THE ONCE AND FUTURE SKY GOD? – From Göbekli Tepe to The Zodiac – and Beyond…

[Michael B-C]

Göbekli Tepe – terrorist site of ideological indoctrination

5. A CLOSE UP ON OUR LANDSCAPE OF INVESTIGATION



Earlier this summer Professor Mehmet Özdoğan from the Istanbul University (who we have met before) published a paper entitled Reconsidering the Early Neolithic of Anatolia in l'Anthropologie, one of the most important journals devoted to prehistoric sciences and paleoanthropology. Only the abstract is currently available for public viewing, but it appears as if the professor is becoming increasingly uneasy concerning the implications behind certain finds which of late have emerged as a result of the frenzy of new excavations in southern Turkey, a process being pushed by a Turkish government that sees its newly declared land of Taş Tepeler as a potential mecca for international tourists and the mounting public curiosity in all things concerning the very ancient past.

In the paper’s abstract, he states:

In the course of last decades Neolithic research has taken a new pace in Turkey; while projects in the western and the central parts of the of the country have been working mainly on the later stages of the Neolithic era, those in south-eastern Turkey had their focus on the incipient stages of neolithization. Work in the south-eastern parts, highlighted by the results attained at Göbeklitepe has been carrying out large scale excavations at several Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites, most of them having their earliest layers by the very beginning of PPNA, evidence of antecedent stages being highly debatable. Recent recoveries have been greatly elaborating our understanding on the entire span of Neolithic way of living, also displaying the differences among distinct core areas of neolithization. However, more significant is the outcome of new research taking place in the Upper Euphrates-Upper Tigris basins of south-eastern Anatolia, revealing ground breaking results so different from our conventional perceptions that redefining what is implied by the term Neolithic now stands as an absolute necessity; inevitably some more time is necessary for the newly emerging picture on Neolithic process to sink in. However, some of the recent findings being unexpectedly different is apt to lead to speculative misconceptions, particularly when coupled with deeply rooted biases of research history.

As I mentioned before, Özdoğan is not one for holding back even if like all academics when in print he is innately nervous of ‘speculative misconceptions’. For example during the launch of the research work on the Siberia-Göbekli Tepe link he was asked what happened around 8,000 BC at the eventual abandonment of the site. The professor is quoted in the Turkish press as saying:

Migrations took place primarily in groups. One of the five routes extends to the Caucasus, another from Iran to Central Asia, the Mediterranean coast to Spain, Thrace and [the northwestern province of] Kırklareli to Europe and England, and one route is to Istanbul via [Istanbul’s neighboring province of] Sakarya and stops… In a very short time after the migration of farmers from Göbeklitepe, 300 settlements were established only around northern Greece, Bulgaria and Thrace. Those who remained in Göbeklitepe pulled the trigger of Mesopotamian civilization in the following periods, and those who migrated to Mesopotamia started irrigated agriculture before the Sumerians.

If this wasn’t enough, now for the coup de grâce:

“The people of Göbeklitepe turned into farmers, and they could not stand the pressure of the overwhelming clergy so they started to migrate to five ways.”

That has to be one of the most perceptive if enigmatically revolutionary lines of thinking I have ever come across from a scholar of note in this field:

… they could not stand the pressure of the overwhelming clergy

Me thinks the professor suspects, even knows something that he just daren’t say too much about in either his writing or in public, but he’s itching, boy is he itching!


AN INTRODUCTION TO OUR LANDSCAPE OF INVESTIGATION

Göbekli Tepe is but the tip of a much larger iceberg. We therefore first need to get a grip on the closely knit yet still widespread outbreak of cultural activity that spans the opening of the PPNA phase just as the Younger Dryas cooling event suddenly reversed to a fast paced and dramatic warming around 9,800 BC.



In approximately 200 years mean average temperatures rose a startling 13° C (God bless global warming!) and out of seeming nowhere humans in the region of Anatolia got mighty busy!

You may remember this map from a previous post:



Let us now focus in more closely on the specific area inside the black box – as this will be our principle stage for the next act in this drama.



As we proceed, I am going to be taking us back and forth between various archaeological sites and geological features, so I’ve marked these out for you, numbered 1-19. I trust this master map will help to give you some sense of place and relationship to which you can refer back as a guide as the often baffling array of Turkish place names whizzes by.

Let us begin with some basic geological references and context.

What you see above is in effect the meeting of three powerfully distinct geological worlds. In the north section, the rugged near fabled territory now known as Armenia, the lower reaches of which – the Armenian Highlands – reach down towards the open planes and rolling steppe lands of south-eastern Turkey (marked in pale green) which will be our primary point of focus. Right through the middle of all this runs the south-eastern Taurus mountain range forming a gigantic and turbulent rolling buttress of dramatic peaks, almost Tolkienian in mythic proportion, and dividing these two regions in twain.

It is from amongst these mountains and lush planes that the fabled Tigris and Euphrates rivers have their sources. Tributaries and off shoots of both rivers branch out and crisscross from here in many a direction before heading south-east towards Mesopotamia. It is around these first springs of water that the first PPNA sites rise up.

I have picked out in purple (numbered 1-9) certain distinct geological features of importance to our story as well as other natural structures worthy of note as follows:

GEOLOGICAL

1. EASTERN ELÂZIĞ PROVINCE



Though it will play no specific role in our investigation, I have highlighted this region – the centre of Elâzığ Province – because it epitomises the turbulent past of the whole region.

Virtually sitting on Göbekli Tepe’s doorstep, Elâzığ resembles an inland peninsula surrounded by a circular waterway and is host to a complex succession of Miocene-Pleistocene effusive and explosive volcanic rocks, divided into four distinct volcanic phases. That is our landscape to a T – volcanic and explosive. One does have to wonder if that oddly circular imprint of lakes has a cosmic history to tell? Certainly, it has been host to something dramatic in the near past as witnessed by the recent discovery of a city supposedly dating to 2,000 BC buried beneath Lake Hazar on the southern rim of the circle of waterways. Explain that one!

