Göbekli Tepe

Gather 'round, children, for I am about to tell you something you did not know beforehand. Maybe. I didn't know about this place until a few months ago, and I think I'm well versed on the subject. It's incredible! Here's a wiki link, and I encourage you to read it. To wit: This recently discovered temple - massive temple - is one of the oldest structures ever found. Begun in 11000BCE during the neolithic hunter-gatherer era of humanity, it is forcing a complete re-write in early human history.

 Here's the site, near Turkey's border with Syria, it's estimated that only 5% of the site has been excavated to date. It's huge! And hard to explain in many ways - so far, there's no evidence anyone lived there. No cooking, no waste piles, no apparent residences. Instead, it seems entirely devoted to seasonal worship - hunter-gatherer tribes from all around would gather there for their religious functions. Furthermore, the age of this complex predates not only cities and other religious temples, but even agriculture. In fact, a working theory is that agriculture was domesticated at this site, because of this site (there's good evidence to support it - the oldest wheat we can trace back is in this region, as is the domestication of the pig and several other animals. Furthermore, ancient Mesopotamian myths told the story of the gods and agriculture being brought to Earth at a far off mountain site - possibly, this site.).

The operating theory previously was: Hunter-Gatherers gradually grouped in bigger and bigger numbers, and through some luck, began domesticating food and animals, and that allowed more complex cities to be developed, which in turn caused more central organization to be required, which in turn led to the creation of castes, and eventually the Priestly caste, who used religion as the organizing principle.

With this discovery, all that gets tossed aside, as the temple came before the city, before the farm, before anything. Someone had to have organized this construction - it involves 50 ton pieces of stone. How would a bunch of un-affiliated hunter-gatherer tribes been able to pull that off? Maybe we'll find out with further excavation.

The artwork found throughout the site is very different than later cultures - it appears to be entirely totemic, and without any evidence of war or violence. The site was continuously used for thousands of years, but something clearly happened in the region around 6000BCE, since not only was the site completely abandoned, but very oddly, it was entirely buried under many feet of dirt. I'm sure those were interesting times!

This burial is a blessing to us, though, since it preserved much of the site. And now it's just a matter of pick-axes, muscle, and brushes, and time, till we find out more. Stay tuned!

One final picture: There are very few depictions of humans at the site, but here's one striking example found so far. You'll note the similarity to ancient "Venus" statues that our ancestors worshiped way, way, way back in our past: