Ancient Origins

Cowie, Ashley

Published November 7, 2019

Ashley Cowie describes himself as a “Scottish historian, author, filmmaker and explorer investigating the old world.” I first encountered his work when I read his A Twist in Time ^[1454], which I found very interesting. Since then I have noted that his website^(a) has dealt with a number of subjects close to or allied to matters discussed in this compilation, but so far little directly relating to Atlantis. He is a frequent contributor to the Ancient Origins website.

I’m also obliged to point out that Cowie has had the critical scalpel of Jason Colavito applied to some of his work^(b).

>^(a) Ashley Cowie (archive.org)

^(b)Ashley Cowie Appropriates Minoan Archaeology for Atlantis – JASON COLAVITO<

Tagged Ancient Origins, Ashlry Cowie, Jason Colavito

Fuente Magna Bowl

Published July 29, 2013

The Fuente Magna Bowl is a remarkable artefact sometimes called ‘the Rosetta Stone of the Americas.’ It was discovered accidentally near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. The bowl’s claim to fame is that it has been inscribed with cuneiform writing, similar to Sumerian.

It is claimed that thermoluminescence dating has shown the object to be quite ancient and not a forgery. The same site^(a) quotes at length a translation of the text by Clyde Winters, but a German website^(b) denounces his translation as nonsense, although it accepts that the Bowl as genuine. Another site^(c) offers a selection of detailed images of the Bowl.

Carl Feagans’ website^(f) is equally critical of Winters’ ‘translation’ and raises a number of questions regarding the authenticity of the artefact.

April Holloway offered an overview of the controversy relating to the Fuente Magna Bowl on the Ancient Origins website, concluding quite reasonably, that further objective linguistic research could bring the debate to a conclusion^(g).

Jim Allen and his supporters have sought to link the Bowl with the theory of Atlantis in the Andes^(d).

The bad archaeology website has a reasonably balanced article^(e) on the bowl which should be read.

>Michel Leygues has published^(h) his study of the Fuente Magna Bowl in which he endeavours to demonstrate the relationship between Sumerian, Akkadian, Aymara and Quechua. Unfortunately, so far it is only available in French.<

^(a)https://web.archive.org/web/20110727221012/http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_8.htm

^(b) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20180418030709/https://www.palaeoseti.de/doku.php/suedamerika/fuente_magna

^(c)See: https://web.archive.org/web/20160613101558/https://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/biados/fuentmag.htm

^(d) https://web.archive.org/web/20200704031245/http://www.atlantisbolivia.org/boliviaandthesumerianconnection.htm

^(e) https://badarchaeology.wordpress.com/tag/fuente-magna-bowl/

^(f) https://ahotcupofjoe.net/2017/11/fuente-magna-bowl-not-cuneiform-not-sumerian/

^(g)Fuente Magna, the Controversial Rosetta Stone of the Americas | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)

^(h) Les signes du vase Fuente Magna : recherche d'une parenté entre sumérien et akkadien d'une part, aymara et quechua d'autre part. (calameo.com) (French) *

Tagged Ancient Origins, Andes, April Holloway, Bolivia, Carl Feagan, Clyde Winters, Fuente Magna Bowl, Jim Allen, Lake Titicaca, Michel Leygues, Sumerians

Yoon, Jay

Published February 12, 2013

Jay Yoon is the American author of the short ebook, Atlantis Shrugged ^[1371] , also known as Atlantis: The Underworld^(b). His views on Atlantis are also available on the Internet^(a) where he supports the Caribbean Basin as the location of Atlantis, which he believes was submerged around 9600 BC.

He claims that originally the Basin, although nearly 13,000 feet below sea level, was kept dry by the range of surrounding mountains which was subsequently breached by the earthquake referred to by Plato. Yoon outlines his theory in the form of a Platonic Dialogue, in which the participants are Solon, Aristotle and Critias.

For anyone interested, Yoon has supplied the following co-ordinates for his chosen location for Atlantis – 17°09’54.95″ N 65°03’32.64″ W.

In my opinion his basic idea is fanciful. Why would Yoon’s Atlanteans send an army climbing mountains over 13,000 feet, in the Caribbean, to launch an attack in the eastern Mediterranean, over 5,000 miles away, at a time when suitable ships did not exist in order to attack Athens and Egypt, which did not exist either? Would it not have made more sense to expand into North and/or South America from the Caribbean?

