First Civilization Part 3 Chapter 24

 

Gobekli Tepe Monolith

Soon the 13 Anakim who had not been captured all died at the age of 30.   But the seven who had been captured and returned  continued to live as before.  Leading the people and teaching them many things.  Since they had been returned in a spaceship the humans believed that these Anakim had been sent by the gods, believing them to be half human and half gods. This is what survives in later texts thousands of years later.  With time the seven Anakim became known as the Seven Sages.

The Seven Sages

Gobekli Tepe was occupied by humans for at least 5,000 years and the Seven Sages continued to live there as well.  No one knows their ages as they are said to have lived many human generations, a human lifespan in those days was short, for many maybe 30-35 years at most. But before they died they passed on their special knowledge to their sons which in essence made them Shamans and tribal leaders.  According to a tradition when the site was abandoned the descendants of the Seven Sages led their kindred to the Euphrates River, which was located about 55 miles to the southeast. 

Euphrates River not far from Gobekli Tepe

 

They then instructed their fellow humans to build boats and they and their adherents sailed south down the river into Mesopotamia where the first civilization would begin.

The boat used to sail down the Euphrates River

An ancient mythological tradition says, that human beings were initially unaware of the benefits of culture and civilization. The god Enki, sent seven Wiseman, who emerged from the oceans (which goes to show you how wrong a myth can be-they came down the river)  to live with the early human beings and teach them the arts and other aspects of civilization such as writing, law, temple and city building and agriculture. These creatures became known as the Apkallu. The Apkallu remained with human beings after teaching them the ways of civilization, and served as advisers to the kings. Certain ancient tablets and artwork attributed to the Sages were medical texts and hymns or songs. They wrote of astrology and one work called the Tablets of Fate.

The Tablets of Fates

 

The End

First Civilization Part 3 Chapter 23

 

 

The structures at Gobekli Tepe not only predate pottery, metallurgy, and the invention of writing or the wheel; they were built before the so-called Neolithic Revolution, i.e., the beginning of agriculture and animal husbandry around 15000 BC. But the construction of Göbekli Tepe implies organization of an order of complexity not hitherto associated with Paleolithic societies. Archaeologists estimate that up to 500 persons were required to extract the heavy pillars from local quarries and move them 100–500 meters (330–1,600 ft) to the site.The pillars weigh 10–20-metric-ton (9.8–20 long tons; 11–22 short tons); with one found still in its quarry weighing 50 tons.  But they forget the early domestication of cattle is possible -the use of aurochs to pull the objects to the desired location.

 

Unfinished stone in Gobeckli Tepe quarry

 

Anakim using an instrument in construction of  a temple

A tradition says that the seven Anakim  (as priests) supervised the work and later controlled whatever ceremonies took place there. If so, this would be the oldest known evidence for a priestly caste—much earlier than in others elsewhere in the Near East.

Gobekli Tepe Lion Carving on Pillar

Archeologists do not know how a force large enough to construct, augment, and maintain such a substantial complex was mobilized and rewarded or fed in the conditions of pre-Neolithic society. They can not "read" the pictograms, and do not know for certain what meaning the animal reliefs had for visitors to the site; the variety of fauna depicted, from lions and boars to birds and insects, makes any single explanation problematic. As there seems to be little or no evidence, and the animals depicted on the stones were mainly predators, the stones may have been intended to stave off evils through some form of magic representation; it is also possible that they served as totems.

 

The two pillars in the center of the temple can be seen clearly here

Archeologists believe the two largest pillars were placed in the center of each circle to help support a roof, and up to eight smaller pillars were evenly positioned around the walls of the temple. The spaces between the pillars had stone benches placed between each set of pillars.  At the time of their construction these buildings were all  above ground.

First Civilization Part 3 Chapter 22

One night a light appeared in the sky near Gobekli Tepe.  The ancient astronauts returned to the  area with the seven clones they had captured and altered.  They were then returned to the community and the spacecraft returned whence it came.  A celebration was held and the seven told all what had happened and that they had been commissioned to help the humans build a civilization.

