Gobekli Tepe Page 8

  So where exactly was the sky world of the shaman during the age of Göbekli Tepe? In an attempt to answer this question, we must examine the deepest, most profound, cave art of Ice Age Europe.

  6

  WINDOW ON ANOTHER WORLD

  If the hermetic axiom of “as above, so below” were to be applied to the construction of Göbekli Tepe in the tenth millennium BC, then it would suggest that ritual activity taking place within its enclosures was reflected in some manner in the heavens, and vice versa. Going beyond the imagined portal created by the twin pillars standing at the center of the structures is likely to have projected the shaman or initiate into some part of the night sky, but where exactly?

  Some idea might be gleaned from the Ice Age cave artists of the late Paleolithic age. Although much of the beautiful imagery seen in the caves suggests a clear interface between the physical world and the perceived supernatural realms existing beyond human consciousness, certain painted panels are now thought to convey abstract celestial themes as well.1 Three examples can be cited in this respect, and in each case the panels or friezes are positioned in the direction of the area of sky where the relevant stars were to be seen during the epoch in question.

  THE LASCAUX SHAFT SCENE

  The first example is the famous Shaft Scene from Lascaux Caves near Montignac in France’s Dordogne region. Located in a pit 16 feet (4.9 meters) deep, which could only be accessed using a rope (the remains of which have been found), the scene is composed of a set of images that have mystified paleontologists since the chance discovery of the cave complex by four teenagers in 1940.

  From right to left, the painted fresco—which is approximately ten feet (three meters) across—shows a wounded bison, a birdman, a bird on a pole, and a rhinoceros (see figure 6.1 on p. 70, although the rhino is not shown here). Black loops drawn beneath the bison’s belly indicate the release of its entrails, perhaps by the barbed spear seen cutting across its body at an acute angle. Either that or it has been gored by the rhinoceros, which appears to be walking away from the scene. Facing the bison is a male human figure, who either has the head of a bird or wears a bird mask. He leans backward in a most awkward position and has an erect penis, a stance that could indicate he is a bird shaman experiencing an ecstatic trance state (the ingestion of psychotropic substances often causes male erection).

  Confirming the significance of the figure’s avian features is the presence just below his feet of a bird on a pole, its head and beak resembling those of the birdman. Off to the left is the rhinoceros, whose role is debatable; he could have gored the bison, or he might simply be associated with the birdman’s blatant display of virility (rhino horn, being phallic in appearance, is valued in some cultures as an aphrodisiac). Next to the creature’s upraised tail are six black dots drawn in pairs, the meaning of which is unclear.

  The panel’s awkward positioning at the bottom of a deep shaft, along with the fact that it shows the only human figure in the entire cave complex, indicates that it held some special significance to the Upper Paleolithic peoples who entered Lascaux and decorated its corridors and halls with a whole menagerie of Ice Age animals.

  THE SUMMER TRIANGLE

  Many scholars have attempted to understand Lascaux’s Shaft Scene, although no consensus regarding its meaning has ever been reached. However, in 2000 German scholar Dr. Michael Rappenglück of the University of Munich came up with a truly inspired interpretation of the painted panel. He argues that the entire scene is an abstract map of an area of sky featuring a group of three bright stars known collectively as the Summer Triangle, these being Altair in Aquila, Vega in Lyra, and Deneb, the brightest star in the constellation of Cygnus, the celestial bird or swan, known also as the Northern Cross.2 At the time the Shaft Scene was created, ca. 16,500–15,000 BC, Deneb acted as the Pole Star, as it was the closest star to the celestial pole, the turning point of the heavens.

  Figure 6.1. The Shaft Scene inside the pit at Lascaux in southern France. Solutrean period, ca. 16,500–15,000 BC.

