Noah´s altar...found?

 

The Trouble Maker in Charge, Jimmy Corsetti, is back with a new video on Göbekli Tepe. Yes, that place again! Not sure if I believe any of this guy´s takes anymore. Posted for easy reference only.  

Conspiracy at Göbekli Tepe?

 

A debunking of Jimmy Corsetti´s claims that Göbekli Tepe has become the epicenter of some kind of deep dark conspiracy to hide the truth of a lost civilization. A propos my previous links to Corsetti´s YouTube channel "Bright Insight". Nothing about Karahan Tepe, though. Maybe next time? 

WTF

 

The Göbekli Tepe situation just got much worse. At least if this conspiracy theorist is to be believed. But he does seem to have photographic evidence. Note also the apparent vandalism at Karahan Tepe?! 

Something tells me "Bright Insight" won´t be allowed back into Turkey any time soon...  

Free Göbekli Tepe!

 

The conspiracy angle is absurd, but otherwise, I kind of sympathize with this perspective...

Nameless civilization

 

Archeologist Milo Rossi takes the viewer on a tour of two important excavation sites in Turkey: Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe. Both are dated to about 12,000 years ago. Göbekli Tepe plays an important role in "Atlantomaniac" speculations about lost civilizations, one reason being its highly anomalous nature as a fairly advanced "temple complex" in a sea of Stone Age hunters and gatherers. Think Graham Hancock. 

However, recent research suggests that Göbekli Tepe was part of a larger civilization, also including the older Karahan Tepe (which may have been the oldest permanent settlement in the world). Due to excellent climate, the surrounding area was virtually teeming with game animals and plant resources, making it possible for people who were still technically hunters and gatherers to settle down and build...whatever these complexes are supposed to have been. (I read elsewhere that bread and ale would have been important, making you wonder what these guys gathered out there!) 

And while no evidence of agriculture has yet been found on the tepe sites, Rossi confidently predicts that it eventually will be. Apparently, the oldest known agriculture is "only" about 1000 years younger and from the same general area. Judging by the book "The Dawn of Everything", archeologists today know that human culture was fairly advanced already during the Upper Paleolithic, so seen in *this* context, the nameless civilization of the Anatolian tepes isn´t as anomalous as it may have looked like at first sight. It seems the Stone Age Atlantis may have been very "native", after all!

Fun fact: although Rossi attacks Hancock and other alternative people in his videos, some of his footage from Karahan Tepe is actually credited to Dakota of Earth, the crazy psychedelic dude most notorious for his mini-documentary about the Aghori at Varanasi, India! Heh heh heh.   

Mesolithic mystery

 

I don´t know the real name for this documentary (there are several docus about the same topic with similar-sounding names). On YouTube it´s called "Ancient History Documentaries - Gobekli Tepe". It was made in 2012. And yes, it´s Göbekli Tepe all over again!

Göbekli Tepe is an ancient mound in Asia Minor (today Turkey) where archeological excavations have revealed the existence of a mysterious Mesolithic culture, which was "too advanced" for its time. Indeed, it seems to have been several thousand of years before schedule! During the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age, people were still hunters and gatherers (although they were not always nomadic). No agriculture existed, the wheel hadn´t been invented yet, nor were any animals domesticated. And yet, at Göbekli Tepe, the local culture built relatively large temples with carved animal and human figures. The site is dated to around 11,500 years BP.

One of the archeologists featured believes that about 50 people could build a temple of this kind in six months or a year. If so, they must have returned every year to build another one, since several temple structures have been excavated at the site. Also, an additional crew of people must have provided the builders with food and drink. This suggests a more sophisticated organization (and division of labor) than hitherto expected from a hunter-and-gatherer culture. The archeologists theorize that perhaps agriculture was developed in response to a pre-existing proto-civilization, rather than the other way around (civilization becoming possible only after agriculture was firmly established). A strange feature of Göbekli Tepe is that the builders succesively buried the temples, only to erect new but smaller ones on top. Over a period of 1000 years, each new temple was thus smaller than its predecessor. Why? Nobody really knows. Did the temple cult lose in importance as people turned to agriculture at the dawn of the Neolithic? There are more simple temple structures in settlements around Göbekli Tepe, suggesting that the cult may have been decentralized at some point.