Ancient Astronaut Spacecraft returning the captured Clones

The people of Gobekli Tepe were most probably part of the Natufian culture or knew of it.   The Natufian culture was a Mesolithic culture that existed from 14,500 to 9,500 BC in the Levant- the eastern regions of the Mediterranean coast. It was unusual in that it was sedentary, or semi-sedentary, before the introduction of agriculture. The Natufian communities were possibly the ancestors of the builders of the first Neolithic settlements of the region, which may have been the earliest in the world. There is some evidence for the deliberate cultivation of cereals, specifically rye, by the Natufian culture, at the Tell Abu Hureyra site, the site for earliest evidence of agriculture in the world. But once it got  going they ended up doing things that had never been done before The Natufian culture as a "Neolithic package"included  farming, herding, polished stone axes, timber longhouses and pottery. It eventually spread into Europe, the Mesolithic way of life was marginalized and eventually disappeared. Mesolithic adaptations such as permanent settlements , population size and use of plant foods are cited as evidence of the transition to agriculture.

Interior of a Neolithic Dwelling at Gobekli Tepe

The assumption that the site was strictly cultic in purpose and not inhabited has also been challenged by the suggestion that there were structures there that served as large permanent communal houses, similar in some ways to the large plank houses of the Northwest Coast of North America with their impressive house posts and totem poles.

The square structures above the temples are where the permanent residents lived.

Soon the 13 Anakim who had not been captured all died at the age of 30.   But  the seven who had been captured and returned  continued to live as before.  Leading the people and teaching them many things.  Since they had been returned in a spaceship the humans believed that these Anakim had been sent by the gods, believing them to be half human and half gods.

First Civilization Part 3 Chapter 21

 

At night the Anakim began to teach the people how to use astronomy to tell the seasons.  But there was also a philosophy about it and this would give rise to the birth or astrology and astronomy.  So they would sit there in between the stone pillars inside their new temple on the rock benches that went between the pillars and look past the walls into the sky.

Looking up into the sky at night inside the temple walls

The Anakim gave them  principles that  were a mixture of reality and thought. A central principle of astrology is integration within the cosmos. The individual, Earth, and its environment are viewed as a single organism, all parts of which are correlated with each other.  Cycles of change that are observed in the heavens are therefore said to be reflective (not causative) of similar cycles of change observed on earth and within the individual.   Accordingly, the natal horoscope depicts a stylized map of the universe at the time of birth, specifically focused on the individual at its center, with the Sun, Moon, and celestial bodies considered to be that individual’s personal planets or stars, which are uniquely relevant to that individual alone. 

Two views of the Temple the brown indicates the dirt build up outside the temple walls the brown on the inside is the benches between the pillars.

Among Indo-European peoples, astrology has been dated to the third millennium BCE, with roots in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications Early Astrology, in its broadest sense, is the search for meaning in the sky. It has therefore been argued that astrology began as a study as soon as human beings made conscious attempts to measure, record, and then predict, seasonal changes by reference to astronomical cycles.  The reasons why astrology evolved in many different areas of the planet were probably the same:
1. An agricultural need to plan and predict the seasons and  growth cycles
2. An awareness the lunar cycle influenced women and the menstrual cycle
3. A need to understand the reason for existence and to give life meaning
4. An appreciation of the beauty of the heavens and a fascination with the stars and the night sky
5. An attempt to predict, and so control, the future (and we must remember that pre-history was a much more dangerous and unpredictable place then now, so anything which gave you an edge was worth having).