It is more likely that if a dry Caribbean Basin did exist in 9600 BC, it was flooded by the rising sea levels resulting from the melting icecaps.

In March & April 2016, Yoon, then Brad and later Brady Yoon, rehashed his Caribbean theory on the Ancient Origins website^(e). In one^(d) he discusses the Deluge and its possible connection with the demise of Atlantis. In the concluding paragraph of the other^(c) he admits that “all of this speculation could be entirely baseless”, a view I enthusiastically endorse.

Nevertheless, Yoon has written an interesting article^(g) on the origin of Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Originally believed to be the result of the biblical Deluge, today it is claimed that the salt came from tributary rivers which remained after the water evaporated. Yoon offers strong evidence that the salt came from seawater and by extension reinstating the Deluge theory!

Jason Colavito has published a critique of some of Yoon’s earlier posts on Ancient Origins^(f).

>Yoon has now assumed the title of ‘The Atlantis Expert’ and has posted a number of YouTube videos^(h) which claims to support his Atlantis theories!<

^(a) https://y2jayblog.wordpress.com/author/y2jay2013/

^(b) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Atlantis-The-Underworld-ebook/dp/B00B1JJDTS

^(c) https://www.ancient-origins.net/opinion-guest-authors/when-ancient-masters-ruled-earth-mysterious-depths-saint-croix-basin-005688?nopaging=1

^(d) https://www.ancient-origins.net/opinion-guest-authors/what-became-atlantis-flood-heaven-005536?nopaging=1

^(e) https://www.ancient-origins.net/opinion-guest-authors/legend-atlantis-between-ancient-ruins-and-philosopher-s-tale-006319

^(f) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/rings-of-power-do-concentric-circles-prove-atlantis-real

^(g) https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/great-salt-lake-enigma-science-shows-anomalies-evidence-global-flood-007082

>^(h) https://www.facebook.com/The-Atlantis-Expert-101925171495708/<

Tagged Ancient Origins, Brad Yoon, Caribbean, Deluge, Great Salt Lake, Jason Colavito, Jay Yoon, Utah

Younger Dryas *

Published June 13, 2010

Younger Dryas is also known as Dryas III was a mini Ice Age that lasted from around 10,700 BC until around 9600 BC. It is named after a wildflower called Dryas octopetala that flourished during this relatively short period. In Ireland, the period is known as the Nahanagan Stadial and in Britain as the Loch Lomond Stadial. For about thirteen hundred years the glaciers had been slowly retreating until within a short timespan temperature dropped and they began to advance again. The cause of this cooling is not entirely clear. One view is that a sudden release into the North Atlantic of vast quantities of freshwater that had been contained by huge ice dams is assumed to have closed down the Gulf Stream, resulting in a twelve-hundred-year lowering of global temperatures. There is evidence that the change only took one or two decades. The same threat is said to exist today with the possibility of the melting of the Greenland ice cap. It also seems that this YD cooling ended with the same rapidity.

In 2011 a paper by Nicholas Pinter et al offered a critical review of the evidence available at that time which, from their perspective, did not fully support the YDIH^(z).

A recent application of archaeoastronomy by Martin Sweatman and Dimitrios Tsikritsis led them to conclude that the carved symbols at Göbekli Tepe recorded an encounter involving the explosion or impact of part of Encke’s Comet around 13,000 years ago, which triggered the Younger Dryas Event that provided the impetus for the Neolithic Revolution. Sweatman later expanded their work in his book Prehistory Decoded ^[1621] and an article on the Ancient Origins website^(k). In June 2021, Sweatman had a paper entitled ‘The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis: a review of the impact evidence’ published in the journal ‘Earth Science Review’ of the University of Edinburgh^(u).

Kevin A. & Patrick J. Casey maintain that a globally catastrophic event occurred 13,000 years ago^(j). The kernel of their theory is that originally the Earth had two moons that at some later point collided, producing our current Moon, while the remnant of the second one eventually exploded over North America kick-starting what we refer to as the cooler Younger Dryas period. They are adamant that it was not a comet or asteroid that caused the devastation, and so clash with the conclusions of Richard Firestone and his colleagues.

