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).
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