In addition, I came up with this:

2. IMPACT CRATER?



Located on a smaller peninsular on the northern ring of the waterway, this little known giant scar in the landscape is deemed to be a sinkhole by some geologists but the locals insist it was due to a strike from the heavens and fables in the region speak of fire monsters battling it out in the skies above before one fell to earth here, and it is thus held by them in deep reverence.

3a. MOUNT MASIS



Popularly known today as Mount Ararat, and for many the mountain which saw the final resting place of Noah’s legendary Ark.

This brings us to something that is worth keeping in mind. Most of us blithely take it for granted that the key events in Genesis and the early stages of the Jewish Bible locate themselves solely in the Middle East. However, as we will be reminded a number of times in this investigation, several actually originate much further north with both Armenia and the region around Göbekli Tepe claiming important biblical home bases; none more so than Mount Ararat and the final resting place of the Ark after the Great flood (along with the mythical locations for his family and first offspring to settle after the floods had relented).

The problem with this is that it should noted that the bible refers to ‘[the] mountains of Ararat’ not the mount – for nowhere does it say the ark actually landed on a Mountain named Ararat. Which brings us to geological feature 3b.

3b. MOUNT AL-JUDI



The modern Cudi Dağ and the location of a more ancient Armenian belief that the Ark actually landed here (the geological site seen above in the foreground is absurdly claimed by some who should know better to be the actual petrified remains of the ship itself).

According to the Babylonian Jews, Christians of the Assyrian Church, Muslims (as stated in the Holy Qur’an’s Sura 11:44), and the Yezidis (a Kurdish angel-worshipping religion), Mount al-Judi was the actual Place of Descent. This claim is backed up by the Chaldean Berossus and the Greek historian Abydenus, who stated that inhabitants thereabouts “scraped the pitch off the planks as a rarity, and carried it about them for an amulet,” while “the wood of the vessel (was used) against many diseases with wonderful success.”

What seems to have happened in this conflict of ownership is that at the time the Council of Ephesus in 431AD, (which banned the ancient Assyrian Church from the Orthodox Catholic Church), Mount al-Judi was under the jurisdiction of the Assyrian Church, the Armenian Church’s southern rival, so along with casting out the Assyrian Church came a switch of identity away from Mount al-Judi to Mount Masis as understandably the Armenians didn’t want the Assyrians to have any further control over such an important place of future pilgrimage. Therefore, for political and economic reasons, the location of the descent was moved further north to Mount Mount Masis/Ararat and the rest as they say is propaganda!

We may well smile at all this jostling of mountain sites but the fact remains the region holds ancient memory of the great flood and the most famous of all stories relating to it finds its source in the region of the PPNA explosion.

4. SOUTHEASTERN TAURUS MOUNTAIN RANGE

This immense and magical range of rolling peaks overshadows our entire tale. If you hone in on it via Google Earth or some such you get an idea of just how strange and otherworldly it can seem. For example, take a look at this close up:



I don’t know about you, but to me this looks to have been formed by massive electrical discharging rather than tectonic activity and erosion. I think Randall Carlson would have a field day examining this place.

The mountain range under its current name was first formally recorded as Ταῦρος (Taûros) in The Histories of Polybius during the second century BC. I find it noteworthy that these mountains carry the name normally associated with the Greek word for the wild Bull (auroch). Heinrich Kiepert writes in Lehrbuch der alten Geographie that the name was borrowed into Ancient Greek from the Semitic (Old Aramaic) root tür, meaning "mountain" whilst others claim the word comes from the Proto-Semitic *ṯawr- (“bull, ox”), but either way both originated from a common, unknown, possibly non-Indo-European and more ancient source. Considering our exploration of an ancient cosmic God/Great Bull of the sacred pillar/mountain, I find it noteworthy that the word Taurus likely denotes both Bull and Mountain as well as that this likely electrically scarred Great Bull mountain range loomed over what took place at Göbekli Tepe and the like.

5. Bingöl Mountain - Bingöl Dağları - Obsidian Grail No.1



Bingöl Mountain in the Armenian Highlands, (once called Mingöl) is the source of both the Araxes and Euphrates rivers, two of the four rivers of ‘Paradise’ all of which originate in this area. It was also one of the most important locations for the mining and distribution of Obsidian.



Eye catching in colour and highly reflectivity, this volcanic glass has a unique capacity to create the deadliest of blades (modern heart and brain surgeons still use obsidian as it cuts so sharply and cleanly that it does no additional damage to surrounding tissue or nerve ends, ensuring a perfect and speedy heal). This was PPNA black gold – a gift from the fire god – and as previously stated, control over its mining, preparation and distribution was almost certainly a key aspect of any ‘secret society’ control over the region.

It is this matter alone that makes me not reject out of hand Andrew Collin’s claims that Bingöl Mountain, and not the Holy Land, was also the true site of the Mountain of Assembly of the Watchers, the legendary fallen angels, and even possibly the original source homeland for the Anunnaki of later Sumerian tradition. I do not wish to get side tracked here into this highly contentious issue, but Collin’s has put more than 20 years into exploring the matter and the local legends concerning such ‘devils’ inhabiting this place are indeed innumerable. If one considers the Russian and Swiderian connection we have previously explored and the idea that some extraordinary tall, fair and devilish folk with strange skulls travelled south through Georgia and Armenia, (with control over the famous black glass resource of this mountain being perhaps one of their targets), then the matter does bare at least consideration. For now I will merely note that In the book of Enoch the name of one particular rebel Watcher, the third in line, is given as Armen, which just so happens to be the root of the name Armenia, and he is said to have “taught the signs of the earth,” this being a form of divination whereby the disturbances in the heavens are reflected also on earth, and vice versa, which of course is the basis for what was later called astrology.

6. Mount Karaca Dağ - Obsidian grail No. 2



A shield crater mountain (a type of volcano named for its low profile, resembling a warrior's shield lying on the ground), Karaca Dağ is again home to plentiful supplies of obsidian which still litter its lower slopes.



Most importantly, it stands right at the very heart of the entire flat plane region where all the significant PPNA sites will emerge.

