Göbekli Tepe: the temple out of time
Göbekli Tepe (trad: rounded hill – navel) is an archaeological site about 18 km north-east of the city of Şanlıurfa in today's Turkey, near the border with Syria between the Taurus range and the Karaca Dağ and the valley where it is located the city of Harran.
It is located on an artificial hill approximately 15 meters high, with a diameter of approximately 300 meters, positioned at the highest point of an elongated elevation, overlooking the surrounding region.
In this place, archaeologists have discovered the oldest example of a stone temple, dating back to 9,600 BC.
This dating is upsetting all certainties about the origins of civilization.
Due to its location and architecture, Göbekli Tepe vaguely resembles Stonehenge, but it was built long before, not with blocks of roughly cut stone as we find in Stonehenge, but with limestone pillars finely sculpted in bas-relief.
It is curious that around 8,000 BC the site was deliberately abandoned and voluntarily buried with earth brought by man.
So far less than a tenth of the site has been brought to light, but this is enough to understand the awe the temple inspired in the pilgrims who gathered in this place 7,000 years before the construction of Stonehenge.
Göbekli Tepe was identified for the first time in 1963 but excavations began only in 1995 by a joint mission of the Şanlıurfa museum and the German Archaeological Institute under the direction of Klaus Schmidt, who since the previous year had been working in some archaeological sites of the region. In 2006 the excavations passed to the German universities of Heidelberg and Karlsrühe.
The excavations brought to light a megalithic monumental sanctuary, consisting of an artificial hill bordered by rough dry stone walls. Four circular enclosures were also found, bordered by enormous limestone pillars weighing over 10 tons each.
The most interesting discovery, however, concerns the approximately 40 T-shaped stones, up to five and a half meters high. The limestone blocks, weighing five tons, were brought here from a quarry not far away. The question remains as to how the populations of the time managed to transport the stones given that Orthodox historiography teaches that they did not know the wheel, nor had they yet learned to domesticate beasts of burden.
Most of the stones are engraved, and different types of animals are depicted: snakes, ducks, cranes, bulls, foxes, lions, wild boars, cows, scorpions, ants. Some recordings were voluntarily erased, and the reason is unclear. There are also abstract decorative elements, such as sets of dots and geometric patterns. In the rock there are also depictions of phallic shapes.
Geomagnetic investigations have indicated the presence of another 250 stones still buried in the ground. Another T-shaped stone was also found about 1 km from the site, only half extracted from the quarry. It is about 9 m long and was probably intended for the sanctuary, but a breakage forced the builders to abandon the work.
In addition to the stones, there are clay sculptures that have been badly damaged by time.
It is probable that the sculptors carried out their work directly on the sanctuary plateau, where bowl-shaped cavities were found in the clay rock and also unfinished stones, a technique already used in the Mesolithic to obtain clay, both for sculptures and for the clay binder used in masonry.
Everything said so far can already classify Göbekli Tepe among the top ten most mysterious and at the same time fascinating archaeological sites. But there are other factors that can determine its uniqueness. For example his age. Radiocarbon dating attributes the complex to at least 12,000, if not as many as 13,000 years ago.
This means that Göbekli Tepe was built around 10,000 BC making it, by a wide margin, the oldest such site in the world. It is so ancient that it precedes the settled life of man, ceramics, and writing, in short, first of all.
It's hard to believe that cavemen built something so ambitious. The architecture, astrological cognition, as well as the structural realization of the entire complex boldly suggests that a much more technologically advanced civilization existed, as if gods descended from the heavens had built Göbekli with their own hands, or with their own construction methods.
And this applies to any megalithic construction we find on earth.
Focusing in particular on the astrological knowledge of those who built the site, we note in particular the layout of the complex which recalls the position of the main stars of the Pleiades constellation, also known as the Seven Sisters, and called Vergil by the ancient Romans. A bit like the arrangement of the three pyramids on the Giza plateau recall the constellation of Orion.
