The first is its staggering age. Carbon-dating shows that the complex is at least 12,000 years old, maybe even 13,000 years old.
That means it was built around 10,000BC. By comparison, Stonehenge was built in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2,500 BC.
Gobekli is thus the oldest such site in the world, by a mind-numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant, right back in our hunter-gatherer past.
How did cavemen build something so ambitious? Schmidt speculates that bands of hunters would have gathered sporadically at the site, through the decades of construction, living in animal-skin tents, slaughtering local game for food.
The many flint arrowheads found around Gobekli support this thesis; they also support the dating of the site.
This revelation, that Stone Age hunter-gatherers could have built something like Gobekli, is worldchanging, for it shows that the old hunter-gatherer life, in this region of Turkey, was far more advanced than we ever conceived - almost unbelievably sophisticated.
Here' what the linked article says about the Eden connection:
In the Book of Genesis, it is indicated that Eden is west of Assyria. Sure enough, this is where Gobekli is sited.Smithsonian on Gobleki Tepe.
Likewise, biblical Eden is by four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates. And Gobekli lies between both of these.
In ancient Assyrian texts, there is mention of a 'Beth Eden' - a house of Eden. This minor kingdom was 50 miles from Gobekli Tepe.
Another book in the Old Testament talks of 'the children of Eden which were in Thelasar', a town in northern Syria, near Gobekli.
The very word 'Eden' comes from the Sumerian for 'plain'; Gobekli lies on the plains of Harran.
Thus, when you put it all together, the evidence is persuasive. Gobekli Tepe is, indeed, a 'temple in Eden', built by our leisured and fortunate ancestors - people who had time to cultivate art, architecture and complex ritual, before the traumas of agriculture ruined their lifestyle, and devastated their paradise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpDgLX3MwOg&feature=related
ReplyDeleteGreat YouTube video of Gobekli Tepi, from one of our Turkish allies who loves the West so much (LOL----he despises the West). The images are teh best Ive seen of the site.
Here is a reconstruction of one of the buildings at Gobekli Tepi:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK_hfylYH-w
The previous "oldest settlement" in the world, the small village of Catal Huyuk----from about 7,500 BC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAr2CNAsMuI&feature=related
Its now estimated that perhaps as many as 10,000 lived at Catal Huyuk, but I think thats probably an overstatement personally. It does predate Jericho though.
Eons from now, archaeologists will marvel at this stone monstrosity in the United States state of Georgia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojyBTAuv8Uc&feature=relate
(I couldn't believe the last one was really in Georgia, but Ive been able to confirm it. Some nut or group of nuts put that up in 1980)
YouTube is truly invaluable now IMO. It lets you "go around" the MSM.
Çatalhöyük in southern Turkey is a site that has been examined much more thoroughly than the Schmidt site. I've visited the Turkish Historical/Archeological Museum twice in Ankara and been blown away by the eons of civilizations that at that time started at Catal Huyuk, as it is spelled in the Roman alphabet. CH is around 9500 years old and is an elaborate urban complex. Joseph Campbell has about 30 pages on it in one of his Masks of God books.
ReplyDeleteI always mistrust articles by authors such as Knox who are selling a book and who neglect to mention the nearby site of CH, which is much more elaborate than the GT site appears to be, and dated much more accurately with carbon 14 from many artifacts.
By the way, any time you read about "human sacrifice" to their gods, we're almost always talking about cannabalism and the yummy protein that brains and bone marrow provide when long pig is roasted just right. My [deceased] brother lived with Sea Dyaks in Borneo for a while and passed on this grisly little factoid he picked up in his many trips with archeologists into the boonies....
"built by our leisured and fortunate ancestors": unless it was built by a few surviving Neanderthals, of course, as their sort finally perished.
ReplyDeleteAn astonishing site, despite the predictable, tiresome eco-fable Knox tries to weave around it. How little we really know about our ancestors.
ReplyDeleteTschafer
BTW............the Bible DOES NOT say that Eden was "west of Assyria". It says that "God planted a garden IN THE EAST, in Eden", and that Eden was between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Thats all that is said about the location of Eden other than some very strange language about a flaming sword protecting the place "to this day" that is obviously symbolic.
