I thought it might be an idea to re-visit the
"Oldest Magalithic Temple in the World"
Which we discussed in SAGG just over a year ago
It was discovered by accident buried under the hillside of
a Field in Turkey in 1966.
Its still being excavated by the German born Archeologist Schmidt, and his team of 40 Turkish workers.
The amazing temple with its 12 carved Stonehenge type pillars nearbye are still being excavated.
Carbon dating now proves that the building was erected a staggering 7000 years before the pyramids of Egypt (although there scientists who believe the pyramids are older than stated).
So Gobelki Tepe was built 11,500 years ago...thats more than 6000 years before Stonehenge was built.
The Biblical walls of Jericho thought to be the oldest construction by man, was started about 1000 years after Gobelki Tepe.
(Incidentally Jericho is stated to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world)
Nearbye to Schmidt's excavation he has discovered 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 these buildings or temples.
Archeologists have recently brought in ground penetrating Radar, and discovered another 15 to 20 such monumental ruins lie under the surface. Schmidt's German-Turkish team has also uncovered some 50 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.
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."
Schmidt speculates that nomadic bands from hundreds of miles in every direction were already gathering here for rituals, feasting, and initiation rites before the first stones were cut. The religious purpose of the site is implicit in its size and location. "You don't move 10-ton stones for no reason," Schmidt observes. "Temples or sanctuaries like to be on high sites," he adds, waving an arm over the stony, round hilltop. "away from the mundane world.
There is elaborate carving on all the 50 pillars yet discovered. Wild boar and cattle are depicted, along with totems of power and intelligence, like lions, foxes, and leopards. Many of the biggest pillars are carved with arms, including shoulders, elbows, and jointed fingers. The T shapes appear to be towering humanoids but have blank faces, hinting at the worship of ancestors or humanlike deities. "In the Bible it talks about how God created man in his image," says Johns Hopkins archeologist Glenn Schwartz. Göbekli Tepe "is the first time you can see blank human faces with the idea, that they resemble gods"
Sifting the tons of dirt removed from the site has produced very few human bones, however, perhaps because they were removed to distant homes for ancestor worship. Absence is the source of Schmidt's great theoretical claim. "There are no traces of daily life," he explains. "No fire pits. No trash heaps. There is no water here." Everything from food to flint had to be imported, so the site "was not a village," Schmidt says. Since the temples predate any known settlement anywhere, Schmidt concludes that man's first house was a house of worship: "First the temple, then a city elsewhere?" he suggests.
The overall site is huge.
So far Schmidt has uncovered less than 5 percent of the site, and he plans to leave some temples untouched so that future researchers can examine them with more sophisticated tools.
Whatever mysterious rituals were conducted in the temples, they ended abruptly before 8000 B.C., when the entire site was buried, deliberately, and all at once, Schmidt believes. bringing in earth from miles around.
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I have only copied the SAGG url just below, since the whole discussion would take up far too much space.
But go and look at the first, and including the fourth letter, where redewenur has found other information.
http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=29636#Post29636There are later pictures of the Gobelki Tepe excavations...
which you might enjoy finding using Google or other search engine.
I do feel this is an important site and worth keepimg up to date for the next few years.
