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World History

The Magic of Faience

ceramic bowls

San Diego Culture

Mehrgahr Blooms

Faience Invented

Making Magic

The Magic of Faience

The Magic of Faience

In 5500 B.C., TGD and biblical history dates are approximating, but they haven’t connected yet.

San Diego Culture

Southern California was settled by people of the Encinitas culture. Grinding stones and shells suggest marine and farming activities. It would endure until 1000 B.C. in the San Diego area.

Mehrgahr Blooms

Mehrgahr (Pakistan) has entered its greatest age, which will last 2000 years! Pottery was in use. Faience has appeared, perhaps originally from the Near East in trade. Manufacturing has blossomed. Creativity is invested in new crafting techniques: both arts and manufacturing. Long-distance trade developed further.

Specific technologies included updraft and large pit kilns, and copper crucibles.

In the arts, faience beads were made, which may have represented money as well as useful beauty. We do not know that. But the later use of wampum in North America puts the idea in my mind.

The first “button” seals, manufactured from terracotta and bone, used geometric patterns.

Terracotta figures became more detailed. They were painted and wore a variety of ornaments and hairstyles.

Burials were different throughout the period. Two flexed burials covered with ochre occurred during the early period. The amount of burial goods diminished, eventually consisting only of ornaments, with more left in burials of females. (Strange in what is assumed to be a paternalistic culture!)

Faience Invented

Egypt was still between cultures, but the art of faience was practiced. Quite possibly, it arrived through trade. The Egyptians fell in love with it and greatly developed its manufacture. Egyptian faience is a ceramic art with a silica body and brightly colored glaze.

Do not confuse Egyptian faience with the Italian faience of the Middle Ages. That is a totally different product.

Making Magic

Egyptian faience was made of easily available ingredients:

Quartz: white quartz pebbles were easily found in the desert

Alkaline salts: plant ash or salts of evaporated salt-water

Lime: limestone

Metallic colorant, most popularly copper

The dry ingredients were mixed with water to create a paste that was then formed into the object. Immediately, the faience differed from the clay. It slumped while modeled. It was not flexible. It cracked instead of bending and could not hold its own weight.

That made faience difficult to work with except for small items such as beads, or flat items such as tiles or plates.

Larger items were made in molds or shaped around cores that burned away when fired. And what a fire! Faience required the kiln to be at 900 degrees Fahrenheit.  

The Magic of Faience

Any piece of finished faience has a core that is fragile and porous: quartz grains that seem powdered encased in a soda-line-silicate glass. This glass is transparent.

But looking through the glaze gives a magical effect. Light reflects off of the quartz in all directions. The result is seen as translucency with brightness in a variety of shimmering depths.

Faience became associated with magic. Religiously, the shimmer reminded Egyptians of sunshine rays and therefore the god Ra. The favored bright blue color made with copper was linked to fertility and rebirth.

It’s no surprise that faience, made of common materials, took its place beside precious stones and metals.

Everyone tried to have at least one shubati, ornament, or house god made of faience. Later, pharaohs used it liberally in pyramid ornamentation and grave goods.

Egyptian faience would maintain its importance for 4000 years.

Source Credit and Suggested Reading:

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/egfc/hd_egfc.htm#:~:text=Faience%20may%20have%20been%20developed,gleaming%20qualities%20of%20the%20sun.

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Categories
World History

Atlatls, Personal Seals, and Temple Prototype

fire burning, seals

Cultural Overview

New Products in North America

A Culture in Mesopotamia!

Greek Megaron: Prototype of Classic Temples!

Atlatls, Personal Seals, and Temple Prototype

We’ve jumped time to 6100 B.C. (TGD).

Cultural Overview

Nothing new is happening in China, Greece, or Pakistan. In Egypt, the Faiyum culture is gone with nothing to replace it. Merngarh in Pakistan is expanding from its farming community, but there are no significant changes.

However, because of the rising seas at the close of the last ice period, Britain is now an island! Although trade will continue through navigation, the British will become a closed community, beginning their own traditions.

New Products in North America

In North America, all sites demonstrate a proliferation of tools, trade goods, and burial items. Columbia River sites in Oregon concentrated tool making on salmon fishing. In Utah the emphasis was on wool, leather, fur, and basketry.

The Great Basin sites, where people lived in caves or rock shelters, added the atlatl (a curved stick for hunting), smoking pipes, medicine bags and the deer-hoof rattles possibly used in the ceremonies, seashell ornaments, and bird-bone whistles.

A Culture in Mesopotamia!

But the best news is that Mesopotamia has awakened at last!