ReplyDeleteJournalists are horrible these days.
Gobleki Tepi has been in the news for over a year also. Its not "new" news, its just that it upsets the traditional view of our origins and the media doesn't like anything it cannot understand or that threatens the generally accepted worldviews. If we, for instance, discovered some very old civilization (like that rumored underwater "city" off of Japan) and dated it to 20,000BC by carbon dating..............the establishment wouldn't like it at all. It would threaten all of the "earth is only 6,000 year-old-types", and some people's notions of their own superiority, etc.
You can see by the attatched YouTube video that some Turkish-nit-wit wants to claim Gobleki Tepi as a "proof" of "his" people being superior to "Eurotrash". The truth is that the desecendents of this place are probably spread out all over the world genetically.
Lawrence Auster doesn't seem to accept carbon dating by his latest blog post concerning Gobleki Tepi. Carbon 14's half life isn't alterable by neither heat nor pressure and has been tested many many many times to access its accuracy.
Dennis, who is this Anonymous who keeps firing off cheap shots at your site, yet doesn't even have a name? He writes:
ReplyDelete"Lawrence Auster doesn't seem to accept carbon dating by his latest blog post concerning Gobleki Tepi."
I didn't say anything about doubting carbon dating. Here's what I said:
"However (are you sitting down?), the Turkish site, called Gobekli Tepe, is 12,000 years old. That is 7,000 years older than Stonehenge and Newgrange and 7,500 years older than the pyramids of Giza.
"Which means that civilization began long, long before we previously believed, even before the invention of agriculture.
"If what the scientists are saying is true, if the structure in the above picture is really 12,000 years (which I personally find hard to believe), then this is one of the most astonishing things I've seen in my life."
In obvious excitement, I reported the extraordinary age of the site and underscored its epochal significance. Then, in parentheses, I remarked that I personally found it hard to believe that such an artifact could be that old. It was a way of expressing how amazing this is. I think that when presented with something that goes beyond anything ever seen before, not instantly and totally subscribing it what one is told is a good thing.
Further all the article says about carbon dating is this:
"Carbon-dating shows that the complex is at least 12,000 years old, maybe even 13,000 years old."
That's one sentence, from one writer, in one newspaper article, passing on a statement from no one knows what source. Other commenters have pointed out that an author trying to sell a book, as Knox is, is not the most trustworthy source.
Further, it's the first I've ever heard of this subject.
So, does the commenter who doesn't name himself yet fires cheap shots at others mind if I read a few more articles about this archeological site before I absorb these amazing facts and accept them as 100 percent established?
Or does he think that being scientific means instantly accepting what one is told in a single, unsourced newspaper article?
I found the comments of "anonymous" a bit all-over-the-place myself. You had mentioned nothing about carbon dating; as for a narrative that the MSM doesn't go for, the MSM is where we're reading about it.
ReplyDeletethe establishment wouldn't like it at all. It would threaten all of the "earth is only 6,000 year-old-types", and some people's notions of their own superiority, etc.
Somehow I doubt that the establishment and the young-earhers have much in common. I just don't get the point he's trying to make here. No, it's not "new" news, but... what?
As I said in an e-mail to Mr. Mangan, I respectfully suggest that comments under the rubric "Anonymous" be eliminated. The main problem with them is that readers have no way of knowing if different comments by "Anonymous" are by the same person, or different people. The result is that you never know whom you're dealing with, and the Anonymous one (or ones) is not accountable for what he's said.
ReplyDeleteGiven how easy it is to establish an account with a name, with any name one wants, there's no reason not to require that commenters register using a name. The point is not that it be their real name, but that they post under a consistent name so that other posters know who is saying what, and posters are accountable for what they've said. But under the present system, as someone once put it at VFR, "Any masked poltroon can walk in and say any fool thing."
If commenters know that they will be known at a blog for foolish things they write, they will take more care with their comments and not just toss off thoughtless remarks.