Forbidden History - Göbekli Tepe: The First Temple

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

The spectacular rock-hewn pillars of Göbekli Tepe in southern Türkiye have baffled archaeologists for decades. Who built this incredible monument over 12,000 years ago, and why? Could the builders have mastered agriculture, and were they the first settled communities of humans in the world? In this episode, experts investigate intriguing new theories, offering clues to unlocking the secrets of this ancient site. Cast List: Dr. Martin Sweatman: University of Edinburgh Dominic Selwood: Historian, barrister, bestselling author, novelist and frequent contributor to national newspapers including The Independent, The Spectator and The Daily Telegraph Dr. Janina Ramirez: Cultural historian, broadcaster and author based at the University of Oxford Hugh Newman: Author & Researcher Tony McMahon: Former BBC news producer, author, print journalist and historian  Dr. Karen Bellinger: Anthropologist, archaeologist, and historian  Dr. Peggy Brunache: Historian, archaeologist and lecturer at University of Glasgow Dr. Julia Gresky: German Archaeological Institute Professor Necmi Karul: Lead Archaeologist, Karahan Tepe Professor Avi Gopher: Tel Aviv University Gil Haklay: Israel Antiquities Authority Lynn Picknett: Historian and researcher specialising in exposing historical conspiracies. She is also the co-author of several notable works Eric Meyers: Narrator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. Gobeckley-Tepi, the oldest building complex ever discovered. Stonehenge in the pyramids, that seems really ancient. But this is on a whole other magnitude of ancient. Built around 12,000 years ago, could early,

humans have done this on their own? Or did they have help from beyond? It's a strange thing about many of these sculptures from the Neolithic, that they look very otherworldly. It doesn't look like a human being. Some evidence suggests this site could have been a map of the stars, commemorating a cataclysmic event. It's probably one of the most important artifacts in the world. It's like our Rosetta Stone. Could Gobeckley really have been built by human hands? And if so, what was the purpose of this ancient enigma? Turkey, a nation spread across two continents.

The arid Asian part of this country hides many secrets as old as civilization itself. Here in the desert outside the city of Shanlyurfer lies one of the most incredible archaeological discoveries of all time. time. Gobeckley Tepe. One man has an intriguing theory about why our ancestors constructed this place. He thinks they built it to commemorate an event that changed the world. Well, Gebeckle Tepe is situated in southern Turkey, but it's a part of the world where archaeologists have been searching for the origin of civilization.

Dr. Martin Sweatman is from Scotland's Edinburgh University. He is captivated by this site and its unanswered mysteries. So here we have, the Becli Tepe. It's very big. The site is actually overwhelmingly large. It's the top of a mound, but it's a huge top of a mound with a diameter of a thousand feet. Although Gobeckli Tepe, which means Belli Hill in Turkish, is a fascinating structure to study,

Its age is what perplexes historians. In order to understand quite how old Gobekli-Tepi is, we have to redraw the lines of our understanding of history. So if you go back to the time that the pyramids were built, you go back through two world wars, the Vikings, the Romans, the Greeks, and then some. But to get to Gobekly-Tepi, you have to do that again and then another 2,000 years.

That is seriously long form history. Gobeckley Tepe is thought to date back to an age known as the pre-pottery Neolithic. Very little is known about these times since people lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers and left few written records. We've got hunter-gatherers, quite a primitive lifestyle, and then they suddenly build this.

I think you need a really, really good reason to do that, and I suspect, or at least it's my view, that the sites archaeologists don't really have an adequate reason for this construction yet. At Quebec Leitepe, there's this wonderful tree up on the hill, the highest part of the hill, which is still there, and it's called the wishing tree. People would go there and it was like a sacred spot where they would make prayers, wish for things to happen in their lives and wish for the good of others. It is rather odd that this site was imbued with religious meaning before Gebeckli-Tepi was actually uncovered. And we have to ask ourselves why were so many people over the millennia

drawn to this spot? Could this site have been built for religious purposes? Gebeckley-Tepi is arguably the world's oldest temple. There is very little doubt in the minds of most people that the way the stones have been configured, the way that the landscape has been worked across millennia, it has to have served some sort of ceremonial and ritualistic purpose. Gobeckley-Tepi consists of over 60 pillars, arranged in several circles,

which archaeologists referred to as enclosures. If this place was built as a temple, what do these pillars represent? The interpretation is that they are stylized human figures, and I think that's persuasive, particularly in the way that they are arrayed in this circular form, facing one another. And on some of them you see a belt or a loincloth,