In 2006, Der Spiegel reported that the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne had discovered that the genetically common ancestor of 68 contemporary types of cereal still grows as a wild plant on its slopes, strongly suggesting that Karaca Dağ provided the birth place for the first domestication of einkorn wheat at some point around 10,000 years ago.



All that bread, all that pasta, all that gluten that has so impacted the physical and mental well-being of humanity ever since originates just 80 kilometres northeast of Göbekli Tepe in one little plant. Makes one think.

The mountain is also the setting for a highly significant folktale preserved by local Bedouin tribespeople. Told to Collins whilst on a field trip there, it speaks of how:

once, long ago, when humankind first began to till the land, a dragon with 7 heads lived in a hole. One day, the tillers’ plows revealed the monster’s lair, making the creature extremely angry. It emerged into the light and began torching the forests with its fiery breath until all the trees had been razed to the ground. Fearing for their lives, the people called upon Allah to stop this misery. This he did by carrying the monster up through the seven heavens until it reached the highest one, and here the dragon exploded with a great burst of fire, scattering rocks across the entire region.

Assuming this is not a flight of Collin’s fancy, this fable is extremely significant. Not only for the seven heads, or for the connection made in the tale to the tell-tell guilt that cosmic hell-fire was directly linked to the advent of farming, but the fact that the dragon lived in a hole. ‘Hole’s’ will become incredibly significant as we progress.

7. Nemrut Dağ - ancient caldera - Obsidian grail No. 3



The purportedly extinct volcano Nemrut Dağ, (though with a last eruption in 1692 and activity noted as late as 1891, who knows…), today takes the form of an impressive caldera half a mile in diameter, within which lies an crescent-shaped lake taking up half the floor space. Previously known as Mount Niphates, it was referenced by John Milton in Paradise Lost iii. as Satan's landing spot upon Earth. Local legend also names it Mount Nimrod, the biblical figure mentioned in the Book of Genesis and Books of Chronicles, being the son of Cush and therefore a great-grandson of Noah. Extra-biblical traditions identified Nimrod as the ruler who commissioned the construction of the Tower of Babel, which led to his reputation as a king who was rebellious against God.



This fearsome statue in the Louvre is claimed by some to be Gilgamesh, by others Nimrod. Both the distinctive comet-sickle and comet-lion emblems he clutches will return in a later post.

Obsidian from here has been identified in the large amounts unearthed at Göbekli Tepe and considering the recent activity of the volcano, 11,000 years ago it was probably more than smouldering, so going there to mine must have been like communing with the very living gods of fire and destruction. If there is anywhere on earth that deserves the title Mount Doom, this is it! Which brings me to…

8. Plain of Muş – the later model for PARADISE/EDEN?



This wide valley plain, hemmed in on three sides by high mountain ranges and guarded from the southern reaches of Lake Van in the east by Nemrut Dağ’s caldera, is undoubtedly straight out of Tolkien in its unique configuration, and in some strange way brings Mordor to mind! Which is possibly unfair as it is apparently a wonderful place full of lush fertile soil and cascading mountain springs. The Murad Şu, or Eastern Euphrates, cuts right across the valley, dividing it in two, before vanishing into a narrow gorge at its western end creating a pass through the Eastern Taurus Mountains, along which the somewhat hazardous road to Diyarbakır winds its way onwards towards Göbekli Tepe. This was the ancient obsidian route from Bingöl and the northern lands surrounding Lake Van to the various PPN and later proto-Neolithic centers in the west, such as Hallan Çemi, Çayönü, Nevalı Çori, and, of course, Göbekli Tepe itself.



In particular, note the close proximity of the valley plain and the obsidian rich Nemrut Dağ to Hallan Çemi (here called Kaletepe), certainly among the very first – if not the first - PPN sites to be established and likely the major preparation and distribution centre for Obsidian supplying the people on the lush lands to the south west.

The Tigris Tunnel through which the Eastern Euphrates passes was originally about a mile long and ran all the way through the mountain. Thousands of years ago, this mysterious an eerie passage was seen as a symbolic gateway from the world of the living to a heavenly realm. Here it was that millennia later the hero Gilgamesh was to mythically come on his quest to discover the plant of immortality, passing through it from the south to reach the Land of the Ever Living, situated in a region of perpetual darkness.

It has recently been recognised that Cedar trees in incredible numbers once graced these hills (a fact that dashes the long held belief that all those references to Cedar trees in Sumerian and Babylonian myths must have related to the forests in the Lebanon). Again I wont go into the true cosmic meaning of these symbolic totems here but the tales of Gilgamesh and the Cedar tree are intimately linked. They have sadly all long gone with perhaps the last being used to help build the innumerable Armenian monasteries the valley later silently played host to, most of which were eventually destroyed during the appalling Armenian genocide of 1915. Was it to here that Gurdjieff came searching for answers to the deepest of all his many questions?

Though it will play little direct part in the story ahead, this land that time forgot was likely a significant staging post for our travellers from the north all those long millennia ago. Little if any archaeological work has ever been done here but one does have to wonder what hidden mysteries lie buried deep below its sacred grasslands and lower slopes.

9. The Plain of Harran

Nature often has its way of playing tricks on the eye with pattern recognition gone mad. Still, I can’t help but draw your attention to the remarkable shape of the lush and fertile Plain of Harran around which the principle events of our narrative will take place. Is it just me or is this the missing goddess herself, stretched on the rack of agriculture, laid bare to all but the watching eye of heaven?



At the very top of this isolated swathe of farmland (as it is now), and nestling high above in the hills overlooking, sits the site of Göbekli Tepe - almost like the missing head of her prostrate body - and at her navel, what became the city of Harran.

Over the course of its later history, Harran grew rapidly into a major Mesopotamian cultural, commercial and religious center. It was made a religiously and politically influential city through its association with the god Sin which historians have associated with the crescent moon (which it later was, but not originally) and who was said to inhabit the Ekhulkhul ("Temple of Rejoicing"), Harran's great sanctuary, built around 2,000 BC. The great god Shamash (again mistakenly identified with the sun) is also thought to have had a temple in Harran along with another prominent deity, Sin's son Nusku, the god of light (Apollo to us). This was all a long way off in the future though, for during the PPNA the plane was encircled by a very different set of ‘temples’ whose impact on the world was to be far greater and far longer.