The Halaf culture, lasting one thousand years, was now first seen at Sakce Gözu, which is in Turkey near Syria. The most important site was located in what today is in the suburbs of Mosul, Iraq.

Halaf culture existed primarily in the valley of the Khabur River, although its beautiful pottery was found throughout Mesopotamia.

Bowls and plates are frequent finds. Nude female figures made of terracotta show traces of pigment as if clothes were painted on them. The earliest stamp seals known in the Near East began in the Halaf culture.

Greek Megaron: Prototype of Classic Temples!

It’s 5700 B.C. (TGD) in Sesclo of the Thessaly area of Greece. A new form of architecture has been developed. It’s called a “megaron house,” although later traditional megarons were not houses to live and sleep in, but were great halls for meetings, celebrations, and/or religious worship.

We don’t know the purpose of this oldest megaron. Maybe it was just the house of the most important or richest man.

It sits on the apex of the hill. (Where have we seen a structure on the highest place before?) Today, only the foundation remains, but we can learn much more from archaeological finds.

The megaron is surrounded by circular stone walls that separate it from the simple houses. It is rectangular and sits on an east-west axis. The foundation is stone. Finds indicate that the walls were brick and the roof was timber.

To enter, you walked through the porch, then the entrance to the main chamber. This chamber is almost square. It has a clay floor and a square clay hearth. On the northwest corner two oblong stone structures act as an area to prepare, serve, or assemble whatever is required. Three conical holes in the middle of the floor would have held the timbers that supported the roof.

Beyond the square room is the back room, possibly for storage. Later, a trapezoid area on the east would become a back porch.

Well! This is quite fancy for Greece! And the megaron is the prototype for the splendid temples of classic Greece.

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Categories
World History

Welcome to Greece and Pakistan!

instrument tray on table

Welcome to Greece!

Welcome to 7000 B.C.!

Welcome to Pakistan!

Surprise!

Welcome to Greece and Pakistan!

It’s time to move on, both in location and history. But first, let’s recap what has been happening in Greece. It’s not much.

Welcome to Greece!

Greece was inhabited by hunter-gatherers like many other lands before the time of the flood. (A significant hiatus noted by archeologists in the geological layers probably relates to the flood.) Greece then was re-occupied.

Although there are several sites available, Franchthi Cave demonstrates occupation for all time periods prior to 3000 B.C. We’ll be using that site for our information.

The re-occupation continued until the first building of Göbekli Tepe. During this time, wild lentils, pistachios, and almonds were added to meat discoveries. The steppe ass continued to be the meat of choice. Land snails were popular on the menu.

At the very end of this period, red deer became the most popular meat. Bits of obsidian that have been traced to the island of Melos began to appear. Melos is 92 miles southeast. Apparently, these people possessed navigational skills.

After the appearance of the Egyptian Faiyum culture, the people of the Franchthi Cave learned to produce micro-flaked blades. Now, the diet is red deer supplemented with pig and small fish.

About the time the Swiderians moved on, the Greeks of the cave changed their diet from large animals to large fish, indicating more advanced seafaring. At this time the waters of the Mediterranean Sea had encroached upon the shoreline almost up to the cave.

The oldest burial is dated from the end of this period. A twenty-six year old man lays toward the entrance to the cave on a deposit of burned shell. Scattered bones indicate that this area was also used for cremation burials.

A five hundred year occupation hiatus occurs. Perhaps the cave was flooded and therefore unable to be occupied.

Then, for a considerable time, the cave indicates domestication of wheat, sheep, and goats. Obsidian is found more frequently. The few pots are small and could not be used for cooking.

Welcome to 7000 B.C.!

According to TGD (traditional geological dating), it’s 7000 B.C.: 1000 years since the Swiderians left Göbekli Tepe. The Faiyum culture is going strong.

Those living in the Franchthi Cave have progressed to Urfimis: pottery for serving, not cooking, decorated with geometric designs. (Where have we heard that before?) Small shell beads and amulets are common, as well as tools for making them.

For the first time, structures are built on the beach in front of the cave.

Within the cave, many more burials exist including numerous infant burials. One of them contained the grave goods of a small marble bowl and a broken ceramic vessel.

None of these Greek settlements have been dignified with the classification of a culture.

Welcome to Pakistan!

It’s much different in 7000 B.C. Pakistan.

A small farming village is settled at Mehrgarh. Surprisingly, it is not on a river.

However, it is located near Bolan Pass, one of the main routes connecting southern Afghanistan and the Indus Valley. Obviously, there is enough trade potential in this village and the Indus Valley to encourage treks through the treacherous mountains.

Mehrgarh was built as a base camp by semi-nomadic people. During this first period, which would last until 5500 B.C., the settlement was used to cultivate six-row barley, emmer wheat, jujubes, and dates. They domesticated sheep, goats, and cattle.

Mud-brick buildings contained four rooms. There was no pottery for cooking or serving. Tools were made of local copper. Grain was stored in granaries using large bitumen-lined baskets.

There is no evidence of government or religion. However many burials have been found complete with generous grave goods: baskets, stone and bone tools, and occasional animal sacrifices. Ornaments abound: beads, bangles, and pendants. These were made from sea shells, the precious stones of turquoise and lapis lazuli, limestone and sandstone, and polished copper. Simple figures of women and animals also appear. Male burials contain the majority of grave goods.

Surprise!

In this oldest area of Merhgarh, evidence was found of dentistry! A dozen molar crowns still in place have been found which were drilled while the person was alive.

With what? I don’t think copper tools would be strong enough to do that. No dental tools have been found. How did dentistry happen to develop here, in this remote place? Who was this first dentist?

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Categories
World History

Elsewhere in the World….

globe

Between the Time of the Flood and Göbekli Tepe

During the Göbekli Tepe Era

After Göbekli Tepe

The First Merlins?

Elsewhere in the World….

Between the Time of the Flood and Göbekli Tepe

In the world prior to Göbekli Tepe, people spread out in small family communities for hunting, fishing, and gathering.

Europe

Remember those Reindeer People who migrated to France and Spain? They eventually migrated to Britain. The earliest tools were found on the Suffolk Coast. They shared Britain with mammoths, rhinos, and giant beavers.

It seems that humans disappeared during the last ice period. Britain was then recolonized.

Although southern Europe had a much better climate and sites of obsidian, there was no significant culture there.

The Americas

We have already talked about the Pre-Clovis Culture of the Eastern United States which was begun by the cultures that swept from northwestern Asia westward through Europe.

That same group of Reindeer People later swept eastward through Russia to enter Alaska by walking over the Bering Strait when it was frozen during the last ice period. They migrated throughout the western and southern United States.

As part of this migration, the Folsom Culture reigned in the Great Plains of the United States, as indicated by a unique leaf-shaped point. These people hunted an extinct form of bison as well as smaller animals. Later, these bison were killed more safely and efficiently by running entire herds over a cliff.

Later, the Clovis culture developed as defined by their invention of the Clovis point. Chipped from brittle stone such as jasper, chert, and obsidian, it was lance shaped and slicing sharp. It was four inches long, one-third of an inch thick, and fluted for attachment to a shaft. The chipping alternated on both faces. It has been found throughout the western United States and as far south as Venezuela.

The Clovis people were hunter-gatherers. They primarily hunted small mammals, but Clovis points have been found among mammoth ribs. It is thought that the Clovis people dared attack these dangerous animals because they were already dying and were easily found near water holes.

The Clovis point was the first invention made in America!

Asia and Africa

There were no significant cultures during this time period.

Summary

You can see that other than the invention of a tool here or a new weapon point there, no culture developed in the world between the time of the flood and Göbekli Tepe.

During the Göbekli Tepe Era

The Egyptian Faiyum Culture became the first culture to develop after the time of the flood. It inhabited the area of the Faiyum Oasis near Lake Qaroun, which is all that remains of an ancient inland sea. It is southwest of Giza. Communities grew from single tribes to several small tribes traveling together.

In the south central Mexican Valley of Tehuacán, people began to experiment with a grain called teosinte. This work eventually resulted in maize, or corn!

In Mesopotamia, wild cereals were now cultivated throughout this time period, but that did not mean a less mobile culture.

There were no significant advancements in Britain, China, India, or Greece.

After Göbekli Tepe

At the end of the Swiderian reign in Göbekli Tepe, kilns were once again built in Mesopotamia to fire pottery. Prehaps Swiderian magi were responsible for this.

The Faiyum people now depended on agriculture as well as hunting and gathering. Most of the settlements were permanent, not mobile. The people built reed huts with underground cellars for grain storage. Cattle, sheep, and goats were domesticated. Basket and pottery making developed.

Different tribes lived together permanently. During this time, tribal chieftains were endowed with the power to rule.

The First Merlins?

I often wonder if the Swiderians continued to absorb and teach knowledge. Were they the first magi, contributing to many cultures as itinerant wizards? Were they the first Merlins?

Is that why distant and disparate cultures often developed similar structures, cultural marks, and legends?

