11,500 year-old temple found in Turkey, predates Pyramids, rewrites history (but is it really a temple?)

History in the Remaking

A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution.

Photo: Berthold Steinhilber/Laif-Redux
A pillar at the Gobekli Tepe temple near Sanliurfa, Turkey, the oldest known temple in the world
By Patrick Symmes | NEWSWEEK
Published Feb 19, 2010
From the magazine issue dated Mar 1, 2010

Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn't just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture—the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.

Göbekli Tepe—the name in Turkish for "potbelly hill"—lays art and religion squarely at the start of that journey. After a dozen years of patient work, Schmidt has uncovered what he thinks is definitive proof that a huge ceremonial site flourished here, a "Rome of the Ice Age," as he puts it, where hunter-gatherers met to build a complex religious community. Across the hill, he has found carved and polished circles of stone, with terrazzo flooring and double benches. All the circles feature massive T-shaped pillars that evoke the monoliths of Easter Island.

Though not as large as Stonehenge—the biggest circle is 30 yards across, the tallest pillars 17 feet high—the ruins are astonishing in number. Last year Schmidt found his third and fourth examples of the temples. Ground-penetrating radar indicates that another 15 to 20 such monumental ruins lie under the surface. Schmidt's German-Turkish team has also uncovered some 50 of the huge pillars, including two found in his most recent dig season that are not just the biggest yet, but, according to carbon dating, are the oldest monumental artworks in the world.

The new discoveries are finally beginning to reshape the slow-moving consensus of archeology. Göbekli Tepe is "unbelievably big and amazing, at a ridiculously early date," according to Ian Hodder, director of Stanford's archeology program. Enthusing over the "huge great stones and fantastic, highly refined art" at Göbekli, Hodder—who has spent decades on rival Neolithic sites—says: "Many people think that it changes everything…It overturns the whole apple cart. All our theories were wrong."

via newsweek.com and ablogabouthistory.com

Wow--11,500 years! That's over 100 centuries! Truly an amazing find.

But isn't it interesting how we assume it must be a temple--as in, a religious temple. The article goes on to explain Schmidt's theory, that "it was the urge to worship that brought mankind together in the very first urban conglomerations."

Really? What makes you so sure that economics, culture and the dating scene wouldn't have played roles? And who's to say that this "temple" was even a temple? What if their idea of "temple" was more about "worshiping" the mechanics of the universe? Observatories on hills, like this one, could provide markers and instruction to those who would look out at the stars and understand what it all meant for people on Earth could easily be an explanation, too. In fact, I've read that such observatories did exactly this in other places in history.

Honestly, it seems like there's just not enough info to decide whether or not there were gods worshiped here or anywhere else almost 12,000 years ago. I mean, these people had no written language--how can anyone assume that the reason someone moved a 10-ton stone was because of a love for some god?

Think about what that means--so, you bust your ass moving a giant fricken rock just to praise some invisible being that may or may not even exist? Wouldn't it make more sense that such stones were moved to benefit other people, rather than some god?? Which is a safer assumption? The latter, I'd say.

Schmidt's suggestions that there were "No fire pits. No trash heaps. There is no water here." make sense, but that doesn't mean you just haven't found them yet. Nobody puts the food court right next to the movie theater at the shopping mall, right? ;)

I often wonder about scientists that are so sure of their conclusions despite having only their own perspectives and the perspectives of those that think like them to go on. The people on this site lived 11.5 **millennia** ago.

Maybe, just *maybe* they thought differently from us?

Posted via web from thepete's posterous