Well, that’s our geology lesson over with. I hope you are with me. Next up, numbers 10-19, dealing with the human imprint on this peculiar chosen land.

(To be continued.)

 

[Tuatha de Danaan]

Göbekli Tepe – terrorist site of ideological indoctrination

The people of Göbeklitepe turned into farmers, and they could not stand the pressure of the overwhelming clergy so they started to migrate to five ways.”

Amidst another enthralling and breath taking trip through millennia past with arid mountains and lush valleys, dark tunnels and snow-capped peaks the above sentence has been pestering me all week. What does he know or how has he come to this conclusion?? He's not making a guess or an assumption.... his sentence is quite emphatic.

I wonder if the Professor will be publishing any more articles in the near future.? I guess this will have to be put under the heading 'ANON'.

Thank you again...

 

[iamthatis]

So I started watching the Graham Hancock dive into the topic of ancient catastrophes on Netflix. After the episode on Gobekli Tepe, I decided to take a pause because I remembered seeing this thread float up from time to time, but had never thought to take a peek. I'm glad I did.

I have spent much of last night and most of my day off work today in a very enjoyable and yet at the same time gripping state taking in and digesting what appears to a monumental labour of love on your part. Suddenly all of the other things I had planned seemed to dim in importance - it's a similar feeling I get when I pick up a book of Laura's or Pierre's!

And I want to thank you Tuatha de Danaan for your warm and generous feedback. I really do appreciate it. There are times during the strange solitude of this exploration in the dark that I question my sanity! I mean really, I'm half expecting you all to say 'get on your bike with this nonsense!', so to hear that some of you out there at least find it of interest and worth pursuing helps to keep me going. I'll also admit that in this craziest of times both at home and abroad I need something like this to give me a purpose and to keep the old grey matter from atrophying. As someone who spent their life as a professional story teller, the real excitement has always come from sharing in the hope that the 'audience' gets as much from the process as the maker. So I'm glad to hear that you for one find the ride worthwhile. It gives me the belief to keep going and I promise that what's still to come in time should raise the old hairs on the back of the neck! And I'll stop with the 'anons' for everyone's sake! No test or homework owing from the reader I promise - I think they will all register and land well enough in good time. And obviously do please bring your own thoughts to the conversation - I really didn't set out intending this to be any form of bleedin' monologue (God forbid!)

Anyway, thank you again and on to the next installment!

Please stay off the bike and continue whatever arrangement of conveyance you've been riding thus far. What you've done so far is brilliant, and another reminder as to why I really appreciate this forum so deeply.

I recently read 9/11: The Utlimate Truth for the first time. Being a new kid around here has its advantages, I realize - there are still a huge number of texts and topics that I haven't explored. It really make life worth living encountering another mystery, or another's labour of love of knowledge in a 'this-journey-just-got-that-much-more-awesome' kinda way. It's like a massive feast of ideas that offers a really important counterbalance to the everyday cycles of wake, wash, work, eat, sleep, repeat. In short, I hear you loud and clear about the atrophy of grey matter. 9/11 was one of these kinda texts for me recently, and your effort here is another.

I had a thought arise when reading your excursion into the global Y chromosome bottleneck event. This relates to Laura's research in 9/11, wherein she discusses the prospect of ethnic-specific weapons, with a focus on mtDNA. It also relates to a comment you made at some point that acknowledges that, in and amongst all of these cometary bombardment events that cross the timespan of this discussion, there are most likely spaceborne viruses that arrived and also unleashed all manner of changes on top of all the other already-tumultuous transformations that lead eventually to the creation of Gobekli Tepe. It's also related to Pierre's work on cycles of the extinction and evolution as connected with comets, viruses, DNA, and the information field. Anyways, the thought that I had was that the Y chromosome bottleneck could have been the result of a spaceborne virus. The operative phrase would be 'gender-specific weapon' courtesy of 4D STS, which somehow targeted the Y chromosome - and yet, somehow left the pathological males intact...

Suffice to say, the undercurrent of male and female energies running through these series of posts of yours is definitely building charge. On that note, I will drop the electricity puns and mention that I had a thought about this proposition of yours, too:

The T-pillar form represents THE GOD. Not a god – but THE GOD. The only God in its original form. And moreover, he is male and yet also fully female. That is, ‘he’ is the ‘he’ that fully incorporates the ‘she’. And the ‘she’ is so fully part of the ‘he’ that one could say ‘she’ also incorporates the ‘he’ that togther comprise THE ONE AND ONLY GOD. The unity before the divide.

I stopped reading along to watch a few of the Electric Universe videos posted (by Bluegazer). In those videos I re-encountered this well-known figure:



Forgive me if this is somewhat obvious, but I thought that perhaps this figure is one way of looking at your above description of the 'ONE AND ONLY GOD', the male who is female who is male, the creative unity in opposites, or the divine androgyne. (1) In the top third of the image, it looks like upturned arms and a head - and perhaps also the crescent and sphere that you've been tracking. (2) In the middle third, could this conceivably be described as the breasts of the goddess? I saw this image in quick succession with your Venus statuette pics and thought it may just fit. (3) In the lower third hangs the male member, and outstretched legs. The androgyne sky-god, perhaps seen throughout the ages in the skies as galactic-scale plasma phenomenon?

 

[Michael B-C]

So I started watching the Graham Hancock dive into the topic of ancient catastrophes on Netflix. After the episode on Gobekli Tepe, I decided to take a pause because I remembered seeing this thread float up from time to time, but had never thought to take a peek. I'm glad I did.

