Göbekli Tepe is a site in South-East Turkey just north of the Syrian border near the town of Sanliurfa that has been excavated for the past 15 years. The work has been led by the German archaeologist, Klaus Schmidt, who has dated the site to 9600 BC, eerily coinciding
gobekli tepe
with Plato’s date for the destruction of Atlantis. In fairness to those who accept Plato’s date, the existence of the monuments at Göbekli
Tepe at such an early date at least indicates the possibility of Plato’s date being correct. However, I am not altogether happy with the date assigned to the site, as I cannot imagine how the stones were carved without metal tools, a development still some thousands of years in the future.
The site consists of megalithic stone circles with T-shaped uprights on some of which are carved a variety of animals. What is most peculiar is the fact that these monuments were completely buried after hundreds of years of use. Schmidt is convinced that this site marked the transition from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural society. An interesting article is to be found in the March/April 2009 issue of Saudi Aramco World and on its website(a). Philip Coppens has also written(b) on the excavations by Schmidt.
The consensus now is that Göbekli Tepe is the oldest known temple in the world, predating the temples of Malta by an astonishing 4,000-5,000 years. This, of course, is based on the dating offered by Schmidt, which may require revision. However, Adam’s Calendar(c) in Mpumalanga, South Africa, has been dated to over 70,000 BC, which, if true, would throw a lot of theories onto the scrapheap.
However, the idea that Göbekli Tepe is a temple site has been challenged by Professor Ted Banning at the University of Toronto, who has claimed(j) that
it was ‘one of the world’s biggest garbage dumps’ suggested by the amounts of
bones, tools and charcoal found there. Instead, he claims that the structures
were homes, I personally find this unconvincing. Needless to say Schmidt is also unhappy with Banning’s contention and is currently writing a rebuttal of his claim.
Readers might be interested in comparing the monuments of Gobekli Tepe with the taulas
- taula
of Menorca(d)at the far end of the Mediterranean. Some of these are also to be found in clusters. Studies have apparently confirmed astronomical alignments at these sites(i).
National Geographic magazine published a leading article on the site in June 2011, which can be read online(e). A new website devoted to Göbekli Tepe with more images is worth a visit(f).
Nevertheless, another temple site 30km to the northwest, Nevali Çori(g), dated to 6,000 BC also has T-shaped pillars but in my mind it raises the question of how the same form of monument would still be in use three and a half thousand years later. I would expect some stylistic evolution unless of course the dating of the two sites should be closer.
Another large site designated as Karahan Tepe 63km east of Sanliurfa has hundreds of pillars, many T-shaped, but the site has yet to be excavated. Page 6 of a pdf file(h) available online will give you more details.
(b) http://www.philipcoppens.com/gobekli.html
(c)http://architectafrica.com/Johan_Heine
(d) http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taula
(e) http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/06/gobekli-tepe/mann-text
(f) http://www.gobeklitepe.info/news.html
(g) http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=14991
(h) http://www.exoriente.org/docs/00019.pdf
(i) http://perso.wanadoo.es/chanches/menorca/taulas/binisaes.htm
