[John A. West] A temple 10,000 BC: Goebekli Tepe

[Claus-Peter Wirth]

A TEMPLE 10,000 BC: GOEBEKLI TEPE, EXCAVATED BY KLAUS SCHMIDT

Information on Goebekli Tepe seems to be mostly in German.
I have read the book "Sie bauten die ersten Tempel"
("They built the first temples") of Klaus Schmidt (PhD+habil in archaeology),
He realized the importance of the place and led the digging over the 
last dozen years. 

It is not clear whether the temples were really temples (i.e. with roofs)
or just temenoi (i.e. holy places without roof but with huge stone pillars,
similar to Stonehenge many millenia later). The pillars are found in situ
with nothing left on top.

Goebekli Tepe is situated on top of a higher stony mountain without water.
Place is Turkey close the the Syrian boarder and the river Euphrat.
Time of activity is 10000-8000 BC.
This is called PPN A and PPN B. Pre-Pottery Neolithic.
Clay was already formed to animals and women and burnt 
in palaeolithic (older stone age), but the two most early phases of
neolithic (younger stone age), namely PPN A and PPN B, do not have
that and the younger neolithic (younger younger stone age, in the
impenetrable beauty of the German language "Jungneolithicum") had pottery.

There are about 40 pillars dug out in the temples of Goebekli Tepe.
Weight is about 5 to 50 tons. The single 50 ton one is unfinished and broken
like the obelisk in Aswan. But, of course, everything is lighter by a 
factor of 10 and the quarry is in place and not hundreds of miles off.

Form of pillars is a "T". Some have face, stola, arms, and hands.
Others carry what Schmidt calls hieroglyphs.
They seem to be a symbolic holy language but without additional phonetic 
usage besides the pictures (such as is the case, however, for Egyptian hieroglyphs).

Symbols are snake, spider, scorpion, millepede, fox, donkey, taurus (bull),
duck, lizard, leopard, lion, cranes with human legs, snake nets, 
"H" with a little hole in the middle, 
and the same "H" rotated by pi/2 (90 degrees).

Interesting is the erasure of some few engravings similar in principle to
the ones probably done by the Egyptian priests themselves
(this is comparison is not drawn by Klaus Schmidt) 
and the fact that the whole place was buried by humans 
at the beginning of of the 8th millennium BC. 
So it seems that they knew that their time was over.
Or maybe they wanted the place to be preserved for the archaeologists ...

Goebekli Tepe seems to have been THE sanctuary of the hunters in Asia Minor.

The clue about the whole thing is that sanctuaries of this 
enormous construction effort should theoretically not exist for
hunting societies. The general theory is that only agricultural societies
have some time in the year where there is nothing to do because
of the flood or the winter. 

Thus, the question is: Who organized the workers?
Who organized the food supply? As hunters have to continue hunting,
the most likely suggestion is that the hunters made a contract with
the farmers of still not domesticated grain. Farmers provided grain.
This is indicated by primitive milling equipment found, actually 
"Basaltreibschalen", i.e., grinding plates from volcanic stone) 
and construction manpower (there were no domesticated huge
animals at that time).  And, as compensation the 
hunters could have kept the grain eating animals away from the farming area.

The area between Palestine and Mesopotamia where Goebekli Tepe is situated 
is also the most probable place for domestication of grains and animals in 
later millenia: It is the only place where all of
sheep, goat, taurus (bull, cattle), pigs and the grains
(except American corn) existed naturally.
(Dogs were domesticated by the hunters already.)

Thus, Goebekli Tepe may be really the place where the farmers and
hunters started a joint venture.

There is some evidence for this: In the PPN A phase there are no remnants of 
domesticated animals found at Goebekli Tepe, but only of wild animals, such as
wild oxen (aurochs), gazelle, wild boar, fox, and onanger (Asian wild donkey). 
PPN A also has no domesticated grains.

PPN B at Goebekli Tepe (T pillars with only half the size of the PPN A ones)
has still no domesticated grains but early domestication forms of animals.
Other PPN B places close to Goebekli Tepe have domesticated grains.

Thus, it seems that there hunters and farmers got together
and started domestication of animals and grains, respectively.

Schmidt suggests that after successful domestication
hunters were superfluous and the temple was buried
and instead of the towns for living and the central 
holy town at the Goebekli Tepe, people started to live
in small villages all over the country with a more primitive
standard of living in the Dark Ages of Pottery Neolithic
that follow this Neolithic Revolution according to Gordon Childe.

This is also interesting because a German archaeologist told me recently
that in central Europe during neolithic two separate societies existed,
farmers and hunters. Genetically the hunters seem to have survived, but 
archaeology was hardly able to document them. 
The farm houses and graves were built by the farmers.

Klaus Schmidt roughly says that, regarding the archaeological impact,
there is hardly anything comparable to Goebekli Tepe but ancient Egypt.
As the Goebekli Tepe culture has human bodies with animal heads
but no animals with human heads, it does not help much to explain the
Great Sphinx, though, I guess. What is you opinion on it???
(Again, the comparison with classical Egypt many thousand years later
 is neither drawn nor intended by Klaus Schmidt.)

Claus-Peter Wirth