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Categories
World History

Ancient Mesopotamia: Religion and Government

Ancient Mesopotamia: Religion and Government - Crown

Temple Worship Begins

Deity Pantheon Invented

Kingship Initiated

Does the King List Prove the Genesis Seth Line?

Kingship Changes Hands

Did you see the note that brick temples were built in pre-flood Mesopotamia? The God of Adam never ordered temples, nor were they encouraged, because the Judeo-Christian God is everywhere at once. He does not need a house.

Temple Worship Begins

Yet brick temples popped up, complete with altars for sacrifice.

Strangely, I have not read of idols in these temples. Were they, then, first erected to the God of Genesis? But why?

It’s only speculation on my part, but perhaps it made Cain’s family more comfortable. Not daring to ditch God completely, they located the omnipresent, omnipotent God in a structure in which they could approach God and worship him, but he didn’t follow them around all week. They could do what they desired.

Deity Pantheon Invented

The next step would be to divide the immeasurable God into gods and goddesses of specific items. But these were not the same as God. These were humans with superhuman powers. They could be capricious in justice. They could be pranksters. Humans still needed to respect and worship them. But they could be bought. You could make a deal with them.

Yes, that’s a much more comfortable idea of deity.

It can be seen today in the behavior of many worshippers of the Judeo-Christian God who worship at church or temple then do as they please the rest of the week. Worshippers also attempt to make deals with God, forgetting that all they have originated from God.

This gives credence to my Mesopotamian scenario—but it’s not proof.

Kingship Initiated

And then came government. A scribe, who compiled a list of Mesopotamian kings from the most ancient sources available, says that “kingship descended from the heavens.” This means that one or more gods invented kingship and brought the idea to humans.

My guess is that it arrived via a convenient prophecy. I’ve seen similar things happen within my lifetime.

One example is that the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) originally held the position that members of the Negro race could not become elect (believers). During the Civil Rights era, other colleges refused to play Brigham Young University because of this. Then, a new prophecy declared that blacks were now acceptable believers, and college sports returned to normal.

How convenient!

Let’s look at the list of kings before the Great Deluge.

The list of kings dated by the scribe as 2125 B.C.

A compilation of ancient sources.

Alulim28,000Eridu

Alalgar36,000Eridu

Enmenluanna43,000Bad-Tibira (probably Badgurguru*)

Enmengalana28,000Bad-Tibira

Dumuzi the Shepherd36,000Bad-Tibira

Ensipadzidana28,000Larag

Enmendurana21,000Zimbir (Sippar/Akkad)

Ubara-Tutu18,600Shurrupuk

Ziusudra (Noah)36,000Shurrupuk

*means City of the Workers in Bronze

Does the King List Prove the Genesis Seth Line?

The first thing I notice is their extraordinarily long reigns! They are recorded as reining much longer than the patriarchs of Genesis lived—and we thought that was strange!

There is an answer, however. Numbers in Genesis were recorded in Egypt’s Base 10 system. Mesopotamian mathematics were calculated in Base 60.

In fact, there are still people today who count in Base 60. We still use the system in minutes and seconds, whether in time or geometry or navigation.

In Base 60, there is a unit of 60 times 60, or 3600. If that is the unit used in the above list, the years come down to being very close to what Genesis records for patriarch lifespans!

In fact, some Christians believe that this list actually relates to Seth and his descendants as recorded in Genesis. However, I see some problems.

The correlation must begin with Seth rather than Adam. Why would that be done?

Enoch’s counterpart, Ensipadzidana, was also said to ascend to heaven without dying. However, this resulted in Enoch’s lifetime being the shortest of the list. This is not true with his match.

Methuselah lived the longest life on record (in Base 10). Emmendurana did not.

Kingship Changes Hands

This is the order after “kingship descended from the heavens.” It remained in a city until it “fell” or was “defeated.” “Then the kingship was taken to” the next city on the list.

There are a variety of reasons why a city could fail. Some possibilities are war, bad location planning, natural disaster, crop failure, an inept king, a king so unpopular that the people moved out, or perhaps it seemed to the people that the god of that city failed them so they moved to the domain of another god.

There is nothing said about the scope of kingship. Mesopotamia is thought of as an area of city-states, each city ruled by one king.

But this sounds as if one person had the rank of king. It does not rule out leaders of each city, probably a priest.

Overall, it seems that there was a time before kingship. After the first king claimed his crown, civilization quickly degenerated into a state similar to the War of the Roses!

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Categories
World History

The Dawn of Mesopotamia

Dawn of Mesopotamia

The First Cities of Mesopotamia

Surprising Relics!