Hi iamthatis. Very glad to hear you are enjoying the ride. You make some very interesting and pertinent points in your post. As you will see below, there's a great deal more coming in a final rush so in terms of:

I stopped reading along to watch a few of the Electric Universe videos posted (by Bluegazer). In those videos I re-encountered this well-known figure:

Forgive me if this is somewhat obvious, but I thought that perhaps this figure is one way of looking at your above description

... you are well on course with the above. Hopefully when I get to it, you will see how I believe this very ancient plasma figure indeed did reappear in symbolic if disguised form at Göbekli Tepe. If I am correct, the implications are of course considerable. But before we get there...

 

[Michael B-C]

POST 1

My silence of late has been due to the reality of having to focus my full attention in the necessary direction of beginning a new professional path. Such is life! I had previously been blessed with a period last year of a consistent income but also a sizeable chunk of free time; both aspects of that luxury is now over and for the foreseeable I don’t see myself being able to give the hours required to continue on this research path with the methodical diligence required as before.

However, I wouldn’t be able to sleep soundly leaving certain things hanging in the air for those of you who have followed matters to date, in particular the implications of the unique iconography at Göbekli Tepe as well as certain other sites. Therefore, by way of a wrap up for now, I’m going to cut a 100 corners and get the meat of the matter in one go! Or rather, a quick series of sign off for now machine gun posts! So hold on to your hats!

But first…

AN IMPORTANT CORRECTION AND APOLOGY – Y-CHROMOSOME BOTTLENECK

I previously began drafting a significant post on this matter but it’s unfinished so I’ll do a quick disclaimer first regarding the Y-chromosome bottleneck topic before I get on to other matters.

I came to realise that I had likely misrepresented something fundamental when previously discussing this matter, namely creating the impression that this bottleneck depicted a definite decline in males relative to females born. This of course was an incorrect headline assumption. The Y-chromosome bottleneck refers to the fact that for say every 5 females who reproduced and successfully left descendants only 1 male did the same – and then at its height, for every 17 females who did so, only 1 male followed suit. It does not specifically mean this led to an equivalent ratio of females to males in the surviving population or that the male population as a whole shrank in accordance. This is a vital distinction, and I sincerely apologise to readers for any misguiding I gave on the matter. Thankfully I realised the blindingly obviously when going back over the published data.

However, the questions this raises are still as significant as before because essentially it means that for a considerable period of time corresponding to the slow rise of what would become civilisation, only very select lines of males determined the patrilineal decent of all surviving humanity worldwide – that is males who survived to breed and whose descendants survived and went on to breed in turn - and this ratio was significantly, and at times dramatically, narrower than the female mDNA line of decent. The bottleneck obviously therefore refers to a collapse in male Y-chromosome diversity as a result.

There are many, many implications of this (for example the possibly that many other males did successfully reproduce but their descendants were wiped out by a host of possible sources from catastrophes to viral decimation, though this is too is highly problematic because it did not impact the female line in the same way). It is also worth saying that it very likely still did have implications for the ratio of males to females within the overall population, although not as dramatically as previously suggested. In fact, one of the consistently repeating findings with regard to excavation of the small numbers of burial sites discovered from say the post Younger Dryas period is the markedly higher number of female to male remains found at these sites. Archaeologist put this down to social factors and the particularity of certain burial rites, but I think it is very likely an indicator that yes, there were indeed disparities emerging particularly in the first successful settlements - and indeed that the move to settlement as opposed to mobile hunter gathering led to a very different social and breeding pattern within those communities that may well have seen the first patrilineal determinants over who did and did not successfully pass on their genes become a significant factor. But that’s a whole different and much larger kettle of fish – so I will leave the matter for now.

I hope that helps to remedy any misunderstanding I inadvertently created.

 

[Alix]

I figured that the holidays had gotten in the way of your fascinating outlook of Göbekli Tepe and its symbols. All the best of luck on your new path! I've enjoyed this thread very much; thank you for taking the time to wrap it up for us, Michael B-C! *holding onto hat*

 

[Michael B-C]

POST 2

SOME IMPORTANT OBSERVATIONS BEFORE WE GET TO THE PPNA/GOBEKLI TEPE ICONOGRAPHY

I’m going to charge through a whole load of crucial data points now so please excuse scarcity of the detailed contextualisation that I originally planned. I hope I don’t lose the reader along the sprint ahead!

Arguably, the biggest puzzle concerning the emergence of the iconographic Göbekli Tepe/T-Pillar phenomenon at around 9,500 BC is there appears to be no symbolic roadmap leading to the massive jump that arrived with the carvings we find appearing in the region. The finds are therefore invariably portrayed as arriving like a bolt from the blue. Well I don’t think this was necessarily the case and we will come back to this fundamental issue of importance shortly.

The base architecture is perhaps a different matter, however. The essential pattern of semi-subterranean, oval stone constructions with increasing use of stone pillars (be they roof supports or otherwise) does have a road map and it is becoming clearer by the day as more and more finds emerge, that an impulse to settle utilizing stone had first begun in the Levant and spread north to Anatolia soon after the YD began to recede. Over time, the architectural forms began to evolve and develop reaching their pinnacle at places like GT. It is important to always remember that settlement came first and then forms of early agriculture followed after, not the other way round.

It is my contention, however, that as previously explored, the circular stone structure revolution likely originated from some form of secret society activity in the Levant and these did seem to be purposefully laid out like honey traps as a means to entice people to begin to settle in proximity to these structures so as to gain access to the first outcrops of agriculturally related activity by way of enticement. This is for example shown by the increasing preponderance of what archaeologists call ‘special purpose buildings’ that crop up at nearly ever site and around which the settlements became focused.



This process ebbed and flowed prior to the Younger Dryas and then accelerated soon after its worst direct cataclysmic circumstances were over. For example, a very early version of this phenomenon was the peculiar solitary stone bread making building found at Shubayqa in the Levant/northeast Jordan dating from as early as 12,500 BC (that’s about 1,500 years prior to any evidence of incipient agriculture). Even MS anthropologists playfully describe this place as a dopamine drug den! It appears the principle – and perhaps only - purpose of the building was ritualised bread making (with the first ever evidence for bread by way of particles found in large quantities beneath the central fireplace). It is the only stone-based building and was likely surrounded by now long since vanished tepee style accommodation used by hunter gatherers who it is thought flocked to get a taste of this new far-out there food stimulant!