A completely different view is expressed in Rod (Carl) Martin’s latest book ^[1623], where he proposes that the Younger Dryas ended as a result of a catastrophic event. Is it possible that there were two cataclysmic episodes? John Ackerman, a keen follower of Immanuel Velikovsky claims that there were two such events related to “the capture of the Moon into its current orbit,” marking the beginning and the end of the Younger Dryas period^(q).

A somewhat technical paper, published in July 2020, challenges the comet impact theory because of geochemical anomalies, Instead, they argue that the YD event was a consequence of volcanic activity(s), rather than an impact! Martin Sweatman refutes this in a paper on Graham Hancock’s website⁽ⁱ⁾.

In 2015, a paper constraining the impact date to within 100 years using Bayesian statistical analyses, now proposed as 12,835 -12,735 years ago^(h).

Coincidentally, Emilio Spedicato independently concluded that it was a cometary impact in the North Atlantic that was responsible for the Younger Dryas. Subsequently, when temperatures rose again it resulted in the flooding of vast areas of low-lying landmasses that in Spedicato’s opinion included Atlantis, which he locates in Hispaniola.

Conflicting evidence regarding the possibility of the Younger Dryas being caused by such an impact is impartially outlined on the internet^(a).

The November 2013 issue of the BBC Focus magazine (p.30) had a brief article on the impact theory, noting that the northern hemisphere saw a drop of as much as 15°C around 11,000BC. In the absence of a suitable impact crater of the right age, there is still much scientific scepticism^(b).

However, in early 2017, further possible evidence of an impact at the start of the Younger Dryas was offered by a team led by Christopher Moore of the University of South Carolina, when they identified a distinct layer of platinum in the soil that coincided with the start of YD. Commenting on this anomaly Moore noted that “Platinum is very rare in the Earth’s crust, but it is common in asteroids and comets.”^(e) In 2019, Moore published further data^(m) supporting the extraterrestrial impact theory, based on studies carried out on sediments, which date back 20,000 years, from White Pond Lake, situated in southern Kershaw County, South Carolina. “Other examples of excessive platinum grains have been found across Europe, western Asia, Chile, South Africa^(r) and North America.” ⁽ⁿ⁾

In early 2018, two papers were published online⁽ⁱ⁾, reinforcing the YD impact theory and adding evidence that the event resulted in a conflagration that “may have consumed ~10 million km2, or ~9% of Earth’s terrestrial biomass.” Related to this is a paper by Andrew Collins that draws attention to the ‘Usselo horizon’, a charcoal-rich layer of between 1 and 8 inches, found on all continents, indicating widespread fires, now dated to 12,900 years ago^(l). An additional paper by Hans Kloosterman offers additional background information on the charcoal-rich layer^(ab).

Ice cores from Greenland indicate a further cooling period circa 6200 BC that may be related to the abandonment of many Neolithic settlements during this period. Other periods of abrupt climate change have been identified from 3800 BC to 3500 BC and 2800 BC to 2000 BC.

The fact that Plato’s apparent date for the demise of Atlantis, circa 9600 BC, roughly corresponds with the current, best estimate for the date of the Younger Dryas is interesting but unfortunately not conclusive proof of any direct connection. In the absence of any supportive archaeological evidence, a linkage between Atlantis and the Younger Dryas will have to remain a matter of faith rather than fact. Interesting but inconclusive.

In 2017, Graham Hancock reviewed the Younger Dryas debate over the previous decade in a lengthy essay^(v). This was prior to the publication of America Before. He finished with the following comment. “Perhaps the lost civilization that I have spent the last quarter of a century trying to track down had its most significant outpost, possibly even its heartland, in North America in the period BEFORE the Younger Dryas cataclysms of 12,800 to 11,600 years ago?” Hancock is inferring here that there was a single global civilisation, a hyperdiffusionist stance that I consider indefensible.