or the suggestion of arms. There is some indication that they might have been the veneration of those who had come before, those who have passed into the underworld and perhaps represent demons or protectors of the people. I think what we have here is the birth of a new religion. And I suspect that what we can see here are very early kinds of temple,

and that brought people together. the community grew, and in a sense that's part of the story of how civilization began. The pillars of Gobeckli-Tepi are decorated with incredible relief carvings of predators and scavengers, including snakes, foxes, and a vulture. In the 1990s, German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt began to formulate a theory on this site's purpose. One argument proposed by Schmidt is that Gebeckley-Tepi is a focal point for communities to come together, but possibly also where they would commemorate ancestors and where they would perform rituals and honour whatever gods, goddesses, creatures,

they may have held sacred. However, Schmidt's theories are being challenged, as new discoveries are being made at Gobeckley-Tepi every year. In 2017, new evidence emerged when a number of human skull fragments were studied, which unlocked more clues about these ancient people. Julia Greski is a paleo-archologist at the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin

and is responsible for deciphering these pieces. I'm investigating bones at the digital microscope. This is very useful to have a close look on surfaces. So you can divide two marks on the skulls, The smaller ones, the cut marks, they are supposed to be remnants of cleaning the skull, removing the soft tissue. So that's this more or less parallel small cut marks. It appears these skulls were intentionally defleshed for some strange reason. But the second set of markings is even more bizarre.

And we have this really huge and deep carvings. They are up to 5 millimeter in depth, so that's really not just a scratch. This was made intentionally with a lot of repetitive movements. What secrets do these carved skulls reveal about the builders of Gobeckley-Tepe? The structures of Gobeckley-Tepe have been shrouded in mystery for millennia. The recent discovery of a number of fragmented skulls points to some sort of religious worship, Skulls are very important. If you remember somebody, you remember his face, his skull, and not other parts, not the hand.

So it's just the most personal thing of a person. But why would Gobeckli Teppi's builders have deliberately carved the skulls in such a specific way? This can be ancestors or enemies, or it could also have a more practical purpose, because there's really deep carvings they were placed in the midline, so in the sagittal axis of the skull. This could help in fixing a cord. So if you want to hang a skull somewhere, this might help in stabilizing it. It's not possible, given the evidence we have right now from Gebeckletepe to say what exactly they were used for at this site. But comparable sites elsewhere tell us that there is a real thing, Anthropology, just refer to as a skull cult.

Skull cults are religious practices that center on the veneration of skulls. And this can either be because it's some kind of ancestor worship, the individuals or the genetic lines were important, or it's because there's some sort of protective or other power coming from the skull, from the dead person to the living people. Scientists are just beginning to understand the practices of the people who came here. But how did hundreds of people who came here? But how did hunter-gatherers, who spent much of their lives searching for food,

find the time to build these structures? The people living in Gebektepe and contemporary sites in the region were the last hunter-gatherers. We think that these people were also the first settled communities. The Neolithic period is also known as the agricultural revolution. This is the time period where dramatic climate change allowed for a very fertile area of the Middle East to produce the possibility for growing crops. Gobeckley-Tepi lies in what is known as the Fertile Crescent, where many of the world's first civilizations were born. The Society at Gobeckley-Tepi may have cultivated crops hundreds, if not thousands of years, ahead of other cultures.

The evidence for agriculture beginning in this region is very strong. Archaeologists can detect changes to the genetic makeup of plants and animals, and the earliest evidence we have of those changes is very close to Gebekitabir. That then raises the really fascinating question. Were they already farmers who then built this incredible place? Or was it the process of building this place that caused them to that caused them to be farmers. But either way, it's really important

because this is one of the first communities of farmers in the world that we know of. It's really ingenuity. These people made a choice of cereals and legumes and animals that feed us all until this very day. Intrigued by what this ancient civilization achieved and the possibility that the builders here were organized in some way.

Professor Avi Gopher from Tel Aviv University and Gil Haklai, from the Israeli Antiquities Authority, have been studying the layout of the site. We calculated a statistical center point for each enclosure based on the position of the peripheral pillars. That point resulted

exactly between the three central pillars and align with the narrow front face. It's obvious when you look at Gaubeckli-Tepi that there is design involved in this. It's something that's really well designed. The fact that our hunter-gatherer ancestors could find the center point of these three huge circles so accurately points to a clear understanding of complex design. And GIL have discovered something else. We found that there is a geometric relationship between the enclosures.

The three center points in between the central pillars of enclosures B, C, and D form an equilateral triangle. We can say that enclosures B, C, and D probably started out, planned and initially built as a complex. In looking at the architecture at Quebec-Le-Tepé, it is very clearly planned, carefully, and with a great deal of skill and a surprising awareness of what we today would call geometrical principles. At Gebekli, this structuring of the buildings, for me, it's not only an architectural, miracle and, you know, a large project. It's a different way of thinking. We often think as a culture quite patronizingly that people in this period in the Stone Age were primitive, they're not as sophisticated as us.

