Göbekli Tepe Day 117 Part 1 of 3

Phenomenal discovery which I'd invite you to read about. Make the journey if you feel like taking a walk in nice surroundings. Come and see it if you're in vicinity. Just don't travel this far only to visit this place, not yet. Hopefully, one day, there will be an open air museum displaying this according to its worth, at the moment it's only a (deserted?) excavation site open to public, so fenced that it's difficult to see anything.

This seems to be the world's oldest (discovered) shrine. The massive mostly T-shaped slabs weighing 7-10 tons full of reliefs are arranged in a circular fashion and estimated to be between 11 to 13 thousand years old. This predates Stonehenge for about 6 millennia!! The era of these megaliths knew no metal tools or pottery yet as far as we're aware. Please read about it here.

The images on stones show boars, ducks, hunting and game, lions, snakes, crayfish... To date, 45 of these stones have been dug out - they are arranged in circles from five to ten yards across - but there are indications that much more is to come. Geomagnetic surveys imply that there are hundreds more standing stones, just waiting to be excavated.

This site was only found in 1994 by a shepherd. Amazing how many things we still don't know about our own history! The stones were entombed under thousands of tons of earth, creating artificial hills. Apparently entombment happened a few millennia after it's creation.

There are theories that this is a temple of Eden (yes, Paradise). "In the Book of Genesis, it is indicated that Eden is west of Assyria. Sure enough, this is where Göbekli is situated. Likewise, biblical Eden is by four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates. And Göbekli lies between both of these. In ancient Assyrian texts, there is mention of a 'Beth Eden' - a house of Eden. This minor kingdom was 50 miles from Göbekli Tepe. Another book in the Old Testament talks of 'the children of Eden which were in Thelasar', a town in northern Syria, near Göbekli. The very word 'Eden' comes from the Sumerian for 'plain'; Göbekli lies on the plains of Harran. Thus, when you put it all together, the evidence is persuasive. Göbekli Tepe is, indeed, a 'temple in Eden', built by our leisured and fortunate ancestors" more here.

From the road to Eden


The site as it is now


Central monolith with carving of a fox


Another detail (lower part of stone is not visible from the observation area)


The official photo of the same monolith (at night using light painting technique)


I so wish I could have taken this pic ;-P