A short paper by John Patrick Hill offers a theory that requires more than faith to accept it; he wrote “Just over 12 thousand years ago, the world was struck by an immense meteor group. It destroyed all of North America and much of Europe and went weIl beyond……… I found proof to support that the creators of the Giza Three and Stonehenge used the Barringer Crater in Arizona as part of the geometry for their massive structures.” Later he reveals that at “Giza, when one takes the distance between the outside corners of the three large pyramids there, that distance is equal to 0.72 miles, the exact distance (diameter) at Barringer.” An expanded version of his paper is available online^(t).

In another paper Hill^(aa)says that “the Younger Dryas Meteor Event struck 12.8 thousand years ago and it was so large, it is wrote down not only in geologic records but also in holy books, as Noah’s Flood.”

Recent discoveries in northern Sudan of dozens of skeletons, the majority of whom were killed by flint-tipped arrows, have led to the suggestion^(c) they were the result of food shortages resulting from the Younger Dryas that in turn led to warfare over diminished food availability.

I note that Robert Schoch claims that there is no evidence to support the Younger Dryas impact theory, instead, he believes that “it was most likely due to reduced solar activity at that time, a solar shut-down.”^(o) Schoch’s wide-ranging critique has been refuted by the Comet Research Group.^(p)

In 2020, James Lawrence Powell (1936- ), a noted geologist, author, former college president and museum director entered the Younger Dryas debate with the publication of Deadly Voyager ^[1911]. In it, Powell offers wholehearted support to the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH), understandably generating a favourable review from Graham Hancock^(w).

In 2020, Tony Petrangelo argued that the Younger Dryas event did not destroy Atlantis, but that it was more compatible with the story of Phaeton^(ac).

Even more important, is that Powell’s book induced a number of heavy-duty critics of YDIH, including Michael Shermer to change their opinion^(x).

Powell offered a further review of the YD debates in a 2022 paper^(y).

^(a) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20130310032309/https://blogs.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/climatedebate/

^(b) https://www.livescience.com/39362-younger-dryas-meteor-quebec.html

^(c) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/saharan-remains-may-be-evidence-of-first-race-war-13000-years-ago-9603632.html

^(d) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268390328_Nanodiamond-Rich_Layer_Across_Three_Continents_Consistent_with_Major_Cosmic_Impact_at_12800_Cal_BP

^(f) https://www.space.com/17676-comet-crash-ice-age.html

^(h) https://cosmictusk.com/new-paper-younger-dryas-boundary-impact-date-constrained-within-100-years/

⁽ⁱ⁾ https://www.dailygrail.com/2018/02/a-comet-impact-13000-years-ago-set-fire-to-10-of-the-planet/

^(j) https://www.academia.edu/38380799/13k_Theory_Atlantis_Revisited.pdf

^(k) https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-important-events/younger-dryas-0012216

^(l) https://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/Lommel.htm

^(m) https://theconversation.com/new-evidence-that-an-extraterrestrial-collision-12-800-years-ago-triggered-an-abrupt-climate-change-for-earth-118244

⁽ⁿ⁾ https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/29/world/ice-age-extraterrestrial-impact-scn/index.html

^(o) https://www.robertschoch.com/plasma_iceage.html

^(p) https://cosmictusk.com/comet-research-group-responds-to-robert-schoch/

^(q)Firmament and Chaos (archive.org) *

^(r) https://www.q-mag.org/the-impact-that-set-the-earth-on-fire-12800y-ago-geological-evidence-now-found-also-in-the-southern-hemisphere.html

*^(s)https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/31/eaax8587

^(t) Archive 6555 | (atlantipedia.ie)

^(u) The_Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesis_MBS.pdf (ed.ac.uk)

^(v) The Younger Dryas Impact research since 2007 – The Cosmic Tusk

^(w) https://grahamhancock.com/deadly-voyager/

^(x) In praise of intellectual honesty – The Cosmic Tusk

^(y)https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00368504211064272

^(z) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012825211000262

^(aa) Migration & Diffusion (migration-diffusion.info)

^(ab) http://www.catastrophist.org/home/usselo-2002/#:~:text=The%20Usselo%20horizon%20was%20found,white%20sand%20with%20black%20speckles”.