  Today Polaris, a star in the constellation of Ursa Minor, the Little Bear, marks the position of the celestial pole in the northern night sky. Yet over time, the Pole Star changes due to the effects of precession—the slow wobble of the earth across a cycle of approximately twenty-six thousand years. During the pyramid age, Thuban, a minor star in the constellation of Draco, the celestial dragon, held the position of Pole Star. Going back further, Vega in Lyra was Pole Star from around 13,000 BC to 11,000 BC. Before that the pole had been marked by Delta Cygni, one of the wing stars of Cygnus. It gained the role from its neighbor Deneb, which was Pole Star from around 16,500 BC until ca. 14,500 BC.

  That Deneb was Pole Star when the Shaft Scene was created makes sense of its connection with the Summer Triangle, especially as Cygnus is universally seen as a celestial bird. In other words, the bird shown on the pole at Lascaux is Cygnus marking the celestial pole, with the pole itself representing the vertical axis, or sky pole, which turns the heavens and holds up the sky. As to the birdman, he might well signify a shaman who has attained a trance state and ascended the sky pole in the guise of a bird associated in some manner with astral flight and, of course, the Cygnus asterism, or star group. Moreover, the Shaft Scene is located on a north-facing wall, which corresponds to the direction of the Summer Triangle during this distant epoch. It is almost as if the panel is an imaginary window onto the celestial world it portrays.

  This theory suggests that the area of sky in question held a special place in the beliefs and practices of the Ice Age peoples responsible for executing the cave art. Such practices, which perhaps involved a ritual descent into the shaft using the rope provided, very likely acted as a symbolic means of shifting from one level of reality to another. In this way the Paleolithic shamans or initiates could commune with perceived supernatural intelligences in a sky world thought to exist beyond the celestial pole.

  On its own, the directing of Lascaux’s Shaft Scene toward the stars its panel represents might seem like a happy coincidence. However, elsewhere in the Lascaux Caves other murals have been identified as abstract representations of known asterisms. For instance, Rappenglück and others see the head, horns, and upper torso of a bull in the Salle des Taureaux, or Hall of the Bulls, as a representation of the constellation of Taurus, the bull, with a grouping of six to seven dots next to it being seen as the nearby star cluster known as the Pleiades.3 As with the Shaft Scene, the animals on the wall of the Salle des Taureaux face toward where the stars in question would have been visible during the epoch in question.

  THE VENUS AND THE SORCERER

  A third example of the relationship between Ice Age cave art and celestial themes can be found in the Chauvet Cave of southern France, which overlooks an ancient gorge through which the Ardèche River once flowed. Discovered as recently as 1994, its painted galleries, full of breathtaking friezes showing a variety of Ice Age animals, are among the oldest so far discovered, having been executed by Paleolithic cave artists around thirty-two thousand years ago. Of special interest here is the fact that in the Salle du Fond, or End Chamber, located in the deepest part of the complex, a remarkable piece of wall decoration can be found. Called the Venus and the Sorcerer, it appears on a vertically hanging cone of limestone (a form of stalactite) that comes to within 3 feet 6 inches (1 meter) of the cave floor.

  The Venus in question is an abstract torso, hips, vulva, and legs of a full-bodied woman, arguably one of the oldest known two-dimensional representations of the female form in existence; it is also the only human figure to be seen anywhere in the caves. The Sorcerer is a young bison, its head overlying the woman’s belly or womb, its left front leg doubling as her left leg, indicating a special relationship between the two figures. Completing the scene is the head and upper body of a large feline, perhaps a panther or lion, which extends above and to the left of the woman’s body as if the former is emerging from the latter (see figure 6.2).

  The strange image is unique, wit
hout anything else quite like it in the entire cave complex, and would seem to have been a central focus of the cave artists’ ritual activity. Thus any suggestion that the panel might depict abstract representations of celestial objects should be taken seriously, especially when we find that it could well reflect the same region of sky as Lascaux’s Shaft Scene.

