Gobekli Tepe Read online

  The quality and style of Göbekli Tepe’s strange carved art are at once breathtaking and mesmeric, a fact made even more incredible in the knowledge that we are told the complex was built by simple hunter-gatherer communities that thrived in an age before the emergence of subsistence agriculture and animal husbandry.

  NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION

  Professor Klaus Schmidt, the forward-thinking German archaeologist in charge of excavations at Göbekli Tepe, now believes that the Neolithic revolution came about as a result of the creation of megalithic complexes of this kind across southeast Turkey, which forms part of what archaeologists refer to as the triangle d’or, or golden triangle. Schmidt proposes that the many hundreds of people involved in the construction and maintenance of the enclosures at Göbekli Tepe would quickly have depleted locally available food resources.

  Add to this the thousands of “pilgrims” who would descend on the site for clan gatherings and other forms of ceremonial activity, and it is clear that another, more plentiful supply of food was required—one that could be provided year in year out, ad infinitum. Hence, subsistence agriculture rapidly emerged in the form of the domestication of wild species of wheat and rye. This required the hunter-gatherers of the region to become settled farmers and pastoralists living in more permanent environments, which gradually emerged as the first towns and villages of the Neolithic age.

  Evidence of this transition from hunter-gatherer to settled farmer in southeast Turkey comes from the discovery by geneticists that sixty-eight modern strains of wheat derive from a form of wild wheat called einkorn that thrives to this day on the slopes of an extinct volcano named Karaca Dağ, which lies some 50 miles (80 kilometers) to the northeast of Göbekli Tepe.

  All this was occurring in the Near East as much as two thousand years before the flowering of the first major city complexes at places such as Çatal Höyük and Aşıklı Höyük in what is today central Turkey. They emerged as part of the rapid expansion of the Neolithic revolution, which after embracing the Central Anatolian Plain very quickly reached Eastern Europe. The revolution moved southward also into the Levant, where forms of protoagriculture already existed, and eastward into Iran, Central Asia, and eventually India and Pakistan, home of the Indus Valley civilization. Schmidt is in no doubt that Göbekli Tepe was one of the key points of origin of the Neolithic revolution, meaning that for our present civilization at least this is where history begins.

  GÖBEKLI TEPE IN CONTEXT

  Before going any further, it is important to place Göbekli Tepe in context with what is known about the emergence of the civilized world. Its earliest enclosures, which are by far the most sophisticated, existed as much as seven thousand years before the construction of Stonehenge in southern England, built around 3000 BC. Yet having said this, mounting evidence indicates that the Stonehenge we see today, with its familiar sarsen trilithons, Heel Stone alignment toward the midsummer sunrise, and bluestone horseshoe of standing stones, is simply the final phase of an evolution that began with the creation of a Mesolithic complex as early as 8000 BC. Who was responsible for this proto-Stonehenge thousands of years before the arrival on British shores of the first Neolithic farmers remains a mystery. Whatever the answer, the fact that this early date of construction coincides with the final abandonment of Göbekli Tepe must raise a few eyebrows and suggests there might have been a much greater communication network between prehistoric cultures than is currently accepted by scholars.

  EGYPT’S FIRST TIME

  Göbekli Tepe is also a full seven thousand years older than the conventional dates attributed to the construction of the Great Pyramid and its neighbors on Egypt’s famous plateau at Giza. Even if we accept these monuments as the product of Egypt’s pharaonic age, the evidence presented both by me and my colleague Robert Bauval in a number of our books suggests very strongly that much earlier structures must have existed in the Nile Valley during a mythical age referred to by the dynastic Egyptians as Zep Tepi, the First Time. It is a time when the gods themselves—Osiris, Isis, Seth, Horus, Thoth, and others—are said to have walked the earth.

  An obvious marker of this age of the gods is the Great Sphinx, the leonine monument that sits on the eastern edge of the plateau at Giza—its gaze fixed toward the eastern horizon, where the sun rises at the time of the equinoxes.

