Stone Age Temple In Turkey, Birthplace of Civilization
Everybody who ever visited Turkey knows that this is one old country, with a tremendous history. While homo sapiens were still hunting and gathering, waging war on each other, hiding in caves from the rain, and so on, those who lived in what is today called Turkey already had a tremendous rich and complex civilization. Culture originated from this part of the world; traveling to Turkey makes this perfectly clear to anyone.
Recent archaeological research has now discovered that Turkey’s civilization goes back even further than previously thought: it is the world’s oldest temple, and it stands in Gobelki Tepe in southeastern Turkey, near the Syrian border.
One of the T-shaped monoliths in Gobekli Tepe, this one bearing a relief of a fox. Wikimedia Commons
The building is a staggering 11,500 years old. This means, as Fox News rightfully puts it, it was built when “saber-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths still roamed, and the ice age had just ended.”
Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute, who is the archaeologist in charge of excavations at the site, told the Smithsonian magazine: “This is the first human-built holy place.”
The temple is truly impressive. Three dozen “T-shaped standing limestone monoliths,” which are 10 feet high each, are “arranged around the site.” They “weigh several tons each and bear detailed, stylized carvings of foxes, scorpions, lions, boars and birds.”
Although examination of the site proves that the builders were hunter-gatherers rather than farmers, they were far from primitive. Schmidt argues that the site indicates that the inhabitants may have become ‘farmers’ because they wanted to build the temple. It required a lot of time, a lot of effort. It required tremendous manpower and may have caused “a logistical problem that may have spurred the builders to begin planting grain and herding wild sheep.”
“This shows sociocultural changes come first, agriculture comes later,” Stanford archaeologist Ian Hodder tells Smithsonian magazine. “You can make a good case this area is the real origin of complex Neolithic societies.”
Interestingly, locals already knew that their neighborhood had a rich history. The site is near the city of “known as Edessa to the Crusaders — and which locals say is the Biblical city of Ur, birthplace of Abraham. The Euphrates flows eighty miles to the west, putting Gobelki Tepe smack in the middle of the Fertile Crescent.”
Freestanding T-shaped monoliths within the walls of Gobekli Tepe. Gevork Nazaryan via Wikimedia Commons
And so Turks have even more to be proud of, and tourists have yet more sites to visit in this country that could very well be called the birthplace of civilization.
This place makes me want to knock my head against the nearest wall. Just this summer I was in Sanliurfa, where the pool of Abraham is located. I got to see some amazing sights, including Nemrut, the Euphrates, the ancient Roman bridge and some even more ancient Tumulus. A local man offered us a guided tour of a place just outside the city that was “over 10,000 years old”. We only had one day left in Sanliurfa and were exhausted from the previous trip, so we turned it down.
I now suspect that he was offering us a tour of this very spot. It makes me crazy to know I was just a few kilometers away and missed it before it became widely known.
To anyone thinking of going to Turkey, don’t forget the East! It’s got a rich history as well and though far more conservative, has an innocence about it that more urban areas have lost. Well worth the trip.
Well the east is definitely going to offer a tour of some Biblical history too. However a lot of the pre-Greek stuff including the ancient cities are on the west and south side of Turkey as well. There are a lot of Roman ruins scattered around, just ride the subway in the city of Izmir and you’ll see some artifacts on display and in physical reach.
Michael, what really stuns me about the invaluable artifacts on display in Izmir Subway WITHIN HUMAN REACH is the fact that if the same artifacts had been put on display like that in NYC Subway, they would have been either torn down or damaged or looted the next minute. I am in awe of the respect that natives show to the historic artifacts.
Let’s hope that some US journalist won’t loot and steal such stuff on public display in Turkey like they’ve done in Iraq. Although I gotta remind that the British deserve that prize for having done most of the looting and stealing historically.
Selin, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the British Museum, but it’s an absolutely unbelievable place. It’s also a monument to British pilfering of historical artifacts.
To be absolutely fair, at the time when many of those artifacts were taken, they were not being taken care of by the cultures that they belonged to. In some cases they were merely ignored and in others they were in serious danger of destruction. In that sense the British saved many of these priceless artifacts. On the other hand of course, now that most of those cultures are far more advanced and ready and willing to take care of those treasures, the civilized thing would be for the British to return them to their homes. But, as we say in Spain, I think we ought to wait for that day sitting down.
“To be absolutely fair, at the time when many of those artifacts were taken, they were not being taken care of by the cultures that they belonged to.”
Oh, really? So THIS is what they say in the West whenever the West steals and loots stuff from the East? Nice public relations method to justify looting and stealing while remaining morally pure and superior at the same time.