Prehistoric Moon Calendar

Animal cults in the Upper Paleolithic period, such as the bear cult, may have had their origins in these hypothetical Middle Paleolithic animal cults. Animal worship during the Upper Paleolithic was intertwined with hunting rites. For instance, archeological evidence from art and bear remains reveals that the Bear cult apparently had a type of sacrificial bear ceremonialism in which a bear was shot with arrows and then was finished off by a shot in the lungs and ritualistically buried near a clay bear statue covered by a bear fur with the skull and the body of the bear buried separately. This type of worship appears to be popular at Gobeckli Tepe too as there were animals carved into the pillars. Here  the pillars are decorated with carved reliefs of animals.  They resemble totems by the fact they have been carved into the pillars.  The pictograms may represent commonly understood sacred symbols, as known from Neolithic cave paintings elsewhere. The reliefs depict lions, bulls, boars, foxes, gazelles, donkeys, snakes and other reptiles, insects, arachnids, and birds, particularly vultures. (At the time the shrine was constructed, the surrounding country was much lusher and capable of sustaining this variety of wildlife, before the millennia of settlement.

Gobekli Tepe Vultures on Pillar

Vultures also feature prominently in the iconography of the Neolithic sites of Çatalhöyük and Jericho; it is believed that in the early Neolithic culture of Anatolia and the Near East the deceased were deliberately exposed in the open in order to be excarnated by vultures and other carrion birds. (The head of the deceased was sometimes removed and preserved—possibly a sign of ancestor worship.)   In France there emphasis on the significance of the vulture carvings;  archeologists has found similar symbols at sites from the same era as Göbekli Tepe just 50 miles away in Syria. In one scholar's words describing excavations at Tell Aswad, "You can really see it's the same culture."

This the oldest known human statue- it comes from another site nearby

Few humanoid figures have surfaced at Göbekli Tepe, but they include the engraving of a naked woman posed frontally in a crouched position that one scholar likens to a Venus. A decapitated corpse surrounded by vultures in bas-relief. Some of the T-shaped pillars picture human arms, which indicate that they could represent the bodies of stylized humans (or anthropomorphic gods). The wider stone member atop the T-shaped pillars is thought to symbolize the head; thus the pillars as a whole have an anthropomorphic identity. One example is decorated with human hands in what could be interpreted as a prayer gesture, with a simple stole or surplice engraved above; this may be intended to signify a temple priest(shaman).

First Civilization Part 3 Chapter 20

 

Göbekli Tepe (culture)[gøbe̞kli te̞pɛ] is a hilltop sanctuary erected on the highest point of an elongated mountain ridge in southeastern Turkey, some 15 kilometers (9.3 mi) northeast of the town of Şanlıurfa (formerly Urfa / Edessa). It is the oldest human-made religious structure yet discovered. The site, having been under excavation since 1994, by German and Turkish archaeologists, was most likely erected c. 15,000 years ago. It is older than the Nevalı Çori (culture) located just 20 kms. away. It has revolutionized the understanding of the Eurasian Neolithic. 

A wild boar on one of the pillars

Many of these pillars used to build the sanctuaries had animals carved into their sides. A lizard a wild boar to name two.  These animals to the people guarded the entry into the next world.  Göbekli Tepe contains two central T-formed pillars surrounded by four benches. On the benches are standing similar stone pillars. They are all obviously marked out as stone-people with arms sculptured on the surface of the pillars.  They are an early example of the later so important notion of the numinous center, the mountain of the assembly of the gods, an assembly mostly consisting of 12 gods, exactly the number of pillars standing on the benches surrounding the two central pillars in the cult building.

Smaller Pillars here representing their gods.

This center is also the symbol of life and primordial unity, the primordial mountain of gold or splendor, more or less identified with the nightly starry sky with its top in the Polar star. Its importance as a religious symbol, as the link between heaven and earth, is obvious from its being remodeled in the pyramids and the Mesopotamian temple tower. Sitting on the benches in the deep and solid cult building creates direct contact with this primordial massive and its primordial spirits, especially the two primordial twins representing the first splitting up of primordial mystic unity into duality, the god riding the bull and the god riding the leopard.

 

The North Star 15000 B.C.

The star Kochab was the north star at this time in history.   They taught the people about astronomy and meteorology-the weather The Anakim began to teach them knowledge about agriculture and engineering techniques.  They also had more than casual contact with humans of the opposite sex who in time gave birth to humans with similar build.  They also taught them to make better weapons- the bow and arrow.