  During the mid-1990s convincing evidence was put forward by Boston geologist Dr. Robert Schoch and his colleague John Anthony West to suggest that the Sphinx is not the product of the Fourth Dynasty, when pharaohs such as Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure built the surrounding pyramid complexes, but dates to a much earlier epoch of humankind. It might even be possible that this timeless monument was originally created to gaze at its celestial counterpart, the constellation of Leo, when that noble asterism last housed the equinoctial sun between the eleventh millennium BC and the ninth millennium BC.

  Such a realization, if verified, would make the Sphinx pretty much contemporary with Göbekli Tepe, which lies at a distance of around 700 miles (1,100 kilometers) from Egypt’s Nile Valley.

  LION PILLAR BUILDING

  It is therefore a matter of great interest that there are striking carvings of advancing lions on the inner faces of twin pillars in an east-west aligned enclosure at Göbekli Tepe dated to the ninth millennium BC. Called the “Lion Pillars Building,” the structure’s leonine pillars form a gateway at its eastern end, their advancing beasts appearing to rear out of the equinoctial horizon.

  As Andrew Collins points out elsewhere,2 there is every possibility that to the Göbekli builders this leonine art not only signified the blood-red might of the sun (like the lion-headed goddesses of ancient Egypt), but also the influence of the constellation of Leo, the celestial lion, as it rose in the predawn light of the spring equinox.

  So the same inspiration behind the construction of the Great Sphinx might also have been present at Göbekli Tepe, leading us to ask whether there is a real connection between these two distant places. If so, was the emergence of high culture in both the Nile Valley and southeast Turkey related in some manner to the creation of proto-Stonehenge by an unknown culture that thrived during the very same epoch? Were all these sites, and many more besides, once connected in some unfathomable manner?

  FORGOTTEN CIVILIZATION

  In books such as Fingerprints of the Gods (1995), Heaven’s Mirror (1998, authored with my wife, Santha Faiia), and the sequel to Fingerprints of the Gods, which I am writing for publication in 2015, I make the case for a global civilization, possessing immense technical sophistication and a profound understanding of our place in the cosmos, that thrived in an age before a terrible cataclysm brought the world to its knees soon after the end of the last ice age.

  More than ever before, science is piecing together exactly what occurred during this global catastrophe, which is now firmly dated to ca. 10,900–10,800 BC. It is a moment in time known to paleoclimatologists as the Younger Dryas horizon, which defines the boundary between the Pleistocene geological epoch and the Holocene, which we still live in today.

  It was a time also when the glaciers that had covered much of the Northern Hemisphere during the Ice Age began rapidly to readvance, for the Younger Dryas is the name given to a mini ice age that gripped the world for a period of around thirteen hundred years, from approximately 10,900 BC onward, and ended abruptly around the time the first major enclosures were under construction at Göbekli Tepe, ca. 9600–9500 BC.

  It seems certain, now, that the cause of this worldwide catastrophe was a large comet that fragmented into thousands of pieces as it entered the upper atmosphere. Each fragment rained down on the earth, causing unimaginable detonations that pulverized vast swathes of land across the planet. Not only did this terrible cataclysm trigger the onset of the Younger Dryas mini ice age and with it the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna, including the mammoth, mastodon, toxodon, great camel, and great sloth, but it also devastated the world’s human population. The worst hit areas were on the American c
ontinent. Here the impact blasts, each one as powerful as a small atomic bomb, were more widespread than anywhere else.

  CATASTROPHOBIA

  Andrew, in this groundbreaking book, proposes that Göbekli Tepe was built as a response to the aftermath of this global cataclysm. The earliest enclosures were created, he postulates, by a hunter-gatherer populace still in fear of another comet impact, even though several hundred years had elapsed since the final reverberations of this catastrophic event.

  Each structure, with its beautifully carved stones, was built with the specific purpose of preserving cosmic order through shamanic interactions with the unseen world. This was achieved using an idealized cosmology, envisaged as a sky pole, or umbilicus, linking earth and heaven. In this way the hunter-gatherers, under the instruction of a ruling elite, were able to maintain the status quo of the cosmos and prevent further attacks on the sky pole, the axis of heaven, from a cosmic trickster in the guise of a supernatural fox or wolf.