^(ac) https://atlantis.fyi/blog/atlantis-and-the-younger-dryas-impact-hypothesis

Tagged Ancient Origins, Andrew Collins, archaeoastronomy, Atlantis, Charles R. Kinzie, Christopher Moore, Clovis People, Comet Research Group, Dimitrios Tsikritsis, Dryas III, Emilio Spedicato, Encke's Comet, Gobekli Tepe, Graham Hancock, Greenland, Gulf Stream, Hans Kloosterman, Hispaniola, Hyperdiffusion, ice dam, Immanuel Velikovsky, John Ackerman, John Patrick Hill, Kevin A. Casey, Martin Sweatman, Megan Gannon, Michael Shermer, moon, Neolithic Revolution, Nicholas Pinter, platinum, Richard Firestone, Robert Schoch, Rod Martin, Sudan, Tony Petrangelo, Usselo horizon, White Pond Lake, Younger Dryas

Göbekli Tepe

Published March 23, 2010

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 Smithsonian.com website noted^(be⁾ that “Gobekli Tepe was first examined—and dismissed—by University of Chicago and Istanbul University anthropologists in the 1960s. As part of a sweeping survey of the region, they visited the hill, saw some broken slabs of limestone and assumed the mound was nothing more than an abandoned medieval cemetery.”

The site work has been led by the German archaeologist, the late Klaus Schmidt, who has dated the site to 9600 BC, eerily coinciding with Plato’s apparent date for the war with 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 to such a high standard without metal tools, a development still some thousands of years in the future. Dating details are available online^(ar).

There is now a claim that another site, Körtik Tepe, may even be older^(av), with a suggested date of 12,500 to 11,700 years ago! Furthermore, another site, Boncuklu Tarla, located about 300 kilometres east of Göbekli Tepe is also believed to be older^(br⁾.

A paper by Schmidt on the development of agriculture at the time of Göbekli Tepe is freely available online⁽^ao⁾

Sanliurfa mentioned above was ancient Urfa and is suggested by David Rohl as the original Ur of the Chaldees, the birthplace of Abraham.

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. One suggestion is that the site is pre-diluvian and was buried by the biblical Flood!

A paper by Alastair Coombs entitled The Atlantis Twins offered further thoughts on possible prehistoric references, including a suggested link with Göbekli Tepe. This was expanded and retitled as Göbekli Tepe & the Atlantis Twins and later published on Graham Hancock’s website^(aq)(bx)*.

Schmidt was 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⁾.

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. Further north is the ancient site of Kahin Tepe considered to be the oldest temple site in the Black Sea region. The remains of structures there have been identified as belonging to the Aceramic Neolithic Period, which dates back as far back as 12,000 years ago^(bf).

However, Adam’s Calendar⁽^c⁾in Mpumalanga, South Africa, has been dated to over 70,000 BC, which, if true, would throw an even greater number of theories onto the scrap heap. However, such dates are highly speculative and, at this point, without any scientific basis.

An imaginative article by Tom Knox, in the UK’s Daily Mail Online, suggested that Göbekli Tepe may be connected with the Garden of Eden^(bd⁾. Klaus Schmidt commented that ‘Gobekli Tepe is not the Garden of Eden: it is a temple in Eden.’

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 find this unconvincing. Needless to say, Schmidt was also unhappy with Banning’s contention and was writing a rebuttal of his claim, which I’m not sure if it was completed or published.

Readers might be interested in comparing the monuments of Gobekli Tepe with the taulas of Menorca^(d)at the far end of the Mediterranean. Some of which are also to be found in clusters.

Studies have confirmed astronomical alignments at these sites⁽ⁱ⁾. A German site has highlighted a possible connection^(ac). The most extensive publication on the subject of taulas was published in 1995 by Hochsieder & Knösel, in French^[¹⁰⁶⁴^].

A 2020 paper by Gil Haklay & Avi Gopher has concluded that their “architectural formal analysis (and the central points calculated) has brought to light an underlying geometric pattern based on an equilateral triangle and a set of main perpendicular axes that ties together Enclosures B, C and D under a single, rather complex geometric design. This suggests a new understanding of what has been initially planned and then built in the enclosure’s system of the main excavation area. It offers an answer to questions on the chronological relationships between the three enclosures, and it evokes insights regarding the architectural design process and how such architectural complexity could have been achieved.” ^(bv)

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). Another well-illustrated site^(k)has drawn attention to the possibility that the animal images at the site match constellations at the time they were carved. It will be interesting to see how this particular investigation proceeds.