That's absolutely not true. Physiologically, they were identical to us and lived exactly the same lives, just in different contexts. Humans are capable of incredible sophistication, and sites like Stonehenge or Quebec-Tepi show us just what people can do. Yet some people believe the builders of this huge complex weren't working alone and had help from afar. Little evidence remains for who built Gobeckley-Tepe. But the incredible ability shown by its builders has led some to wonder whether their knowledge came from a divine source. So who could this higher power have been? These T-shaped pillars are covered with really intriguing, almost surreal, abstract symbols. So are they representations of the gods that these people worshipped?

Or are they representations of the people themselves? A six-foot-tall humanoid statue was found near Gobeckley-Tepe, with some interesting features. Could we be looking into the eyes of the people from that time? or some other being. Earth a man that was discovered in 1993, this life-sized human sculpture really challenges our notions of what humans were doing in the year 9,000 BC,

which is when this sculpture dates to. It is an extraordinary piece of art. The way that the face is sculpted, the way the arms come round to cover over the genitals, the fact that obsidian pieces have been set into the stone so that as you move around the sculpture, the eyes would have glistened as if they were alive. This is extraordinary by modern standards.

The thing about Earth a man is that he looks like a very important person, a man of status, because he's wearing quite an impressive sort of necklace, which could be official regalia. He could be a king or he could be a priest or a shaman. It has to be said it looks more to us like an extraterrestrial. It doesn't look like a human being. And it's a strange thing about many of these sculptures from the Neolithic, that they look very otherworldly.

They don't look like what we would regard as our ancestors. If Eartherman is otherworldly, does this suggest that the builders of Gobeckley-Tepe had help? It really looks like this very powerful-looking individual could represent one of the watchers or the Ananaki, the original builders of these sites. The Anunaki were a group of deities worshipped for millennia in the Fertile Crescent. They were originally written about by the Sumerians,

the civilization that first invented the plow and developed writing. Some authors have claimed the Anunaki constructed many of the world's ancient monumental structures. Could this theory explain how hunter-gatherers built something so impressive? We know that the Anunarchy were Samarian and Assyrian gods. However, there are those who have other theories about the Anunarchy, for example, believing that they were humanoid extraterrestrials that arrived on Earth half a million years ago, looking for gold, and that they enslaved the local populations.

The thing about the Watchers or the Ananaki is that they were very sophisticated. They mastered the arts of agriculture, working with the land. They understood astronomy to a very high degree, and they were thought to be the first builders of ancient sites. So if we do believe that the Ananarchy were humanoid, extraterrestrials, then the theory runs that they gave human beings the knowledge required to build the temple at Quebec-Tepi. While some believe Earth a man represents something otherworldly, others are a little more skeptical.

There is some crazy speculation around objects like the Earth a man. It's been argued he looks like he's wearing a space suit. Is he a spaceman? Is he an alien? I think what's happening is now in our modern age, we find it very hard to think that humanity could have been so, conceptual, so creative, so accomplished 10,000 years ago, that the only solution can be that it's extraterrestrials. It's never surprising that people jump to pseudo-scientific conclusions when it comes to what was the purpose of these kinds of sites. It takes time to do excavations, to do enough analysis, to have a better idea of what was

going on. Whatever led to the creation of Gobeckley-Tepe, there is one area of the site that has drawn more attention than any other. It's known as the vulture stone. And Martin Swetman thinks this holds the secret to the site's origin. Perhaps they are constellations. Like, we think of constellations today, we represent them in terms of animal symbols. It's like our Rosetta stone. It's probably one of the most important artifacts in the world.

Gobeckli Tepe has been called the place where human civilization began. Yet the real purpose of this site and its intricate carvings remain a mystery. The depiction on some pillars tell a mythological story, actually. And this scene, we're not writing, of course, but they conveyed a story like of writing. You have some history in your mind. Otherwise, it doesn't have any meaning. It means they have the collective memory. Martin Swetman thinks he has found the focal point of this whole complex. The pillar 43 is incredibly important for our interpretation and presumably for the builders of Kabethti Tepe. There's so much information on it that it's like our Rosetta Stone. It's probably

one of the most important artifacts in the world, because it's telling us something important about this very crucial transitional period. Probably a circular disk is the sun. And that would make a lot of sense because many cultures worship the sun and the moon, often represented them together. So if that's the sun, like we think it is,

then what are these animals? Well, probably it implies that they are constellations. And again, that would make a lot of sense. sense we use animals to represent constellations today. The wings and the head of the eagle or vulture have pretty much the same look and angles that we'd expect for that part of the Sagittarius constellation. It's not terribly different than how we do see constellations now.