  It was this absolute fear of another cosmic catastrophe, something that visionary writer Barbara Hand Clow refers to so aptly as catastrophobia, that caused the hunter-gatherers of southeast Turkey to suddenly start supersizing their cult buildings into the beautiful megalithic structures we see today.

  It was also this obsession with preventing another cataclysm that was responsible, at least in part, for the collective amnesia that has allowed us to filter out and reject the existence of the proposed global civilization that thrived in the epoch immediately prior to the Younger Dryas Boundary impact event, as scientists call it today.

  Yet some expression of the complex cosmology existing during this former golden age is almost certainly locked into the design, proportion, and carved art at Göbekli Tepe. It thus becomes a virtual Noah’s ark in stone, bridging the gap between a former age of enlightenment and the emergence down on the Mesopotamia Plain of some of the oldest known civilizations of this current world age, most obviously those of Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, and Babylon.

  ABODE OF THE GODS

  The mythologies of these great civilizations speak clearly of wisdom bringers and creator gods responsible for the formation of the earliest towns, cities, canals, walled enclosures, and irrigation channels—and even of humankind. Named as the Anunnaki, these anthropomorphic, or humanlike, gods are said to have emerged from a primeval mound called Duku, situated on a cosmic mountain named Kharsag, beneath which was the world of mortal human beings.

  Klaus Schmidt believes that Göbekli Tepe had a direct impact on the myths and legends regarding the Anunnaki, and that the site could be the role model for the original Duku mound. Indeed, he goes further, as Andrew points out in this book, by hinting at a connection between Göbekli Tepe and biblical traditions concerning the Garden of Eden, and perhaps even the very human angels of Hebrew mythological tradition known as the Watchers.

  CULT OF THE VULTURE

  A deep look at the description of the Watchers and their offspring, the Nephilim, in ancient Jewish texts such as the book of Enoch makes it clear that these mythical creatures were not incorporeal angels, but flesh and blood human beings with very distinct shamanistic qualities. They are occasionally said to wear dark, iridescent cloaks, or feather coats, and on occasion they take flight like birds, echoing the presence among the earliest proto-Neolithic communities of the Near East of a cult of death and rebirth focused on scavenger birds such as the vulture.

  As Andrew points out, at Göbekli Tepe, as well as at the nine-thousandyear-old Neolithic city of Çatal Höyük in southern-central Turkey, there are abstract representations of vultures with articulated legs. Either they are shamans adorned as birds or bird spirits with anthropomorphic features.

  Were these shamans of the early Neolithic age role models for the Watchers of Enochian tradition? Are the Watchers a vague memory of those behind the construction of proto-Neolithic complexes, amongst them Göbekli Tepe in southeast Turkey? Did the Watchers really introduce this current world age to forbidden knowledge carried over from a global civilization that once thrived in an antediluvian world?

  FROM THE ASHES OF ANGELS

  These are questions we are only now beginning to ask for the first time. Yet they were asked as far back as 1996 by Andrew Collins in his groundbreaking book From the Ashes of Angels. What is more, there is little question that Andrew was one of the first writers to realize the greater significance of Göbekli Tepe, bringing it to the attention of the mysteries community as early as 2004. It is for this reason that his book Göbekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods is such a masterwork, for it is the culmination of nearly twenty years of Andrew’s original research into the origins of the Neolithic revolution and its relationship to Hebrew traditions concerning the location of the Garden of Eden and the human truth behind the Watchers of the book of Enoch.

  In a testimonial written to accompany the publication of From the Ashes of Angels, I said that Andrew had “put important new facts before the public concerning the mysterious origins of human civilization.” I stand by this statement and add only that with his vast knowledge of the subject under discussion, there is no one better suited to reveal Göbekli Tepe’s place in history today.