Since the temple builders didn´t have any script, all interpretations of their religion remain highly speculative. The archeologists interviewed believe that the T-shaped pillars symbolize humans, and therefore the dominion of humanity over nature and its animals (since there are animals carved at the pillars). But the pillars are not anthropomorphic, something also pointed out in the documentary. There is also a carved headless man on one of the pillars. Perhaps we are dealing with a cult of the ancestors, symbolized by severed heads? Is the headless man a god waiting to be resurrected? You can speculate like this all you like, and never come to any firm conclusion...

Göbekli Tepe is a perhaps a problem for those (like myself) who (in my case cynically) believe that human history is driven by material or "materialist" factors. It´s easy to understand how, say, climate change can force hunters and gatherers to invent agriculture, and how this at some later point makes possible (or even necessary) some kind of more complex society. It´s not as easy to understand how purely ideological factors could lead Mesolithic hunter-gatherers to build a temple complex devoted to a new religion of hominid dominion, and then *this* leads to agriculture as a by-product. But then, perhaps the relation between "base" and "superstructure" was more fluid at the end of the "last" Ice Age?

Göbekli Tepe has (of course) also been the topic of much "alternative" speculation, most notably from Graham Hancock in his book "Magicians of the Gods", where the mystery mound is taken to be another piece of evidence for the existence of a lost civilization á la Atlantis. Regardless of what you might think of this angle, Göbekli Tepe does show that it only takes one dig to rewrite our history books (or "pre-history" in this case), so who knows what else might be waiting to be unearthed...   

My new guru

The guy interviewing Graham Hancock is a nut case, but many of Hancock´s ideas are interesting. I think he´s right about Göbekli Tepe. Debunk that, Randi my dear!  

Conversion experience

“Magicians of the Gods” is a tour de force by controversial explorer Graham Hancock, and is considered a sequel of sorts to his “Fingerprints of the Gods”, published already in 1995. Reading it was like a conversion experience, although strictly speaking I was “converted” to the idea of a Lost Civilization (or, more likely, lost civilizations in the plural) already after reading John Michael Greer´s “Atlantis: Ancient Legacy, Hidden Prophecy”. I used to believe that Hancock was simply a latter day Velikovsky-Däniken combo. I now think that the man is on to something, probably something huge!

The main archaeological discovery since “Fingerprints” which, more or less literally, “changes everything” is the ancient temple complex at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, believed to be about 12,000 years old. At the time, only hunters and gatherers lived in the area – indeed, all humans everywhere were still at the Paleolithic or Mesolithic stages of technological and cultural development. Either hunters and gatherers built enormous temple complexes, or…well, you get the picture. Hancock believes that ancient Göbekli Tepe was built by survivors from “Atlantis” or the Lost Civilization. I happen to agree that something very, very strange is going on here. In fact, if Hancockism (or hyper-diffusionism) ever becomes main stream, it will be because of Göbekli Tepe. In my crystal ball, I see a popular documentary about the site circa 2020…

On most points, Hancock´s ideas are more radical or “fringe” than those of official archaeology. He believes that sites dated by archeologists to within the span of “known” human history are actually considerably older. The book contains discussions about Baalbek, Sacsayhuaman, Tiwanaku, submerged cities off the Indian coast and a pyramid-like structure in Indonesia. Unsurprisingly, the controversial redating of the Sphinx carried out by Robert Schoch is discussed, and Hancock seems to believe that all structures at Giza are either older than Egyptologists want to admit, or based on a master plan from primordial times. A strong point of the book (at least to a “moderate” like myself) is that the fringiest aspects of Hancock´s previous works are played down, such as the notion of “wandering poles” and “crustal replacement”. He even attacks the late Zecheriah Sitchin, calling his works “science fiction novels”. No face-on-Mars either! It´s not entirely clear whether Hancock believes that Atlantis was technologically advanced as in 21th century modern, or whether they looked more akin to other ancient civilizations, albeit with some additional gadgets (perhaps some form of electricity).