  THE GREAT RIFT

  Swiss researcher Franz Gnaedinger has proposed that the woman’s torso and genitalia represent the Summer Triangle, within which the young bison’s head and shoulders are perfectly framed.*2 This is an inspiring theory, although a more positive identification would be to suggest that the woman’s vulva and scissorlike legs represent the area of the Milky Way known as the Great Rift (also known as the Dark Rift, Cygnus Rift, and Great Cleft), which is framed within the Summer Triangle (see figure 6.3 on p. 74). This is a dark band of stellar dust and debris in line with the galactic plane that causes the Milky Way to appear to split into two separate streams in the region of the Cygnus constellation. As a dark band it continues to where the ecliptic, the path of the sun, crosses the Milky Way in the region of the stars of Sagittarius and Scorpius, or Scorpio, the celestial scorpion. Here one “leg” of the Milky Way peters out as the other expands in width and continues into the southern sky.

  Figure 6.2. The Venus and the Sorcerer panel inside the Chauvet Cave. Note how the woman and bull share the same leg, while the large feline seems to emerge from the scene.

  If Chauvet’s Venus figure really is an expression of the Milky Way, then the head of the young bison might be viewed as emerging from the Great Rift like a newborn child. As alien as such a concept might seem, there are 3-D representations and murals showing women, goddesses perhaps, giving birth to bull calves at Çatal Höyük, the Neolithic city on the Konya Plain in southern central Turkey, which dates to ca. 7500–5700 BC (see figure 6.4).

  Figure 6.3. The Venus and the Sorcerer from the Chauvet Cave overlaid on the Milky Way, showing that the woman’s legs form the twin streams of the Great Rift, while the head of the bull calf in her womb area corresponds to the position of the stars of Cygnus and Cepheus.

  Figure 6.4. Three-dimensional panel showing a leopard-headed woman giving birth to a bull calf, from the Neolithic city of Çatal Höyük, ca. 7500–5700 BC.

  In addition to forming the outline of a bird in flight, the arrangement of the Cygnus stars resemble the frontal view of a bovine head, complete with extended horns. It is a realization that probably inspired both the Chauvet Cave’s Venus and Sorcerer panel and the ancient Egyptian belief that the sun is reborn each morning in the form of a bull calf, which emerges from between the twin streams of the Milky Way’s Great Rift.4

  Yet if Chauvet’s Venus is an abstract representation of the Milky Way in the region of the Great Rift, and the bull calf signifies the Cygnus stars, what does the large feline represent? Its position immediately above the other figures gives the impression that it is either responsible for or connected with what is displayed, suggesting that it too is a representation of something to be seen in the heavens. Universally, large felines, such as panthers, jaguars, pumas, and lions, have been seen as personifications, and even controlling intelligences, of the night sky. Is it possible that the example at Chauvet plays a similar role? Could it be seen as the “father,” or progenitor, of the bull calf, with the Venus as its mother—the feline, bull, and woman having some kind of symbiotic relationship?

  As with the proposed astronomical frescoes at Lascaux, the Venus and Sorcerer panel at Chauvet is located at the extreme northern end of the cave complex at a position suggesting that it too acted as a symbolic window onto the section of sky represented by the images in question. If this surmise is correct, it could suggest that the Ice Age artists that executed this extraordinary cave art some thirty-two thousand years ago possessed, like those at Lascaux, a highly complex understanding of the night sky that we are only now beginning to comprehend.

  CAVE SCENES TO CULT SHRINES

  All this is very interesting and might well be correct. Yet linking Ice Age cave art with the design of sacred enclosures created at Göbekli Tepe in southeast Anatolia thousands of years later might seem presumptuous. It is a fact, however, that in the early Neolithic, stalagmites and stalactites were removed from cave interiors and carried back to Çatal Höyük, where they were placed in cult shrines alongside statuettes, bucrania, vulture beaks, and painted frescoes of extraordinary beauty and sophistication. So many fragments from caves were found there that British archaeologist James Mellaart, who excavated the site in the 1960s, proposed that the shrines at Çatal Höyük might have been the realm of chthonic deities; that is, gods of the underworld.5

  B. C. Dietrich, Ph.D., author of The Origins of Greek Religion, went further by suggesting that the ritual activities practiced in Çatal Höyük’s cult shrines had formerly been celebrated in primordial cave settings, adding that: “Though the locality of the cult may have changed, its form did not relax its curious hold on the mind of the worshipper who, over many generations, retained the aniconic stalagmite as an image of his goddess.”6 This, of course, resonates with the manner in which the limestone cone in the Chauvet Cave was utilized in the creation of the Venus and Sorcerer panel.