The map (above) which shows Göbekli Tepe at its centre gives an idea of the near proximity of a set of other significant sites ranging in dates prior to or near contemporaneous with GT’s estimated date of construction, both to the northeast (around the northern Tigris River) and south west (around the northern Euphrates). Again note that promoting settlements on river ways has been shown to be a key strategy utilised by secret societies for control and dissemination.

As previously discussed, influences from the south and from the far north seem to have played significant roles in the development of certain elements of the GT culture and it is via some of these sites that these influences likely migrated inwards towards the later GT complex. The following also gives you some idea of the overlaps (though the whole issue of dates - and particularly beginning dates - is still highly problematic).


There are a significant number of other anomalies in the Levant prior to the YD event. Perhaps the most important for the long term is the site of Abu Hureyra (situated at the bottom of the map) which we covered before in relation to it being the first known village to establish settled farming practices and how it was effectively destroyed by a comet fragment exploding above it at the height of the YD event.



Abu Hureyra is of profound importance and yet remains essentially a lost enigma. The remains of the site now lie buried beneath a reservoir complex in northern Syria and the hasty if highly diligent excavation ahead of its disappearance only managed to cover less than 10% of the total site. This is pivotal – and regrettably a repeating story - because the village really was of such standout historical importance, no such destructive event should have ever been allowed to happen before it revealed all of its many mysteries. The comprehensive results published by project leader Prof. Andrew Moore and his team in the form of a 600-page book called ‘Village On the Euphrates: From Foraging to Farming at Abu Hureyra’ is a must read for its lucidity and its absolute rigor and care over the most minute detail. Unfortunately, Moore and his team admit that they were forced to reach their many conclusions from what was clearly merely a fraction of the data that lay hidden beneath the soil.

What makes AH so important is that it shows clear evidence of a long, slow process of continual evolution as (1) mobile hunter gatherers first chose to permanently settle at the site in significant numbers (initially circa 100), (2) how they commenced for a number of generations with a complex mix of hunting and foraging within their fixed locality, (3) how this gradually evolved towards the very first deliberate management of an environment to increase yields and then finally (4) the slow stages by which wild grasses etc, were tamed and cultivated specifically for harvesting in a manner we would recognise as agriculture, thus breaking open and tilling the land for the very first time anywhere in the world

What Moore and his team show is the geographical and botanical nature of the site was truly unique across the whole region. It would take pages to describe, but essentially the village was directly situated at the epicentre of around 6 different abundant ecologies and multiple important mineral deposits, all of which individually offered outstanding resources and which collectively were as close to Eden as you could imagine, all within a radius of around 16 miles, with the vast majority accessible with less than a day’s walking distance. It also happened to stand at the very epicentre of the paths taken by vast numbers of gazelle on their north to south/south to north annual migration, with the area directly around the village being their birthing pasture.

This is the first mystery. It is assumed from the data that up to 3 extended hunter gather families/clans came together to work on creating the first village (which is extraordinary enough with again no known precedent) and they just so happened to do so at the one site for many 100’s of miles around that offered not just the perfect HG resources but the perfect ecology for farming in the future. Again, there was apparently no precedent for this and yet it happened.

What I also find remarkable is that after what is called Abu Hureyra 1 was devastated by the comet fragment very soon after the initial steps taken to initiate the beginnings of early farming, instead of abandoning the site forever and returning to their traditional ways as the YD worsened, within a comparatively short time they returned in numbers to build Abu Hureyra 2. There the community continued on the path to farming as if nothing had happened to stop their process in its tracks (indeed, it appears that some survivors/stragglers stayed on at the site throughout as if protecting it throughout the intermediary period, so in some sense it was never abandoned at all.)

Abu Hureyra 2 expanded dramatically both in terms of population and agricultural development. Here Moore says something very interesting; that despite all the signs of evolution of practice and skill within the group, it was his team’s conclusions that the base technology and the original seeds for planting came from elsewhere i.e. they were not first developed by accident or design on site. He speaks about trade contact being an essential element of the settlement from the very beginning (including our old friend from the north, Obsidian) and assumes that the arrival of these game changing food seeds of mass destruction came as part of this trading network (reminds one of the old Big Bang formula – give me a single miracle and I can explain everything that follows!) Moore does not comment on the fact this just shifts the problem elsewhere, back into the mystery of time!

What is also remarkable is that there appear to be negligible evidence of any social hierarchy or elite activity. No special purpose buildings were uncovered, and only much later in Abu Hureyra 2 are there any apparent differentials in housing types or funeral attire. The archaeologists conclude that the village was an egalitarian paradise that successfully self-regulated itself through multiple stages of expansion and development without any signs of conflict or political/ritual control. I know this is the evidence but the evidence they based this on is a mere 10% (all from one area) of the total and I find these conclusions both understandable and likely impossible.



There are the remains of some interesting stone benches that faced into the section of the village they excavated and which had evidence of fireplaces situated between any one sitting there viewing the settlement and the occupants. What to my mind are likely secret society benching were to become an ever present feature at many of the major sites around GT and so I can’t help but think these benches may have had some oversight capacity and remained of use only by the select and that these select had their cult and living centres at the heart of the village in an area never reached by the archaeology. There are also some enigmatic clay tablets found in Abu Hureyra2 that the archaeologists determined might well be a form of accounting!



Yet it still remains highly surprising that no significant ritual symbolism or any other signs of regular political or social unifying practices other than those around food gathering and cultivating were uncovered at the site covering the period of its entire existence.

It’s as if the people were perpetually on happy drugs! To me, the whole place had a Jonestown feel about it…

Anyway, I’ve already written more than I intended, so I’ll move on to another nearby enigma, namely tel Qaramel.

 

[Michael B-C]

POST 3

Tel Qaramel is the diametric opposite of Abu Hureyra, in that it originally appears to have been nothing but an elite centred settlement, being famous for its series of so-called round stone towers that make up the key elements of the surviving finds.