The Ancient Astronaut space base in the Mount Ararat area.

The Supreme Leader then ordered the clones who had deserted them  to be caught and imprisoned in an underground prison.   Seven of them were captured from the Gobekli Tepe area and were interrogated by the supreme leader who asked them, "What have you done ?  Why did you not return to us ?"

The Ancient Astronaut Supreme Leader

They answered that they wanted to have children of their own and so found the humans attractive so they had sex with them and now they had children.  But they added, “We have taught the humans a better way to live as they have been living in a primitive state for some time. They are now our family and we want to help them." To which the Supreme Leader told them, "Those humans are your ancestors.  They were deserters like you millions of years ago."   The Clones replied, "How can that be ? They were just like you and us in that case."  Then the Supreme Leader asked them what they had been teaching the humans they so they explained what they had been teaching them.  The Supreme Leader saw that this was good so he did not return them to the prison.  He wanted to confer with the council.  When the council convened.  It was recognized that they only had so many more years to live-until age 30.  They discussed giving them a longer lifespan so that they could continue the work they had begun.

First Civilization Part 3 Chapter 19

 

The change from Mesolithic 1 to Natufian culture can be dated more closely. The earliest date from a Mesolithic 1 site in the Levant is 13,150 BC. The  latest date from a Natufian site is 11,140 BC.  This period is characterized by the early rise of agriculture. The domestication of animals and agriculture occurred together.  Larger social groups were also forming under a chief of shaman. The Natufian culture was a Mesolithic culture that existed from 13,500 to 9,500 BC in the Levant, a region of the Eastern Mediterranean coastland. It was unusual in that it was sedentary, or semi-sedentary, before the introduction of agriculture. The Natufian communities were possibly the ancestors of the builders of the first Neolithic settlements of the region (which would include Jericho), which may have been the earliest in the world. There is some evidence for the deliberate cultivation of cereals, specifically rye, by the Natufian culture, at the Tell Abu Hureyra site, the site for earliest evidence of agriculture in the world.  Generally, though, Natufians made use of wild cereals. Animals hunted include gazelles. Because of its strategic location at the intersection of Asia and Europe, Anatolia has been the center of several civilizations since prehistoric times. 

Remains of a Natufian wall

Settlements occurred in the woodland belt where oak and Pistacia species dominated. The underbrush of this open woodland was grass with high frequencies of grain.  The habitations of the Natufian are semi-subterranean, often with a dry-stone foundation. The superstructure was probably made of brushwood. No traces of mud brick have been found.

Route taken to Gobekli Tepe by Ancient Astronaut Clones

The Anakim and the humans finally found a high ridge to build their stone temples.  The distance from their spaceship was a little over 300 miles to the northeast.  The site was  located on an elongated hilltop in the southern part of Anatolia.   The Anakin had to employ a large number of people to do the work. First they had to have a quarry to get the stone the from.

The Gobekli Tepe Stone Quarry

Also the people had to be taught how to do that and make mud brick as well.   A shaman Seer was the leader of them all and he taught the people that this place would have great religious significance in their lives.  In every part of the operation there was an Anikim overseeing that part of the job.  They decided to use families and make work teams from these groups.

This was how they could have made and  cut the stones

There must have been a pecking order for the work to be done.  So the Anakin had to find out which ones were the most intelligent and talented. From this group came the gang foreman who was under an Anakim overseer.   Since the men of this period had only stone axes to cut rock with.  They were taught what stones could be cut with what axe. Limestone can be carved with flint and so on. Use a harder rock to carve a softer rock.  Since the quarry was not too far away it would have been easy to find a way to bring the stones to the site where the temple would be built.  Having a superior knowledge of physics and engineering the Anakim instructed the workers in each phase what to do.
The first structure built was round with walls made of rock and mud brick. In the center were erected megalithic stone pillars facing a radial direction like the spokes of a wheel. The rock they used came from the limestone quarry located not 100 meters away on the same hill.  There was only one entrance into this temple.
In the structures, two pillars were placed in the center of each circle, possibly to help support the roof, and up to eight pillars were evenly positioned around the walls of the room. The spaces between the pillars were lined with unworked stone, and stone benches were placed between each set of pillars in the inner  circle. 