Nevertheless, another temple site 30 km 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 the 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^(t), which is 63 km east of Sanliurfa is ‘reported’ to have hundreds of pillars, many T-shaped^(h). In September 2019, a start on the excavation of the site was announced^(aw). Work continued through 2020 and is expected to restart in 2021^(bg). The suggestion now is that Karahan Tepe may be older than Göbekli Tepe^(bq). Andrew Collins has written a paper entitled Karahan Tepe: Göbekli Tepe’s Sister Site—Another Temple Of The Stars?^(bj)

A Norwegian website^(l) has some little-seen images of the Göbekli Tepe site.

A new suggestion has now emerged linking Easter Island and the ongoing discoveries at Göbekli Tepe. This seems to date back to early 2010^(m)and has now been given greater prominence in Robert Schoch’s most recent book, Forgotten Civilization^[867]. A 2013 article⁽ⁿ⁾ by Schoch includes a report of a recent visit by him to the site.

In July 2013 a paper^(o)(p) by Giulio Magli explores the possibility that Göbekli Tepe had been constructed to “celebrate and successively follow the appearance of a new, extremely brilliant star in the southern skies: Sirius.” Sirius is the brightest star and had significance for ancient Egyptians and Greeks and features in Robert Temple’s theory regarding the astronomical knowledge of the Dogon people of Mali.

Amanda Laoupi has written a five-part paper in which she expands on the significance of Sirius for the Pelasgians, among others^(al).

Magli’s suggestion has been dismissed in a paper^(q) by Andrew Collins and Rodney Hale, who have made the alternative proposal that if there was an intended astronomical orientation, a more likely candidate was the star Deneb in the Cygnus constellation. Collins has already explored the significance of that constellation in the ancient cultures of America, Egypt and Britain in The Cygnus Mystery^[075].

Nevertheless, Anthony Murphy and Richard Moore have written^(bi) about the Cygnus Constellation and a possible link with Ireland’s Newgrange ^[1441].

In 2014, Collins devoted an entire book to the Göbekli Tepe discoveries with the publication of Göbekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods^[⁹⁸³^]. In it, he refers briefly to Atlantis commenting that “Plato’s account of Atlantis might well be based on some kind of historical reality” (p.168). This seems to lack the certainty he showed in his best-selling Gateway to Atlantis^[073]. Collins and Rodney Hale have published a paper in which they discuss the possible astronomical value of ‘Pillar 43’ at Göbekli Tepe^(bw).

Additionally, Collins has produced a 68-minute video entitled Gobekli Tepe and the Watchers of Eden, referencing his earlier work^(w). A preview^(y) of Genesis of the Gods has been published on several websites including Academia.edu and Graham Hancock.com. Collins’ book has been heavily criticised as pseudoscience^(an)by at least one reviewer on ‘goodreads’.

Hugh Newman, author and self-confessed ‘megalithomaniac’ has now proposed links between Göbekli Tepe and ancient Peru. He has also managed to include Göbekli Tepe in his theory of earth grids^(r). Another writer, Trebha Cooper, claims a link between France and Göbekli Tepe^(x)!

The unexpected death of Klaus Schmidt (1953-2014) took place on Sunday, July 20th, 2014 and was announced shortly afterwards^(s).

In September 2014, archaeologists on the site described it as “the oldest known sculptural workshop on the planet.”^(v)

The excellent The Stream of Time website from ‘antiquated antiquarian’ has a couple of well-illustrated blogs relating to Göbekli Tepe^(z)and the region generally.

In April 2015, the Ancient Origins website published a two-part article^(ag) by Ozgür Baris Etli, a Turkish scientist, in which he discusses the most recent discoveries on the site. The article^(aa)(ab) is well illustrated as the author reviews the carvings there and their possible relevance to the early development of religion. In a 2016 article^(ah), on the same site, he has drawn attention to the similarity of the position of carved hands at Göbekli Tepe, Easter Island as well as some other sites around the world where the hands are shown meeting at the navel. The significance of this, if any, is not known.