The Invention of Writing

The Dawn of Mesopotamia

Ancient cities exist that show a distinctive flood level. Debate rages between whether this was a local flood or a world-wide flood.

If one believes that the legend of Noah’s ark is true, these cities existed before a worldwide flood occurred and were rebuilt later. It was probably Cain’s family that originally populated the region.

The First Cities of Mesopotamia

The cities discovered to pre-date the flood are: Eridu (Abu Shahrein, Iraq), where tradition says Adam and Eve lived after ejection from the Garden of Eden, Obeid, Erech, Susa, Tepe Gawra, Fara (Shurppah/Shurrupuk), which tradition says was the home of Noah, Ur, Kish, Sippar (Akkad), Larsa, and Jemdet Nasar.

The legends of Adam and Eve and of Noah’s Ark in Genesis have surprisingly similar counterparts in Mesopotamian cultures. Other cultures also support these legends as facts.

Surprising Relics!

A variety of surprising relics have been discovered in the pre-flood layer:

  1. Pottery painted in geometric patterns and figures of birds. Some pottery is vitrified; that is, some of the clay has turned to glass at high heat, making it waterproof. Wow!
  2. Tools of copper and stone, including flint and quartz. These include hoes, sickles, and fish hooks.
    1. In fact, primitive inscriptions brag that Babylonia (Mesopotamia, near the mouth of the rivers) was never inhabited by a people who were unacquainted with the use of metal!
  3. Models of boats hint at life on the water, perhaps fishing and/or trade.
  4. A chariot that proves the domestication of the horse, including breeding of small, stocky wild horses into a breed with enough bone and muscle to pull a chariot.
  5. A rich community is indicated by vanity items: turquoise vases, copper mirrors, and cosmetics to darken eyebrows and eyelids.
  6. Structures include an underground kiln and ruins of brick temples that were painted red or covered with plaster.
  7. Seals to assert ownership and/or authority have been found, but also inscriptions on clay tablets.
    1. In fact, an ancient Babylonian king recorded that he “loved to read the writings of the age before the Flood.”
    1. Assurbanipal, founder of the great library of Ninevah, referred to “inscriptions of the time before the Flood.”
    1. How did they come to survive the Great Deluge, as the Babylonians called it? Berosus was a priest who wrote a three-volume book of Babylonian history in Greek and dedicated it to Antiochus I around 300 B.C. In it, he relates the tradition that Ziusudra (the Babylonian name for Noah) buried the sacred writings at Sippur before the Flood and afterward dug them up. (Why do that at Sippur?)

The Invention of Writing

Jewish and Arab tradition says that the Enoch who was descended from Seth invented writing. There is no proof.

He did, however, write three Books of Enoch. They are considered non-biblical texts by many Christians but contain spiritual events and prophecies. Therefore, it is safe to say that he adhered to the God of his ancestors.

But being an author does not mean one has invented writing. I should know!

What is the argument that it was Cain’s son Enoch who invented writing? According to Genesis, all of the inventors were from Cain’s family. And, being much older than the Sethite Enoch, the latter benefitted from a writing system that by his time had advanced in practicality.

Unless significant, specific proof is unearthed, we will never know who invented writing.

Well, this artsy, luxurious lifestyle is far from the Caveman Culture envisioned in most history texts, isn’t it?

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Categories
World History

Göbekli Tepe: What Have We Learned?

held upright fork

We’ve spent a lot of time on Göbekli Tepe. We’re done. It’s time to “put a fork in it” and examine what we have learned.

The facts are what we see at the site. The rest is speculation.

What is the strongest line of logic?

  1. The site must have been chosen for a purpose since there were so many negatives: scaling the highest mountain in the range and hauling supplies up to it, no fresh water, quarries some distance away, and ignorant locals. That purpose seems to have been an unobstructed view of the sky. It was the world’s first observatory.
  2. The site was probably engineered and supervised by the Swiderians, who seemed to have the habit of absorbing knowledge of various groups they encountered in their travels, synthesizing that knowledge, and using it to control the local population.
  3. The Swiderians had engineering knowledge we don’t have, at least regarding how to erect the structures with only tools of stone and wood. They probably had knowledge of sailing. What else did they know for which they left us no clues?
  4. The local population consisted of hunter-gatherers and, therefore, they moved from site to site. This disproves the theory that culture always arises from hunter-gatherers who subsequently adopted agriculture.
  5. Göbekli Tepe required a large work force, but no settlements have been found. Nor are there dwelling places within the site.
  6. With the observatory, and the catalog of animals carved into T pillars, it seems that Göbekli Tepe was the first university. People came to learn, then returned to their homelands.
  7. If you believe the Genesis account, learning would have been easy because everyone was already closely related by blood and spoke the same language.
  8. The Swiderian belief system was different from other cultures. Instead of man being an equal part of the world with animals, the enormous humanoid T Pillars that dwarf carvings of animals indicate that man was now considered of supreme importance.
  9. Ideograms were used. It also seems that at least some groups of carvings are positioned purposefully to give information.
  10. As tempting as it is to call this a temple, the logic seems to be very weak. One can’t say that later similar structures were temples and therefore this one is, because this site is the first and later structures could be corruptions…as we see within Göbekli Tepe itself. There is no altar. Feasts can be held without religion. There are no burials, as are often seen with later religious sites. We don’t know what the ideograms and carved groups mean.

     Let’s look at the vulture with the circle on its wing. It doesn’t have to be a vulture cult. First, the carved vultures are far from being large enough to be the religious center. If the circle does represent a human soul, the carving does not have to mean that the vulture, the bird of death, is responsible for transporting the soul to its final destination. It could be simply a statement of belief that after death the person lives on.

  1. If there is religion at the site, it would probably be centered on the most impressive structures: the seeing stone and the humanoid T pillars. If the pillars represent gods, that would indicate religion, but they could just as easily represent heroes or ancestors.
  2. The navigation they learned from Western Europe and the massive architectural structure imply an extensive use of mathematics. In navigation, the captain has to know how to plot his position and how to navigate to his destination.

In architecture, the Swiderians didn’t choose the circle, a shape easily made with a stake and a string. Instead, they preferred an oval.

Maybe they had someone who could freehand an oval the size of a structure, but that would be washed out by the next rain. Perhaps they knew advanced geometry using stakes, lines, and arcs to construct one. Or they knew the algebraic formula for the perimeter of an oval: π × (a + b) [1 + (3 × h/ (10 + √ (4 – 3h)))].

  1. The final mystery: why were the various structures filled in? The ones most carefully packed with skulls and tools and construction rubbish and dirt would have been constructed under Swiderians. The best guess is that they were already constructing the next enclosure because of a shift in the constellations they chose to observe. The first enclosure was packed carefully, almost reverently, as no longer useful.

     The second one was packed almost as carefully, but damage was done or it was completely emptied before being backfilled.

The Swiderians seem to have left during the construction of the third enclosure, leaving ignorant workers whose construction and later backfilling was sloppy.

Göbekli Tepe and the advances in knowledge that it represents are truly mysterious and awe inspiring!

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Categories
World History

Göbekli Tepe D: Mysteries Continue

Göbekli Tepe D: Mysteries Continue

Central Pillars

Stone Guardians

The Oldest Ideagrams?

Exploiting Catastrophobia?

The Final Clue?

Experiencing Enclosure D

Göbekli Tepe D: Mysteries Continue

Central Pillars

They stand side by side in the center of Enclosure D, these two T pillars, even more massive than the ones along the sides. Each is 18 feet tall and weighs 16.5 tons.

If we wondered how the smaller pillars were raised, the difficulty has now multiplied.

How did they stand? These pillars stand in rectangular pedestals carved into the bedrock: but at only 4-6 inches deep, the pillars are unstable.

At the site, they are supported by scaffolding.

That seems odd. It’s not at all what we have come to expect of these precise engineers. Maybe they were stabilized by the roof that they supported at its apex?

Another thing seems odd. The top stones slant downward slightly toward the enclosure entrance.

Stone Guardians

Oh, my goodness!

These pillars represent people! They have skinny arms slanting downward along the broad sides of the uprights. The fingers almost meet on the thin side, just above a belt’s buckle. From the belt hangs a fox (wolf?) pelt loin cloth, the animal’s tail hanging downward. And each “person” wears a neck ornament.

That makes the top stone the head of the statue. There are no features at all!

Now, we have more questions! Was facial identity unimportant? Did one statue represent a group of people instead of an individual? Are features left off as a kind of respect by not reproducing the face?

Who are these stone guardians? Heroes? Gods? Ancestors? All of the above? Is this the long memory of the Sethite line from Adam? Why only two? Why are both men? Is one a chief and the other a shaman?

For that matter, do the other pillars also represent people?

And why is the eastern central pillar more decorated than the western?

The western pillar has a featureless belt and buckle. It has a fox loin cloth. (Was the fox/wolf already the evil trickster it would become in world mythology?)

The head of a horned bull is the neck ornament, and one arm seems to carry a fox.

The eastern pillar’s belt is wide and highly decorated. There are flightless birds on the pedestal.