The Gobekli Tepe Temples being built

Until excavations began, a complex on this scale was not thought possible for a community so ancient, and with such primitive quarrying tools. The massive sequence of stratification layers suggests several millennia of activity, perhaps reaching back to the Mesolithic. The oldest occupation layer (Layer III) contains monolithic pillars linked by coarsely built walls to form circular or oval structures. Four such buildings have been uncovered, with diameters between 10–30 meters (33–98 ft). Geophysical surveys indicate the existence of 16 additional structures.  So a large community of humans for at least a few generations must have occupied Gobeckli Tepe.
In these sites no remains of domesticated animals were discovered.  But this does not say that some families had some animals of their own they used.  Remember this took place during the time right before the Neolithic Revolution in which the first domesticated animals and agriculture appeared.  They go hand in hand when you think about it.  It would have been something to see these people use aurochs ( the wild ox ancestor of domesticated cattle) to do some of the work. The reason I say this is that on megalith pillars they erected are carvings of local animal life.

Animals on a Gobekli Tepe Temple Pillar

So animals played an important role in these people's lives. The inhabitants are assumed to be hunters and gatherers who nevertheless lived in the village for all of the year.  A scholar speculates that the site played a key function in the transition to agriculture; he assumes that the necessary social organization needed for the creation of these structures went hand-in-hand with the organized exploitation of wild crops. For sustenance, wild cereals may have been used more intensively than before; perhaps they were even deliberately cultivated.

First Civilization Part 3 Chapter 18

 

The Upper Paleolithic ( and also in some contexts Late Stone Age) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. Very broadly it dates to between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago,  before the advent of agriculture

A Relevant Historical Timeline to the Story:

Upper Paleolithic:

40,000 years ago: Cro-Magnon colonization of Europe. Megalania dies out.

35 000 years ago: oldest known figurative art (Venus of Hohle Fels), age of the Aurignacian culture

31,000 years ago: oldest known cave paintings

29,000 years ago: extinction of Homo neanderthalensis.

c. 28,500 years ago: New Guinea is populated by colonists from Asia or Australia.

c. 28,000-20,000 years ago: Gravettian period in Europe. Harpoons, needles, and saws invented.

c. 26,000 years ago: Women around the world use fibers to make baby-carriers, clothes, bags, baskets, and nets.

25,000 years ago: first colonization of North America.

22,000 years ago: the oldest known tally stick (the Ishango Bone)

c. 20,000 years ago: Chatelperronian culture in France.  Kebaran culture in the Levant.

c. 16,000 years ago: Wisent done in clay deep inside the cave now known as Le Tuc d'Audoubert in the French Pyrenees near what is now the border of Spain.

15,000 years ago: The woolly rhinoceros goes extinct.

c. 14,800 years ago: The Humid Period begins in North Africa. The region that would later become the Sahara is wet and fertile, and the Aquifers are full.

12,000 years ago (10,000 BC): Land ice leaves Denmark and southern Sweden; start of the current Holocene epoch.

11,000 years ago (9000 BC): Emergence of Jericho, which is now one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Giant short-faced bears and giant ground sloths go extinct. Equidae goes extinct in North America.

10,000 years ago (8000 BC): The Quaternary extinction event, which has been ongoing since the mid-Pleistocene, concludes. Many of the ice age megafauna go extinct, including the megatherium, woolly rhinoceros, Irish elk, cave bear, cave lion, and the last of the sabre-toothed cats. The mammoth goes extinct in Eurasia and North America, but is preserved in small island populations until ~1650 BC.