These oft-rebuilt, small circular redoubts show all the signs of being special purpose buildings and predate by a significant amount of time similar structures at places like Jericho. They appear to have been first constructed at the very cusp of the YD event and certain stages show signs of dramatic fire damage and destruction before again being rebuilt. In truth the term ‘tower’ – one used by the archaeologists themselves – is something of a grandiose misnomer for although the solid stone foundations remain, it is highly unlikely their construction style would have allowed for the buildings upon them to climb much above 6-10 feet in height with much of the remaining building being made of destructible materials. The level of protection they would have offered is highly questionable but the evidence is still that they existed for centuries and were constantly repaired and re-engineered throughout that time, so something of immense value came of their construction (and again there are no known predecessors). My instinct is that as the early levels these towers are all that remains it is likely any structures inhabited by the lesser folk were made of destructible materials and have so vanished.

What I find most important about the site, however, are the clear signs of ritual practice and mythical symbolism. Bullhorns and human heads – both of which will be vital recurring factors as we go forward – seem to have been a fixation. However, perhaps most pertinent is the surviving symbolism passed down to us on plaquettes and shaft straighteners.

Here are some samples I have managed to glean from a host of academic papers, starting with perhaps the most important in terms of a primer.



For those who have hitherto followed this thread, the 5 fingered ‘hands’ should evoke recognition of the following from the much, much later Çatalhöyük as well as all those handprints in Palaeolithic cave art.



Yes indeed, here we have again a clear representation of the transformative power sign of the cometary hand of the ‘God/s’.

I therefore suggest we have depiction of multiple comets progressing right to left. We also have long horned serpents/dragons (?) flowing from left to right. Whatever the full meaning of this, the horned ‘cosmic’ serpent in similar form seems to have dominated the symbolic thinking of those at tel Qaramel.



Note I have deliberated inverted the image on the right on the basis that the imagery on the shaft straightener would likely have pointed upwards to the more rounded end. Shaft straighteners, though an instrument of seeming everyday utility (being used for preparation of throwing sticks and arrows), seem to have been a particular favourite for covering with symbolic meaning. This further amplifies the high likelihood that the bow and arrow began as a symbolic ritual implement designed to mimic the action of say plasma discharge’s ability to shoot down ‘prey’, such as rogue comet fragments – hence the connection with hunting and the way in which the hunted animal became a representative of what was happening in the skies above.

Also note how there is an apparent dynamic relationship between horned serpents from above and what one might call the ‘tree’ or ‘plant’ from below (left and middle of picture on the right, above). Destruction vs creation (and both being intimately intertwined)?

There are also the beginnings of what look like key constituents of a narrative structure:



(left) the serpent on the left, the divine figure of the ‘crossing’ in the centre, and a bird in flight on the right (see further below for more of this recurring trinity)

(right) a horned animal, (possibly a gazelle), under attack from horned serpents.



There are also depictions of fierce predators crawling down vertical planes, a concept we will find repeated later at places like Göbekli Tepe (above right).



Then there is the above, which I suspect is a familiar if particular representation of the mountain/pillar/tree/plant god with its two toroid eyes (the bull).




Then there is this intriguing composition. The central figure is seemingly insectoid (with x6 legs) and may be another form of the symbolic figure above, with energy lines and serpentine flow passing through its centre. Whatever the case, it depicts a startled if not traumatised face and posture. There is I think some connection to the remarkable frieze embossed onto the front of a stone bench discovered at the later Anatolian PPN B site of Sayburç, part of which is below (if I can I will return later to this depiction in full).



I think this ‘cornered’ figure may belong to the widespread design motif we will now explore below.

Here are some chards from tel Qaramel of a form of highly distinctive, stone-carved pottery (and remember we are a long way of the clay pottery age, hence the term PPN – Pre-Pottery Neolithic):



The reason this is so important is because near identical designs dominate the finds at places in the far north east of our area of interest such as Körtik Tepe.



from Körtik Tepe

The culture at Körtik Tepe in Anatolia (an early precursor to the Göbekli Tepe culture) was entirely distinct from that at tel Qaramel in the Northern Levant. So what was this motif and design doing there? Was it trade related? Or was the trade tied up with networking and narrative dissemination etc along secret society lines? When you consider their complexity of design and the amount of time it would have taken to carve them out of solid stone, it is highly likely this pot and the like elsewhere were reserved for high ritual or even initiation purposes.

We also find the same at other Levantine sites to the east of tel Qaramel and to the north of Ab Hureyra, such as at Tel ‘Abr 3 and at Jerf-el-Ahmar.


from Tel Abr



from Jerf-el-Ahmar

The primary and idiosyncratic motif – a multi circular labyrinth at the centre with crisscross ‘energy’ lines passing to and through it - also turns up elsewhere in the area, most notably in wall carvings on the highly important (and what I believe to be secret society) benched room in a special purpose building at Tel ‘Abr 3 (this building deserves a post all of its own!).



from Tel ‘Abr 3 – special purpose building with benches

And finally, some further examples from Tel ‘Abr 3.

 

[Michael B-C]

POST 4

The primary significance of this motif is further amplified by its repeated use in other designs, again from Körtik Tepe in the northeast.



all from Körtik Tepe


To my mind these are clearly consistent and cosmically inspired and seem to suggest a widespread understanding of some kind of narrative containing at its heart a highly unified set of observed occurrences centred on a labyrinth and an eye or eyes motif and also ‘snakes’ and other electrical plasma forces.