The Oldest Ideagrams?

Speaking of the decorations, they do not seem random. They are few in variety. The most frequently used are the C and the H…or maybe it’s two connected Ts. All of them are sometimes in these positions, but sometimes on their sides. Does position mean anything?

None of these are obvious carvings of natural things. Yet, they don’t seem to form words. It is thought that these and other less frequent symbols are ideagrams. They express an idea, such as love or war or courage. If so, we don’t know what ideas they represent.

On the neck of the eastern pillar is this: an H, beneath that a doughnut with a hole, and below that a C on its side so it looks like a cup.

The belt is completely decorated with Hs and (s in varied positions. The belt comes around to the front of the pillar where there is an oddly decorated buckle. It is a thick U shape with another inside it. Inside of both is a single thick upright. (See the photo above.)

Exploiting Catastrophobia?

The book interprets the belt buckle symbol as a three-tailed comet that caused massive destruction. It hypothesizes that the Swiderians obtained primacy by exploiting the catastrophobia of other cultures. They offered “protection” from a repeat of the event through knowledge and ceremony.

If that is a three-tailed comet on the buckle, and the Swiderians did act on those fears, it makes sense to give it important placement.

Remember, though, that we have already recognized serious questions about an event of worldwide destruction by a comet. However, comets could have been part of that destruction, perhaps even an early part of the event. In that case, they could be remembered as the heralds of worldwide destruction.

All of this is, of course, speculation.

The Final Clue?

You know, I keep returning to the heads of the central pillars.

It’s not just the featureless visages. It’s the heads themselves.

Why do they bother me? The overall art isn’t naturalistic, so why should I expect the heads to be accurate human heads? After all, there are no legs, and the arms are extremely thin, as if these parts are not important. Perhaps that’s also the message of the blank faces.

But the heads are so very alien! Look at the markedly thin faces. And the proportions of the heads are not even close to normal.

That’s what bothers me: the proportions! The anterior-posterior ratio of each head is significantly longer than the width. In fact, it seems to be accentuated to draw attention to the head.

Maybe that’s why the faces are featureless. It’s the heads that are important.

And the heads are definitely Swiderian!

Experiencing Enclosure D

You are in the time of Enclosure D.

You have never seen the night sky so clear and bright. But it’s normal here and now because this is pre-industrialization.

You enter the Enclosure.

The night sky behind you illuminates the interior darkness in a straight path to the Sighting Stone, the heart of this place. Your eyes are drawn to the hole in the stone, illuminated with its own sky light.

Looming between you and the Sighting Stone are the massive Stone Guardians: two statues of Swiderians whose heads soar into the shadows of the roof, but can be seen bent toward you, staring at you while you enter, as if demanding to know your purpose here.

Slipping sideways to a bench, you are deeply relieved that you will not be the one to walk between those pillars tonight.

Suggested reading:

Collins, Andrew. Göbekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods, Bear & Company, Rochester, Vermont, 2014, p. 51-56, 120, plates 11-14 and 16.

Photo credit: ©tegmen from Unsplash.com

Categories
World History

Göbekli Tepe: Site of Megalithic Mystery

Göbekli Tepe: Site of Megalithic Mystery

The Discovery

Peculiar Site

Mysteries Already!

Beware of Bias!

Göbekli Tepe: Site of Megalithic Mystery

Long before the mighty stones of the pyramids and Stonehenge were erected, mammoth megaliths soared skyward on a mountain in Turkey. The oldest site with gargantuan architecture is known as Göbekli Tepe. And it was almost lost forever.

The Discovery

A 1963 archaeological team noted several knolls on a black limestone plateau of a mountain ridge 750 meters above sea level. It’s fifty miles from where we identified the site of the Garden of Eden. Today, the nearest city is Şanliurfa.

The man-made mound consists of earth and rock debris. To the west was a large collection of stone tools. Also present were cut and dressed slabs with some attempt at carved relief.

An expert decided that it was the remains of a Byzantine cemetery. The team lost interest.

In October 1994, Professor Klaus Schmidt decided to survey the area before it was given to limestone quarrying. Professor Schmidt immediately recognized the slab architecture as similar to other sites in the area.

Göbekli Tepe was saved! But not even Schmidt guessed the massive amount of discovery and mystery he was about to uncover.

Returning with a complete dig team, Schmidt and his team drove as close to the barren Germuş mountain rangeas possible. They hiked to the top of the highest mountain. They carried all of their food, clothes, and equipment with them.