Neolithic:

9,000-10,000 years ago (7-8000 BC): In northern Mesopotamia, now northern Iraq, cultivation of barley and wheat begins. At first they are used for beer, gruel, and soup, eventually for bread. In early agriculture at this time, the planting stick is used, but it is replaced by a primitive plow in subsequent centuries. Around this time, a round stone tower, now preserved to about 8.5 meters high and 8.5 meters in diameter is built in Jericho.

9,500 years ago (7500 BC): Çatal Höyük urban settlement founded in Anatolia

9,000 years ago (7000 BC): Jiahu culture began in China

7,500 years ago (5500 BC): Copper smelting in evidence in Pločnik and other locations.

 

Advocates of Behavioral modernity argue that the great leap forward occurred sometime between 50-40 kya in Africa or Europe. They argue that humans who lived before 50 kya were behaviorally primitive and indistinguishable from other extinct hominids such as the Neanderthals or Homo erectus. Proponents of this view base their evidence on the abundance of complex artifacts, such as artwork and bone tools of the Upper Paleolithic, that appear in the fossil record after 50 kya. They argue that such artifacts are absent from the fossil record from before 50 kya, indicating that earlier hominids lacked the cognitive skills required to produce such artifacts.  Whereas Proponents of the Continuity Hypothesis hold that no single genetic or biological change is responsible for the appearance of modern behavior. They contend that modern human behavior is the result of sociocultural and sociobiological evolution occurring over hundreds of thousands of years.  Continuity theorists base their assertions on evidence of aspects of modern behavior that can be seen in the Middle Stone Age (approximately 250 - 50 kya) at a number of sites in Africa and the Levant. For example, a ritual burial with grave goods at Qafzeh is Middle Stone Age (MSA) having been dated to 90 kya. The usage of pigment is noted at several MSA sites in Africa dating back more than 100 kya.  The fact remains that there can be no comparison between a human being and a wild animal.  They are two distinct creatures no matter how much they may look alike.

The terms "Late Stone Age" and "Upper Paleolithic" refer to the same periods. For historical reasons, "Stone Age" usually refers to the period in Africa, whereas "Upper Paleolithic" is generally used when referring to the period in Europe.

Neanderthals in cave dwelling

This shift from Middle to Upper Paleolithic is called the Upper Paleolithic Revolution. The Neanderthals continued to use Mousterian stone tool technology, but were probably extinct by about 22000 BC .
Technological advances included significant developments in flint tool manufacturing, with industries based on fine blades rather than simpler and shorter flakes. Burins and racloirs were used to work bone, antler and hides. Advanced darts and harpoons also appear in this period, along with the fish hook, the oil lamp, rope, and the eyed needle.
Some scholars have argued that the appearance of complex or abstract language made these behavior changes possible.  But I believe all of them used some kind of oral communication.  This could have had something to do with the development of an area language and its dialects.  But it was probably very simple in nature at this time in history.

A Prehistoric Funeral

Intentional burial, particularly with grave goods may be one of the earliest detectable forms of religious practice, it may have signified a "concern for the dead that transcends daily life."

The period starting from the end of the last ice age, 15,000 years ago, to around 6,000 years ago was characterized by rising sea levels and a need to adapt to a changing environment and find new food sources. The development of (microlith) tools began in response to these changes. They were derived from the previous Paleolithic tools, hence the term Epipalaeolithic, or were intermediate between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic, hence the term Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age). The choice of a word depends on exact circumstances and the inclination of the archaeologists excavating the site. The date of the Paleolithic—Mesolithic boundary may vary by locality as much as several thousand years. Microliths were used in the manufacture of more efficient composite tools, resulting in an intensification of hunting and fishing and with increasing social activity the development of more complex settlements.  Domestication of the dog as a hunting companion probably dates to this period.

 

Ancient Astronaut teaching the people.

Finally the leader of the Anakim had a meeting with the others of his type and suggested they teach these humans how to build a village using stones.  But they would first have to find a suitable location and a quarry for the stones.  They began to talk to the humans and making drawings showed them what they had in mind.  Of course this was a completely new thing to humans who had lived in encampments near water or in a cave. So the Anakim taught them how it ought to be done and the search began.