The idea that human beings spending all this time at night, staring up at the sky, tracking the movement of stars and planets, today was something that others did, in the past. So if Martin is right, and this is a map of the night sky, why did the builders of Gobeckley-Tepe decide to record this in stone? The most obvious thing is that they are writing a date, perhaps, using procession of the equinoxes, and that maybe this is representing the position of the sun relative to Sagittarius on the summer solstice.

One of the other three animal symbols at the top, perhaps these are the other three solstices and equinoxes for the date given by the position of the sun relative to Sagittarius. So I think this date must have been very important. It must be telling us something about the reason, about the motivation for constructing Quebec Tapia. But the vulture stone has more than just carvings of animals on it. There is also a strange image of a headless human. What does this headless man at the bottom represent? Probably a headless man represents death. Other pillars around this enclosure hold more clues

to what could have happened to the builders of Gobeckley-Tepi. It's possible that some of the iconography is a representation of what they were seeing in the night sky. Was it that of a meteorite striking the Earth? Was it that of the introduction of a new star that is quite predominant in our skies today, 12,000 years later? It's quite possible.

Over the millennia, the Earth's axis has changed relative to its orbit around the Sun. Known as axial procession, the Earth's axis wobbles in a circle on a 26,000 year cycle. So 12,000 years ago, the night sky would have been quite different. Using computer software to analyze the procession of the Earth's axis, Martin believes he has dated the snapshot of the night sky on the vulture stone

to almost 11,000 BC. So we've got meteors, we've got death, and we've got a date to about 10,800, 10,900 BC. What do we know today about that date which might involve meteors and death? There is this theory known as the Young-Adryas' impact theory which proposes that on that date there was a massive comet impact with Earth. Could this huge temple complex have been built to commemorate this cataclysmic impact? And what effect did it have on the people of Gobeckley-Tepe? Now the Younger Dryas is a geological period when the Earth rapidly and suddenly cooled,

a bit like a mini ice age. It occurred about 13,000 years ago. One of the more controversial issues that kind of plagues climate science as well as the question of the archaeology of this site is what the Younger Dryas actually was and what caused it. And one theory is that there was an impact event. And supporting this hypothesis is the presence across four continents at about the right time, 13,000 years ago of nanodiams and platinum, both of which derived solely from outside this solar system.

It's very feasible that the Younger Drys impact event took place or something very similar to that. The devastation that took place around the world is recorded in myth and legend, but it's also recorded in the different levels that have been excavated in certain The Earth's impact from a comet or meteor would have been incredibly powerful. It would have struck with the energy of up to one million atomic bombs. For the builders of Gobeckli-Tepi, their world would have been turned upside down. So just imagine in 10,000 BC people see a comet. They've got no way of understanding what a comet is. So to them, this is some terrifying divine retribution where the sky has caught fire.

I mean, we can't even begin to imagine how they felt, the fear they felt as they saw this thing tracing the heavens. Assuming you were alive at that time and you managed to be in just the sweet spot, far enough away to observe it without being affected by it, I think it would have been terrifying. Just imagine for ancient peoples, if something like that happened, a comet strike, if they witnessed it themselves or their ancestors witnessed it, you can bet that the story of it would have been told down the generations, embellished, changed, there would have been a divine significance attached to it. According to Martin, the age of the vulture stone and the date of the younger Dryas impact are the same. The vulture stone was built to commemorate the cosmic strike. The environment changed dramatically, temperatures plunged,

skies probably went dark, perhaps, for weeks on end. You can imagine what that would, the effect that would have on the people of the time. Perhaps it was this comet impact that inspired a new religion, inspired the construction of temple-like structures like Ibeki-tepe, which then catalyzed the origin of civilization. But not everyone agrees with the theory that Gobeckley-Tepe was built to commemorate a specific event. Cosmology is hugely important to ancient civilizations. You have a sense that there would have been long-term memory that was recorded.

So the idea that an asteroid impact, that something catastrophic could have affected, humans and that that is passed down through oral tradition is not entirely far-fetched that they would plot it so specifically against a night sky that they couldn't have conceived of or used computer technology to reconstruct is where I see it stepping into the realms of fantastical. While the true purpose of the vulture stone and this site remains unknown, Quebecly Tepe gives us an incredible snapshot into what life was like over 12,000 years ago. But this monument is not alone.