The most disturbing aspect of “Magicians of the Gods” is, inevitably, the discussion about the reason behind the Lost Civilization´s disappearance. Why exactly did it go lost? Hancock believes that Earth was struck by a comet at the end of the last Ice Age. The comet impact vaporized large portions of the ice sheets, creating a massive flood which destroyed Atlantis and any other civilizations which may have been in existence. Hancock believes that this global cataclysm turned humanity into a species with amnesia (a Velikovskian notion – really a secular form of Gnosticism). He also believes that the survivors of Atlantis encoded hidden messages about the next apocalypse at Göbekli Tepe and other ancient sites. The time is NOW, more specifically 2012 to 2040, during which the comet will return and once again destroy us all…unless the nations of the Earth can unite and stop the old devil with some modern space technology. I admit I´m not entirely “converted” on this point – Hancock´s interpretation of the Göbekli Tepe stela with the scorpion motif sounds like pure speculation. Note also the tie-in to the failed New Age prophecy of 2012. That being said, the author is probably right that neo-catastrophism deserves a hearing within academe.

If Hancock is right about the Lost Civilization, many ancient mysteries will finally be explained. Why do unconnected cultures all over the world have flood legends? Why is humanity´s original concept of history not “progress” but rather regress from a Golden Age? Why do legends from unconnected cultures talk about a dangerous comet? Why are the Sumerian king lists so ridiculously long, stretching back into pre-history? Why did many ancient civilizations claim to have been founded by culture-heroes from foreign lands, rather than by the natives? What caused the “genetic bottlenecks” our species seems to have gone through? And, ahem, why did Plato place the destruction of Atlantis right at the end of the last Ice Age? I wouldn´t be surprised if the Lost Civilization will be accepted academic dogma in 50 years or so, at which point everyone will say that of course they knew all this all along, Graham Hancock be damned. Perhaps we should take special care to preserve “Magicians of the Gods” to posterity…

Of course, there are other aspects of “Magicians” which I found more questionable, including a quasi-religious reverence for said magicians and their secret brotherhood . Hancock´s ideas are easy to combine with Theosophy and I believe ARE has promoted them. The idea that the culture-heroes may have been White is likely to appeal to Alt-Right circles, although the Indonesian-Tamil aspect perhaps mitigates this. (Unless, of course, you believe in the Tropical Ur-Heimat of the Aryan race!) I believe that Hancock´s success can at least in part be explained by its character of “revelation”. I already mentioned that Velikovsky´s idea of amnesia sounds like a form of Gnosticism. Some groups hope to find religious or technological secrets left behind by the Atlantids, perhaps in a Hall of Records under the paws of the Sphinx. OK, here is the bad news: what if Atlantis turns out to be just another ancient civilization, ultimately neither better nor worse than Egypt, Greece or Rome? The Hall of Records is just another bunch of cuneiform tablets.

Still, the good news is that Atlantis might have been real, warts and all, and I therefore give this book five stars.

The quest is over, guys. Graham Hancock did it!

I un-ironically believe that Graham Hancock and Santha Faiia did it. They actually found Atlantis. Yes, I´m referring to Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, discovered already in the late 1990´s by a team of German archeologists. The site is a huge temple complex, and the oldest parts are at least 12,000 years old. Now, at the time, only Stone Age hunters and gatherers lived in the area. In fact, only hunters and gatherers lived anywhere in the world. Either hunters-gatherers sometimes, well, gathered to build large, ornamented temple complexes (nothing´s impossible on Planet Weird), or…or it´s Atlantis.

Part of me is excited about this find, since I was recently “converted” to the Lost Civilization concept. Another part of me is disappointed. So we found Atlantis. And now what? Suddenly, the world became more boring again. (They found Lemuria, too, btw.) I suppose I have to go back watching old episodes of “Finding Bigfoot”. That mystery won´t be solved any time soon. I mean, they´ve been trying to catch Bigfoot since time immemorial, since Atlantid times even, without much suc­cess. Just don´t tell Hancock and Santha about it, they might find a way to spoil another one of our mysterious quests... ;-)