Peculiar Site

Very difficult to access, but widely visible, Göbekli Tepe was far from the nearest springs. The quarry from which the stone slabs were cut was at the bottom of the mountain. Items still waiting to be discovered had sometimes traveled hundreds of miles to be used at this place.

The mound perched on the mountain peak, widely visible in every direction. It was one thousand feet in diameter, the length of 2 ¾ football fields.

Schmidt dug into the mound. The debris was a mixture of limestone rubble, flint artifacts, stone vessels and tools, and a large number of animal bones.

He hit stone. He used his tools to check the age of the dig site. He couldn’t believe the reading. He checked again.

The site, known as Göbekli Tepe, was far older than any other megalithic site in the world. It would change everything that historians had believed about ancient people!

Mysteries Already!

Schmidt’s team had barely begun. Mysteries already confronted them.

  1. Why was such a remote site chosen?
  2. How did they transport megaliths from the bottom of the mountain to the building site at the mountain top?
  3. Who built it?
  4. Why?
  5. Where did they get the large numbers of laborers?
  6. How did laborers maintain hydration?
  7. Surrounding villages were hunter-gatherer settlements. Did this construction change them to agrarian?
  8. And most of all, why was the architecture buried? For it became obvious while they dug deeper that the fill had been carefully packed in and around structures, possibly in an effort to preserve them, as if the builders intended to return.

Even today, decades later, we don’t know most of the answers. But digging continues.

Beware of Bias!

Nearly every reference to Göbekli Tepe calls it The First Temple. If you read Göbekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods you will find most of the book filled with hypotheses. Now, I find hypotheses interesting, but most of these are based on later archeological finds.

It is illogical to base hypotheses about the first of anything on later similar finds. It’s possible that aspects of the early site were appropriated later for purposes different than was intended originally.

Any hypotheses we discuss will be related to facts and authorities already established. The basic difficulty is that we are still dealing with preliterate cultures. The builders can’t tell us the answers.

Suggested Reading:

Collins, Andrew. Göbekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods, Beer & Company, Rochester Vermont, 2014, p. 18, 23, 28.

Categories
World History

The Dominators!

black sphere in palm

A Different Look

The Journey

Vanishing Point

The Dominators!

     The Swiderians were a different kind of people. They looked different. They traveled west to east: opposite of all other cultures. The restless people didn’t stay long in most places, as seen by relatively few hunting remains. Traversing the treacherous territory of Eastern Europe and the western Near East required humans of tremendous willpower and endurance.

     Like vacuum cleaners, the Swiderians sucked up the cultures, skills, territory, resources, and learning of others until they emerged the dominant culture.

A Different Look

     The Swiderians had skulls that were dolichocephalic. That is, the anterior-posterior length was unusually long compared to the width of the skull. Their faces were thin with prominent and massive brow ridges, slanted foreheads, high cheekbones, and strong chins. They were significantly taller and larger than other people.

The Journey

     Swiderian travels can be traced by their unique tanged and leaf shaped points. We see settlements first along the Vistula, Oder, and Warta Rivers of northern Poland. The Swiderians then ranged east to settle on the Dneiper, Volga, Oka, and Don Rivers in Russia.

      Then came a major shift: in central Poland the Swiderians developed efficient mining of exotic forms of flint, hematite, and ochre. They commanded these important resources of paint and points and discovered that they loved to trade.

     But the Polish mines lacked the volcanic glass called obsidian that everyone craved for scalpel-sharp points on weapons and tools. The Swiderians set out toward the known sites of this mineral, determined to dominate that trade also.

     They traveled south into the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, which held three sources of obsidian.

     From there, some continued south to the Crimea. Whereas there were no sources of obsidian in the Crimea, the area has always been a trade crossroads. Perhaps that it why the Crimea was chosen as their destination. And there, the Swiderians would have met the Zarzians!

     It was probably the eastern Swinderians who travelled south to the Caucasus Mountains where there were five sources of obsidian.

     A short but difficult trip south from there would find them reaching the three sites in the Armenian highlands—and the Zarzian mines.

 Vanishing Point

   It is at this time in history when the Zarzians, their unique culture, and their trade empire vanish.

     Were the Zarzians forced to give up their trade by right of conquest? Perhaps.

     But the Swiderians seem to be more inclined to diplomacy, perhaps sharing cultures and knowledge with the Zanzians.

     Then, like an amoeba, they may have figuratively surrounded the Zanzians and absorbed them into an enriched Swiderian culture.

Suggested reading:

Collins, Andrew. Göbekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods. Bear & Company, Rochester, Vermont, 2014, p. 168-194, 215-217.

Photo credit: Julia Bogdan at Unsplash