More sites with remarkable similarities are being found all over the region that further deepen the mystery of what was going on in theolithic Turkey. So it appears there are at least 30 sites in this general area. There's a whole kind of zone, it's about 120 miles wide where they're finding these pre-pottery Neolithic discoveries, many of them with these tea pillars like we find at Quebecly Tepe. Is this really evidence of, this is the oldest advanced civilization on the planet? I mean, we have sophisticated stone carving techniques, we have beautifully arranged sites, stone circle formations, we have astronomical alignments, and so to me, this is the smoking gun. This proves that

that before Egypt, before ancient Peru, Southeast Turkey was the hub of the ancient world. In the plains of southeastern Turkey lie a number of Neolithic sites, up to 13,000 years old. Excavations at Karahann-Tepi, the newest discovery, only began in 2019. Could these ancient sites be connected somehow? Karan-Tepae is the sister site to Gebeckli-Tepi. It's located southeast of Sandleuifer. It's in the Tektec Mountains. And it's been known about since 1997,

although obviously the family who live on the farm there have known about it for much longer. Karahan Tepe and Gebeckli Tepe are incredibly close to each other. They're just 25 miles apart. They're both on hills and from a clear day, one can see the other. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that these cultures knew each other. Much like Quebecli Tepecki, Karehantepi features many T-shaped pillars.

But here, one of the monoliths was never completed, and it reveals a lot about how the builders worked. At Carahan-Tepae, we have what's called the unfinished monolith. This is not fully carved out T-pillar. It's still in situ, it's still attached to the bedrock. But what it does show you, it shows you how they cut it out, and you can see the scoop marks and the kind of pick marks within it. And so why are they looking at it?

leaving one stone, the largest stone, still in the quarry. Is it significant? Is it like marking the spot where the first stone was taken from, like the birthplace of the temple? Interesting features have been noticed at Karahantepi that may give us clues to its purpose. On the surface where the teapillars were sticking out the ground, they appear to kind of go up in avenues, like almost parallel stones, going up in a kind of serpentine way to the top of the hill. You must remember, this part of the site hasn't been fully excavated yet, so I would like to see what happens when this is fully opened up. We can see actually what's going on. Because if that's the case, it's almost like a kind of sacred pathways leading up to the top

of the hill through this serpentine route. It could have some symbolic nature. Antepe, archaeologists have unearthed an incredible cultic structure, which is mind-blowing. So in this very strange kind of subterranean pits, we have 11 monoliths which look very phallic, but also they're carved out of solid bedrock. They're not freestanding, they're literally carved deep into the bedrock. They brought out these amazing sculptures out of the rock itself, and that requires a huge amount of of ingenuity, imagination, and technical skill. The presence of snakes at both Gobeckli Tepe and Karahann Tepe has led some to believe that the people who built these places

might have engaged in snake worship. Snake gods were revered by cultures across the Fertile Crescent, who held them as symbols of strength and renewal due to their ability to shed skin. We have this protruding head this huge head coming out with this extremely long neck, which almost is like a serpent neck. We have a serpent carved along the bottom part, just under the kind of bench that's being carved into it. And it's thought that the watchers or the Ananaki, their symbol was the serpent,

often coiled around a staff. And so to find that here is quite remarkable, because this is not just in this country, we find this. We find it developing in other countries around the world after the time of Quebecli and Carrahan-Tepa. The structures here are immensely impressive. It's humbling to think that people spent this long, this amount of time and effort and perseverance with very, very primitive tools, building and carving and decorating this site. And the thing that's just most intriguing is that we just simply don't know why it was important to them. How significant are the discoveries at these sites for our understanding of human civilization as a whole?

Karahan-Tepé could become as significant as Quebec-Tepi or possibly more so. It seems like just around Karahan-Tepa itself, it's like a complex, it's not just one site. And potentially this could blow open this whole story of what was happening here in Southeast Anatolia 10 to 12,000 years ago. When you fold in the context of the critically important farming revolution and the question whether farming caused Gebekli Tepe, or Gebeckli Tepe tepe caused farming, we're left with something that potentially is a milestone in the story of civilization itself. Only 5 to 10% of the site is estimated to have been investigated at all at this point.

So who knows how big the site really is and what else it has to teach us about this absolutely pivotal time in the development of human civilization. Ground penetrating radar indicates that there may be even larger structures still waiting to be discovered. It's going to be a very exciting time in the future when all this new excavations, this new knowledge is produced, and we can check all of these new finds against this interpretation that we currently have.

Because there are no texts written down at this ancient period when Quebecli Tepe is being created. I don't think we will ever fully understand what is going on there. But that's partly its appeal. It's a mystery that will probably never be solved.