  If the sacred enclosures at Göbekli Tepe do reflect an interest in the celestial heavens, was it just a symbolic gesture, without any kind of real accuracy, or was there true precision involved in their construction? We examine now the evidence presented by the T-shaped pillars, which reveal a recurring pattern that will leave the reader in little doubt that they were once turned toward something very specific in the night sky.

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  TURNED TOWARD THE STARS

  In the knowledge that megalithic monuments worldwide have been found to possess alignments toward celestial bodies, such as the sun, moon, and stars, it seems reasonable to look for something similar at Göbekli Tepe, with the most obvious candidates for orientation being the various sets of twin pillars at the center of the different enclosures. These could have acted as astronomical markers, especially as at the time of their construction a clear view of the local horizon would have been visible in all directions from their elevated positions.

  Even a cursory glance at the positioning of the different sets of twin pillars in the main enclosures shows them to be aligned roughly north-south. This suggests they are unlikely to have targeted the sun, moon, or planets, which all rise in the east and set in the west. Clearly, if their orientations mean anything, then the enclosures must have been built to target a star or stellar object that either rose or set close to the imaginary north-south meridian line that divides the sky in two and crosses directly overhead.

  ANGLES OF ORIENTATION

  Establishing the precise orientations of the enclosures’ central pillars was put to chartered engineer Rodney Hale, who for the past fifteen years has made a detailed study of stellar alignments at prehistoric and sacred sites around the world. He examined Göbekli Tepe’s detailed survey plan and determined that the central pillars in Enclosures B, C, D, and E (the Felsentempel, or rock temple, located to the west of the main group) all seemed to be aligned just west of north, and, equally, just east of south, in the following manner:

  Enclosure B 337°/157°

  Enclosure C 345°/165°

  Enclosure D 353°/173°

  Enclosure E 350°/170°

  The twin pillars marking the entrance to an apse-like feature at the northern end of Enclosure A were turned much farther west. Indeed, they are oriented 312 degrees/132 degrees, just 3 degrees off northwest-southeast, suggesting that whatever it was they were oriented toward had little to do with the primary alignments of the larger enclosures.

  The slight differences in the mean azimuths of the central pillars in Enclosures B, C, D, and E is telling, as it suggests that each set targeted a star or stellar object that was very gradually shifting its position against the local horizon as a result of precession (see figure 7.1). Thus the enclosures were aligne
d to a celestial object that either set each night on the north-northwestern horizon or, equally, rose each night on the south-southeast horizon.

  AN ORION CORRELATION?

  Among the southern star groups and constellations looked at by Hale were the Hyades, Taurus, the Pleiades, and Orion (more specifically its three “belt” stars), all of which have been claimed to match the orientations of the twin pillars in the various enclosures at Göbekli Tepe during the epoch of their construction.1 Out of these, just one candidate emerged as perhaps playing some role at Göbekli Tepe, and this was Orion, the celestial hunter.

  Rodney Hale charted the risings of Orion’s principal stars between 9500 BC and 8000 BC, then matched this information against the window of opportunity created by the orientations of the central pillars in the various enclosures at Göbekli Tepe.*3 However, the results were disappointing. Although potential alignments existed between Enclosure B and the Orion belt stars between 9000 BC and 8600 BC, the mean azimuths of the central pillars in Enclosures C, D, and E did not target the rising of any of Orion’s belt stars between 9500 BC and 8000 BC. The constellation’s other key stars—Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Saiph, and Rigel—fared even worse, making it highly unlikely that Orion was involved in the orientation of Göbekli Tepe’s principal enclosures.