Do you truly believe the Ottoman Empire was NOT taking care of its stuff? I must admit that they had considerable trouble taking care of their valuable things during their demise because they were being invaded by the British and the rest.
Do you know how many lawsuits are pending by the Turkish Ministry of Cultural Affairs so that the British bring many of the artifacts that they looted from the country? For you to make such a blanket statement is astonishing.
MUST one commercialize these artifacts by putting them in a museum or sell them in an auction for huge profits in order to qualify as TAKING CARE of this stuff? Do you think those artifacts could possibly serve a better purpose by just being in the place that they were built in?
Stating that “those cultures didn’t take care of their valuable artifacts” is quite similar to saying that the British brought “civilization” to the rest of the world by colonizing it because these places didn’t have an “civilization” of their own. Do you see the imbedded assumptions of the “European Superiority” behind your statement that also serves to justify such actions from a moral standpoint?
Your statement above flat out indicates that my culture had not done ENOUGH to take care of its inheritance and the British did my culture a FAVOR by looting my home. Claudia, I’m curious: Is THIS the spirit with which you visited Turkey?
Selin I humbly suggest you calm down and actually read my comment without assuming my intentions.
I was not particularly refering to Turkish artifcact when I discussed the items at the British Museum (which, incidentally, is a non-profit). The artifacts at the museum span a large number of times and cultures. I said that many of the artifacts were not taken care of, not that all of them were not being taken care of. Such is the case with some Egyptian artifacts, to name one example. I don’t know the specific situation of the Turkish artifacts, though from my visit to Turkey it seems clear that a lot of care was taken to take care of the Sultans belongings (a tad off-topic, but considering what the Sultans were like, I wouldn’t be shouting too much about old misbehaviour of the British).
I don’t actually think the British Empire would have given a damn whether the artifacts they took were being well taken care of or not, they probably would have taken them anyway. However there’s no huge issue in recognizing that many artifacts, had they not been taken, would have been lost.
You’ll note that I don’t consider that a justification for them keeping the artifacts now against the wishes of the countries they originate from. Or did you not read that far?
Claudia, before you tell Selin to calm down, perhaps you should re-read your post and put Spain (which is where I believe you may be from) into the category of pilfered from countries and see how you feel about what you wrote.
When I first read what you wrote, I found it so unbelievably arrogant and offensive, I couldn’t even write a response and decided to ignore your comment in the interest of civility.
England and its allies were hell-bent on destroying the Ottoman Empire, and pretty much were succeeding in squeezing it both economically and socially from the late 1700s through its demise after WWI- brought about largely by their creation of divisions, and exploitation of ethnicities, within the Empire. There is a reason they called the Empire “the sick man of Europe”, and it is largely attributable to their efforts and the inability of the Empire to counter them.
And do tell, who appointed the British, the greatest exploiter of other countries’ natural resources and labor to the detriment of those societies, the “keeper” (or more properly, thief) of other countries’ history and artifacts?
Give me a break, the pilfering of history by the British was not done to benefit anyone but the British.
And who are you, or anyone for that matter, to judge the Ottman Empire as backward? Ottoman society was socially much more advanced than Europe in that it a was multi-ethnic and multi-religious when the ruling Catholic monarchs of Europe were waging the inquisition and burning those who refused to bow to the Pope’s superiority at the stake, which is why ethnic “minorities” who were Orthodox Christians did not emigrate out of the Ottoman Empire into Europe although the borders were open and Jews fled to the Empire to find refuge.
There is and was no justification for the culture theft of the British. Each sovereign nation has the right to do, or not do, what it wants with its historical artifacts, and to act in the best interests of its citizens without paternalistic interference from other nations.
There is no culture other than the British that is better at pissing on another and shamelessly proclaiming how wonderful it is that it’s raining and cleansing “the dirt.”
I have to side with our Turkish readers on this one. The Brits didn’t take these things because they felt they weren’t being taken care off, they took them because they wanted to show themselves and the world how rich and powerful they were and how civilized and interested in culture.
Of course, quite some of them were simply scientists who were fascinated by other, ancient cultures and who could not care less about what the locals thought about them taking away these artifacts.
As for the Sultans: most stories about the Sultans and their ‘horrible behavior’ are tremendous exaggerations meant to depict the Muslim ruler as the anti-Christ. In fact, though, Ottoman Sultans behaved better than European Kings (or Emperors) for many centuries. At high school they may teach you slightly differently, but once you go to University and take a course in dark age history there, you’ll quickly learn that the biased and prejudices are mostly inaccurate.