What has been identified as possibly the earliest pictograph in the world has now been revealed at the Göbekli Tepe site^(ad). Andrew Collins also claims^(ae) to have found the earliest depiction of Göbekli Tepe in the museum at Sanliurfa. Not unexpectedly Jason Colavito has a few words to say on the matter^(af). Colavito also has a critical view^(ai) of the recent Turkish documentary, supported by the government, which claims that Göbekli Tepe was built by Telah, Abraham’s father, and destroyed by Abraham. So who built Nevali Çori?

A 2016 paper^(bm) by J.A. Belmonte, et al offers a review of recent archaeoastronomical studies in the Eastern Mediterranean including Göbekli, the Hittites and the Egyptians.

The March 2017 edition of Mediterranean Archaeology & Archaeometry (Vol.17, No.1, pp 233-250) includes a paper^(aj) by M.B. Sweatman & D. Tsikritsis of the University of Edinburgh. In it they claim that the animals carved on the Göbekli Tepe pillars represent asterisms and that they found “compelling evidence that the famous ‘Vulture Stone’ is a date stamp for 10950 BC ± 250 yrs, which corresponds closely to the proposed Younger Dryas event, estimated at 10890 BC.” Understandably, their claims have been met with stony scepticism^(ak). Sweatman has expanded his ideas further in Prehistory Decoded ^[¹⁶²¹^].

Shortly after Sweatman & Tsikritsis (S&T) published their paper, a number of the archaeologists who have excavated at the site quickly published, in the same journal, several critical comments relating to the methodology and conclusions of S&T^(bn).

The interpretation of the carvings has exercised the imagination of various researchers such as Graham Hancock, Andis Kaulins, and Paul Burley, as well as Sweatman and Tsikritsis, but no consensus has emerged, apart from an element of an agreement that some form of zodiacal representation is involved. The range of decipherments is discussed in detail in a paper by Edmond Furter who is disinclined to accept the zodiac explanation^(bl).

In an August 2019 article on Graham Hancock’s website^(at) Sweatman ventures further into the realms of wild speculation with the suggestion that Göbekli Tepe should be considered the world’s first ‘university’. This obviously had Jason Colavito spluttering into his cereal bowl, prompting him to apply his literary scalpel to the idea^(au).

Constantinos Ragazas has produced a paper^(am) in which he argues against the early date ascribed to Göbekli Tepe by Schmidt and others. He ponders on “How a Date can go wrong: Were Göbekli Tepe built 600 BC by Babylonians/Assyrians, no one would flinch a thought. It is the Date that makes Göbekli Tepe an enigma. The great dilemma for archaeologists is reconciling the date with the people that built Göbekli Tepe. Either the date is wrong or our theories of prehistoric people are wrong. And prehistoric people were more capable 12,000 years ago than all our other evidence tells us. Archaeologists trust their data over their understanding of prehistoric people. I argue the date is wrong. And prehistoric people were as we have always thought.” While this is controversial enough, Ragazas goes further and claims that Göbekli Tepe is, in truth, the site of the ‘Hanging Gardens of Babylon’!

However, Ragazas’ reservations regarding the early dating of Göbekli Tepe were given further support in an extensive 2016 paper^(ap) by Dimitrios Dendrinos of the University of Kansas.

In March 2019, a paper by Roger M. Pearlman put forward another radical idea, namely, that Göbekli Tepe had been founded by Noah (Noach) and his sons^(as).

There was further excitement at Göbekli Tepe in September 2019 when Andrew Collins was removed from the site and his book, From the Ashes of Angels, banned in Turkey and Collins himself may be subject to a ban. It seems that he may have expressed pro-Kurdish sentiments, which is a big no-no with the Turkish authorities. It is also speculated that some of Collins’ historical views run counter to some extreme Islamic interpretation of the past!

2019 produced another radical theory from A.Refik Kutluer, a Turkish tourism executive, who proposed in an interesting article^(ax) that Göbekli Tepe was a site of ritual sacrifice. He suggests the possibility that “Men tried to placate the gods to avoid their anger and to keep them satisfied. As the gods punished them with natural disasters taking many lives when they became angry, men sought a way to mollify the gods, killing some of their own to ward off the gods’ rage, thinking that the gods were satisfied when these people or animals were sacrificed.“

2019 also saw reports^(ay⁾ of a ‘mini’ Göbekli Tepe in the Mardin Province of southeast Turkey and dated to 11,300 years ago.