  Graham Hancock, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, is a British writer and journalist. His books, including Fingerprints of the Gods, The Sign and The Seal, and Heaven’s Mirror, have sold more than five million copies worldwide and have been translated into twenty-seven languages. His public lectures, radio, and television appearances have allowed his ideas to reach a vast audience, identifying him as an unconventional thinker who raises controversial questions about humanity’s past.

  Also see the Notes and Bibliography of this book for further references related to the material in this introduction

  PROLOGUE

  IN QUEST OF ANGELS

  September 16, 2013. Ever since kindergarten I have had a strange fascination with angels. Back then I was forced to endure Sunday school on a regular basis, and what I heard about Moses parting the Red Sea or Jesus feeding the five thousand with just a few loaves and fishes intrigued me. I loved hearing about miracles. Yet the lessons were always long and dreary. I wished only to be in the park, kicking about a soccer ball with my dad and brother.

  Then one day my Sunday school teacher, a rather stern-faced woman, related how the Old Testament prophet Abraham received into his presence three angels. They sat with him beneath the shade of a tree, where they talked and ate food together.

  I knew about angels, those with radiant bodies and beautiful wings, but what the teacher was implying seemed at odds with this ethereal view. Not only did angels seem to function in this world, but they could also be tangibly real. What’s more, people could talk to them and perhaps even become their friends. This was an incredible revelation to me.

  Abraham’s meeting with the angels was not lingered on, causing me to raise my hand and ask: “Please miss, what are angels?” To which I was told: “They are messengers of God.”

  I needed to know more, so I asked the teacher to elaborate further. She just looked at me and said, slowly and decisively: “There is nothing to be explained—they are the angels of God.”

  For her, the existence of angels seemed arbitrary, so my curiosity bore no meaning or relevance. Yet clearly it mattered to me.

  It was a moment in my life I shall never forget. Somehow it fired my interest in angels as corporeal creatures and was one of the reasons I was here in southeast Turkey, making my way through sun-baked, dusty streets looking for answers. All around me were market vendors plying their wares, stalls brimming with ripe melons, trays of tomatoes, and all manner of household goods sold at very competitive prices.

  Amid the incessant din, I gazed up at an age-old stone archway, the only opening through a more or less intact wall of some considerable size. Beyond it, as far as the eye could see, were the ruins of an ancient city razed to the ground by the Mongol hoards in 1271. Known as Carrhae to the Romans, this sprawling Mesopotamian metropolis—a commercial ce
nter at the crossroads of several key trading routes—is better known by the name Harran.

  All that remains of the ancient city today are a scattering of walls; a massive stone arch marking the entrance to the now-vanished Great Mosque; a ruined castle, built in the early Islamic period on the site of a pagan temple dedicated to the Mesopotamian moon god Sin; and a colossal stone structure, rising to a height of 110 feet (33 meters) and known locally as the Astronomical Tower. Although it too once formed part of the Great Mosque—or Paradise Mosque, as it was more correctly known—legend asserts that the Harranites, the inhabitants of Harran, were keen astronomers who used the tower’s summit to observe and record the movement of the stars.

  Although the Harranites acknowledged the faith of Islam following the Arab conquest, many belonged to an altogether different faith—one that came to be known as Sabaeanism. These curious people worshipped the sun, moon, and planets, which they honored in temples built specifically for this purpose. In addition to this, they saw the Pole Star, and the northern night sky in general, as the direction of the Primal Cause, of God himself, a fact celebrated each year in a grand festival known as the Mystery of the North. This fascination with the Pole Star was a belief shared by other religious sects of the region including the Ismaili Brethren of Purity, the Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran, and the angel-worshipping Yezidi, all of whom owe at least some part of their existence to the Sabaeans of Harran.

  In addition to being star worshippers, the Harranites are said to have collated the sacred writings of Greco-Roman Egypt attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, the Thrice Great Hermes. Following the destruction of Harran in the thirteenth century, this important corpus of religious literature known as the Hermetica was carried into Europe, where, some one and a half centuries later, it became the spiritual backbone to the Italian Renaissance and, with it, a revival of all things Egyptian.