A pillar at the Gobekli Tepe temple near Sanliurfa, Turkey, the oldest known temple in the world
Posted on 02/23/2010 8:21:35 AM PST by Palter
A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution.
They call it potbelly hill, after the soft, round contour of this final lookout in southeastern Turkey. To the north are forested mountains. East of the hill lies the biblical plain of Harran, and to the south is the Syrian border, visible 20 miles away, pointing toward the ancient lands of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, the region that gave rise to human civilization. And under our feet, according to archeologist Klaus Schmidt, are the stones that mark the spot—the exact spot—where humans began that ascent.
Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn't just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture—the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.
Göbekli Tepe—the name in Turkish for "potbelly hill"—lays art and religion squarely at the start of that journey.
A pillar at the Gobekli Tepe temple near Sanliurfa, Turkey, the oldest known temple in the world
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Gobekli Tepe ping.
To assume this is the last “oldest” site ever to be discovered is dumb, arrogant, naieve or some combination of all of the above.
There is a pile of poop in Kenya buried under a mountain of sand that is the first monument to liberalism.
Why do you say that?
Seriously?
Fascinating.
No Helen Thomas photos.
Thank you very much.
This guys conclusions are a stretch. This complex could just as easily be the site of the first human swap meet.
Sumerians Look On In Confusion As G-d Creates World
Members of the Earth’s earliest known civilization, the Sumerians, looked on in shock and confusion some 6,000 years ago as G-d, the Lord Almighty, created Heaven and Earth.
According to recently excavated clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform script, thousands of Sumerians—the first humans to establish systems of writing, agriculture, and government—were working on their sophisticated irrigation systems when the Father of All Creation reached down from the ether and blew the divine spirit of life into their thriving civilization.
“I do not understand,” reads an ancient line of pictographs depicting the sun, the moon, water, and a Sumerian who appears to be scratching his head. “A booming voice is saying, ‘Let there be light,’ but there is already light. It is saying, ‘Let the earth bring forth grass,’ but I am already standing on grass.”
“Everything is here already,” the pictograph continues. “We do not need more stars.”
Historians believe that, immediately following the biblical event, Sumerian witnesses returned to the city of Eridu, a bustling metropolis built 1,500 years before G-d called for the appearance of dry land, to discuss the new development. According to records, Sumerian farmers, priests, and civic administrators were not only befuddled, but also took issue with the face of G-d moving across the water, saying that He scared away those who were traveling to Mesopotamia to participate in their vast and intricate trade system.
Moreover, the Sumerians were taken aback by the creation of the same animals and herb-yielding seeds that they had been domesticating and cultivating for hundreds of generations.
“The Sumerian people must have found G-d’s making of heaven and earth in the middle of their well-established society to be more of an annoyance than anything else,” said Paul Helund, ancient history professor at Cornell University. “If what the pictographs indicate are true, His loud voice interrupted their ancient prayer rituals for an entire week.”
According to the cuneiform tablets, Sumerians found G-d’s most puzzling act to be the creation from dust of the first two human beings.
“These two people made in his image do not know how to communicate, lack skills in both mathematics and farming, and have the intellectual capacity of an infant,” one Sumerian philosopher wrote.
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/sumerians_look_on_in_confusion_as
“This complex could just as easily be the site of the first human swap meet.”
It’s too “out of the way” and elaborate. Swap meets are about improving one’s situation by trade. You would do this where convenient.
This was way out of the way, necessitated huge amounts of work dragging stones for miles, carving them, etc.
People wouldn’t do that for a swap meet.
LOL! “If what the pictographs indicate are true, His loud voice interrupted their ancient prayer rituals for an entire week.”
Stormer-Not sure about your question, but I’ll say it another way.
What is it about this latest find that precludes the possibility that older evidence of man is not out there? Or, how can anyone know everything that is to be discovered with regard to man’s existence has been discovered?
Back in the early '90s I worked in a plant in Macon, GA. I used to come in early, usually the first one there. One game I always played, because I was among a bunch of bible-thumpers, was to intone in a deep voice, as I flipped the lights on, "And I commanded, 'Let there be light', and behold!, there was light upon the land."
I didn't know one of the BTs also came in early and when the lights came on, he came out of his cubicle with eyes as big as saucers. He stayed away from me from then on. :-)
In line with the Onion article, the Sumerians are said to have pictured the entire solar system, complete with an extra planet that we have yet to discover (mebbe we'll find it in 2012):
I’ve encountered the claim that the Sumerians had pictured the entire solar system and have even been presented with the image you have provided. Who knows what knowledge they may have possessed, but if that is meant to represent what is claimed, the Sumerians missed the single most impressive aspect of our solar system - Saturn’s rings. If they were represented, I’d be impressed.
You’d need a telescope to see the rings.
But you could (theoretically) figure out we live in a Copernican system with the naked eye.
Gollum’s uncle?
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