Göbekli Tepe / Oldest Temple of the world

• Share
• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Friendfeed
• Share to Google

Print

GÖBEKLI TEPE: THE DIVINE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION?

Written by Thomas Büsch. Posted in Feed the Sense, Sense of Time, Sustainibility

http://senseoftime.inenart.eu/?p=2013

In recent years, startling archaeological discoveries have indicated that human civilization is millennia older than we have long thought it is. Case in point: Göbekli Tepe, a Neolithic santuary perched atop a hill in southeastern Anatolia in Turkey. This sacred place, with its megaliths and strange animal carvings, is 6,000 years older than Stonehenge. That makes Göbekli Tepe 11,000 to 12,000 years old. Wiki: "The site was most likely erected by hunter-gatherers in the 10th millennium BC and has been under excavation since 1994 by German and Turkish archaeologists. Together with Nevalı Çori, it has revolutionized understanding of the Eurasian Neolithic." It is considered by scholars to be one of the most, if not the most, important archaeological site in the world.

Göbekli Tepe comprises twenty round structures – stone circles made up of edifices weighing dozens of tonnes – which took enormous effort to build. Then, strangely, the entire complex was buried by local people 2,000 years after it was constructed, around 8,000 BCE. This is somewhat equivalent to ancient Egyptians burying the pyramids. That act adds to the questions and a dark mystery surrounding the site's purpose. Why cover up something so spiritually significant? To our mindset, it would suggest the site was cursed; some have linked it to the Garden of Eden and Cain and Abel stories in the bible. Its lead archaeologist has called Göbekli Tepe not the 'Garden of Eden,' but the 'Temple of Eden.' One theory suggests that the burial reflected a great conflict between the dying hunter-gatherer society and a rising agricultural society, indicated by evidence of mass human sacrifices in the nearby Stone Age village of Caynou. If the place was cursed, what does it mean that it is now being unearthed around the turn of the Millennium?