In 2019, Robert Schoch in a paper^(ba⁾ written with Manu Seyfzadeh claimed that the “world’s first known written word at Göbekli Tepe on T-Shaped Pillar 18 means God”. In a recent Lost Origins podcast, Schoch repeated this claim, which led Jason Colavito to attack its credibility^(bb⁾, finding it “remarkable that he (Schoch) can translate a heretofore unsuspected system of writing in a 10,000-year-old language no one alive has ever heard. After all, several writing systems from historic times, such as linear A, related to languages that were only spoken a few thousand years ago, remain largely unreadable. We can’t even read Etruscan fluently, and yet Schoch has supposedly learned to read an Ice Age language! Think about that. For example, Old English is largely unintelligible to modern English speakers, while the Ice Age is removed in time from us by a factor of twenty times that chronological distance. The unlikeliness of Schoch’s claim boggles the mind.”

There are now regular updates available regarding the ongoing work at the Göbekli site, with contributions from members of the Göbekli Tepe Archaeological Research Project^(az⁾.

In 2020, Stone Age rock tombs were excavated not too far from Göbekli Tepe at the Kizilkoyun Necropolis area, adding to the importance of the region^(bc⁾.

Also, in April 2020, Haaretz published a report that “a discovery by Israeli archaeologists suggests the Göbekli Tepe construction project was even more complex than previously thought and required an amount of planning and resources thought to be impossible for those times.”^(bh)

In June 2021, “Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Ersoy told reporters gathered in the southeastern Turkish city of Sanliurfa that several new sites had been found in the vicinity of Göbeklitepe.” and “We have [discovered] 11 more major hills on a 100-kilometre line around Göbeklitepe,” Ersoy declared. “Here, we will give the details for the first time, and now call it 12 hills.” In fact, Ersoy offered few details about what had been found at these new sites. He explained that a “major study” was on the verge of being completed and said the results of that study would be released in September 2021.”^(bk⁾

Graham Hancock visited the Karahan Tepe site in 2020 and found a team of Turkish archaeologists well-advanced with their excavations. As their findings were unpublished until now^(bp⁾, Hancock refrained from offering his observations^(bo). The enclosure revealed a carved human head protruding from the bedrock as well as a number of pillars that appeared to represent phalli! Hancock echoed Minister Ersoy’s comments noting that “a dozen other sites of similar antiquity are under excavation in the so-called “Stone Hills” area, a zone of intense interest to archaeologists extending for 100 square kilometres around Gobekli Tepe.”

A travel site has a useful article that should be read by anyone intending to visit Gobekli Tepe. This was last updated in August 2022^(bt).

The World History Encyclopedia offers further interesting information regarding the discoveries at the site^(bu⁾.

Fortunately, no damage was reported at Gobekli Tepe following the 2023 earthquakes in Turkey and nearby Syria.>However, October 2023 brought news that further exciting discoveries have been made at both Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe. At the former a statue of a giant man, 7.5-foot-tall, and apparently clutching his penis, while at Karahan a life-size statue of a wild boar. carved from limestone was found. “Archaeologists detected red, black and white pigments on its surface, indicating that the sculpture was once painted.”^(by⁾<

^(a⁾Saudi Aramco World : The Beginning of the End for Hunter-Gatherers (archive.org)

⁽^c⁾https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-africa/adam-s-calendar-oldest-megalithic-site-world-003160

^(d)https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taula

^(e)The Birth of Religion (archive.org)

^(f)https://web.archive.org/web/20200307093932/http://gobeklitepe.info/news.html

^(g)https://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=14991

^(h) Wayback Machine (archive.org) (new link)

⁽ⁱ⁾https://web.archive.org/web/20080425092420/https://perso.wanadoo.es/chanches/menorca/taulas/binisaes.htm

^(j) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2050908/Gobekli-Tepe-Temple-thats-6-500-years-older-Stonehenge-house.html

^(k) https://web.archive.org/web/20180215143747/https://timothystephany.com/gobekli.html

^(l) https://spredtetanker.wordpress.com/tag/atlantis/

^(m)https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=176228