Staying with Körtik Tepe for the moment (and also Gusir Höyük, another north eastern Anatolian site), another centrally repeating image is that of what I believe to be the great trickster himself, what I will call the cosmic fox.



from Körtik Tepe


from Gusir Höyük

Archaeologists/academics have all agreed that this motif is a representation of a goat. I say baloney! They base this on the ‘fact’ it has two ‘horns’ and they say therefore it is a goat. I say, those are not horns but floppy ears often shaped into two exaggerated circular motifs likely for a very specific symbolic reasons. It also has a very canid like snout and holds its forelegs in a highly distinctive ‘soft’ manner, which is distinctly foxy (note also it does not have any back legs but does have a long tail nothing like a goat’s). They also do not explain why considering the wild goat/mountain goat played such a relatively small part in the diet of the people it should have been so important and repeatedly depicted; nor do they explain why the people at Körtik Tepe had a very specific way of actually depicting goats, which though they did so rarely, they remained utterly consistent to:



from Körtik Tepe

Note the extra-long curved horns, the small stubby tail, the throat goatee, the stocky body and large rounded head. No one of course bothers to consider why both these animal depictions, whatever they may be, appear to have an inner motif based upon a circular object from which an elongated tail stretches throughout the body of the animal! So no, we are not likely talking domesticated animals or local wild visitors, but creatures of the skies and the two legged comet fox may actually be our old friend Mars in its cometary state – or a precursor that the natives also viewed as being a similar trickster. Whatever the case, I am convinced our Disney character – which again was consistently and uniquely reproduced - is actually the cosmic fox/trickster:



from Körtik Tepe

Note on the example above the ‘v’ throat motif below the toroid ‘eye’; this will reappear at Göbekli Tepe along with a fully realised fox form on the central pillars of Enclosure ‘D’ (the earliest by date so far excavated). To ram the point home, jumping ahead in time to a near neighbour of Göbekli Tepe’s, Karahan Tepe, we find the following:



from Karahan Tepe

This freeze is cut into the front of – yes, you guessed it – a stone bench in a special purpose enclave away from the main centre of the site thus far excavated. I will come back to this remarkable, clearly secret-society frieze, but I don’t think things could be much clearer than a fox riding in on the back of a monstrously long serpent (the whole faded image is 20+ feet in length)!

To add to this melee of iconography, here is a further selection of other plaquettes and shaft straighteners from Tel’Abr 3 and Jerf el-Almar:



Various

Each of these could tell a significant story, little or none of which I believe related to terrestrial events. Note for example possible celestial foxes flying with horned serpents etc in the 2nd image/row 2 and 3rd image/row 3 (along with the vulture of death).

The set of images 3rd along/row 1 is particularly complex and is very likely a series of story elements in strata form, including among other factors, comets above and the full bull’s head and horns below, seemingly under attack by serpents/comets on the left and perhaps combating them with its own plasma response on the right.

Several of the images also show birds being pursued by serpents. 1st image/row 1 centres on a depiction of what I believe to be the primordial god on his mountain with down turned horns and pillar plus a horned serpent to the left and birds in flight to the right – which brings to mind the following from Göbekli Tepe that we have covered before:




from Göbekli Tepe

The secret tussle between the ‘bird’ (STO) and the ‘serpent’ (STS) for the future direction of the ideological narrative is I think central to this whole story.



from Körtik Tepe

To round up our rush through of some of the key imagery found at all these sites, back to Körtik Tepe in northeast Anatolia once more for this remarkable pair of images:



from Körtik Tepe

Here we appear to have a form of the pillar god standing upon his mountain. Note the parallel lines running down his chest, and what may be a mask – perhaps that of a bird – on his face. The twin parallel line motif running down the torso famously returns at Göbekli Tepe.



from Körtik Tepe

And perhaps the same figure, but now represented with a fox head and tail as if co-opted. Again, the same parallel lines down the middle, but this time presented with forms of cross bars top and bottom.

This matter will bring us to one of the great, unsolved symbolic mysteries represented at Göbekli Tepe, namely the ‘H’ symbol and its inverted form:



from Göbekli Tepe

Hold on to your hats, because I think I may have cracked it! More anon on this pivotal matter.

Here concludes my pre PPNA/ Göbekli Tepe symbolic round up. I again apologise for the undue haste; I only wish I had the time and resources to dedicate to writing this all up for you in a more methodical and cohesive manner, plus there are plenty more examples I have collated and issues of note that warranted inclusion as well, but I simply don’t have the time. Still, I trust you are getting the impression that something truly monumental was at stake in these highly symbolic representations. Pillar gods, bulls, horned serpents, comets, foxes, fierce feline predators, various birds including vultures, sprouting plants, etc, were being regularly symbolically represented in the region in the centuries prior to Göbekli Tepe’s emergence.

I also suggest that many of these images were strictly for private use – perhaps as signs of initiation, perhaps as symbols of belonging to a particular secret society group or rank, perhaps as teaching devices. I simply do not buy the idea that these complex symbolic memetic instruction tools were merely ‘ornamental’ or representative of the local ecology. Slowly over the years, something ideological was steadily brewing despite the climatic challenges and it was ready to explode into full expression during the PPN A and B once the YD had abated. It was to be central to a mounting pressure to give up the old ideology and the old way of life and move to a settled agricultural life with the increasing production and control of surplus materials and resources; wealth and power. I believe the dissemination of fear and a warped ideological programming with sacrifice at its core was absolutely central to this process.

Next up, the PPN A sites of Anatolia including Göbekli Tepe itself.

 

[Michael B-C]

POST 5
THE SOUTH EAST ANATOLIAN COMPLEX - INTRODUCTION

The challenge here is to convey key information to you without the likely undue length required to do it full justice. My plan is to give some brief and important supporting context and then focus in on the iconography of Enclosure ‘D’ (though named so, it is actually determined to be the earliest of the enclosures yet excavated). Very early on in this thread I focussed in on one of the central x 2 pillars but this time I am going to explore in detail the whole enclosure. Before I do some further context is necessary.

The first matter of importance’s is to convey to you the fact that despite its remarkable notoriety, Göbekli Tepe (GT) is merely but one of a host of sites from the PPN A and B spread across the region of south-eastern Anatolia and by no means the most extraordinary. Over recent years, considerable effort has gone into mapping and excavating this whole region and the ever increasingly significant finds. The sheer number of new sites being discovered means we are really looking at a vast complex of interconnected locations spread over 100’s of miles – what one might dare term a widespread culture bordering on an incipient civilisation. