarchy and craftsmen capable of producing such
beautiful sculptures. The temples are aligned with the stars and it’s likely
that the shamanic rites practised there were based on the earliest pillar or
pole star religions found around the world.
[ See my post: The Origins ofChristmas: Part 2 – Shamanic Roots for more on this ancient belief system. ]
All this requires long cultural development over time. Temples don’t
spring fully formed out of nowhere. People used to wonder at the origins of the
civilisations of Sumer and Egypt – they seemed to appear from nowhere, with
fully developed mythologies and beliefs. But earlier cultures have since been
found, and now the temples at Gobekli Tepe take us all the way back to the end
of the Ice Age.
I could go on about this for ages, so I’ll leave you with a video. Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple
was produced and directed by Ahmet Turgut Yazman for Maker Arts. It’s a
fascinating film which covers the science and archaeology, as well as
astronomy, history, religion, and mysticism of the site.
Discover more about Gobekli Tepe
Visit the film’s website: World’s First Temple
Images: Source
