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Feature Articles – Göbekli Tepe: the world’s oldest temple A 12,000-year-old temple that is being excavated in Turkey is rewriting the historical record and seems to belong to a larger, hitherto unknown civilisation that is slowly being uncovered. by Philip Coppens Five millennia separate us from the birth of ancient Egypt in c. 3100 BC. Add another five millennia and we are in 8100 BC, coincidentally the start of the Age of Cancer. Add another millennium and a half, and we have the date when Göbekli Tepe, in the highlands of Turkey near the Iraqi and Syrian borders, was constructed.

Göbekli Tepe: the world’s oldest temple Feature Articles – Göbekli Tepe: the world’s oldest temple A 12,000-year-old temple that is being excavated in Turkey is rewriting the historical record and seems to belong to a larger, hitherto unknown civilisation that is slowly being uncovered. by Philip Coppens Five millennia separate us from the birth of ancient Egypt in c. 3100 BC. Add another five millennia and we are in 8100 BC, coincidentally the start of the Age of Cancer. Add another millennium and a half, and we have the date when Göbekli Tepe, in the highlands of Turkey near the Iraqi and Syrian borders, was constructed. Archaeologically categorised as a site of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period (c. 9600–7300 BC), the world’s oldest temple sits in the early part of that era and so far has been carbon-dated to 9500 BC. It is the time-frame when Plato’s Atlantis civilisation is said to have disappeared. And it was built an incredible 5,000 years before the rise of what many consider to be the “oldest civilisation”, Sumer, not too far south of Göbekli Tepe as one goes down the River Euphrates and leaves the highlands of the Taurus Mountains in Turkey.Want to know your future? Try my free online Rune Readings! Göbekli Tepe is an incredible site. David Lewis-Williams, Professor of Archaeology at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, says that “Göbekli Tepe is the most important archaeological site in the world”. It is a small hill on the horizon, 15 kilometres northwest of the town of Sanliurfa, more commonly known as Urfa—which has been linked with the biblical Abraham (some claim that Urfa was the town of Ur mentioned in the Bible) and which once hosted the Holy Mandylion, linked with Christ’s Passion. Once also known as Edessa, Urfa is on the edge of the rainy area of the Taurus Mountains, source of the river that runs through the town and joins the Euphrates. Urfa was (and still is) an oasis, which could explain why Göbekli Tepe was built nearby. A life-sized statue of limestone that was found in Urfa, at the pond known as Balikli Göl, has been carbon-dated to 10,000–9000 BC, making it the earliest-known stone sculpture ever found. Its eyes are made of obsidian. An old Kurdish shepherd, Savak Yildiz, discovered the true nature of Göbekli Tepe in October 1994 when, spotting something, he brushed away the dust to expose a large oblong-shaped stone. A survey of the site had been carried out by American archaeologist Peter Benedict in 1963, but he identified the area as a Byzantine cemetery. When German archaeologist Harald Hauptmann and Adnan Misir and Eyüp Bucak of the Museum of Urfa began excavations in 1995, they soon learned that the site was so much more. Göbekli Tepe is a series of mainly circular and oval-shaped structures set in the slopes of a hill, known as Göbekli Tepe Ziyaret. “Ziyaret” means “visit”, but this is often left out of the name. And though some translate “Göbekli Tepe” as “Navel of the World” and “Gobek” does mean “navel” or “belly” and “Tepe” means “hill”, the most correct translation of the site’s name should be “bulged-out hill”. The more sensationalist media have made attempts to link Göbekli Tepe with the biblical Garden of Eden. Göbekli Tepe is indeed old, but it is not unique; nor was it a garden. However, over the past 50 years the time-frame for the beginning of civilisation has been gently pushed back from the rise of the Sumerian civilisation to the construction of Göbekli Tepe. Alas, it has been a voyage that has not received the attention it should have had. Pushing back the birth of civilisation The discovery of the biblical town of Jericho and its stone walls, dated to c. 8000 BC, was the first to push back the date of the birth of “civilisation”. ‘Ain Ghazal is often seen as a sister site of Jericho and, with its 15-hectare area, is the largest Neolithic site in the Middle East and four times as big as Jericho. American Gary O. Rollefson, its principal archaeologist, was able to date the town to 7250 BC, and there is evidence of agriculture in the area dating back to c. 6000 BC—later than the establishment of the town itself. In its heyday, 2,000 people lived at ‘Ain Ghazal. However, by 5000 BC the town was completely deserted. Thirty statues have been found there, measuring between 35 and 90 centimetres; they are human in appearance but may represent deities or the spirits of ancestors. Jericho’s discovery added weight to the argument that the Bible is history, not myth. But when it was next learned that there are even older sites than Jericho, “unfortunately” not located in Palestine but further north in Anatolia, southeast Turkey, media interest in these new discoveries seemed to wane. The most famous of these sites is Çatal Höyük. It was discovered in 1958 by British archaeologist James Mellaart, who began excavations in 1961 and eventually dated the site to 7500–5700 BC. It is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date. Mellaart described it a...

Göbekli Tepe: the world’s oldest temple - Eye Of The Psychic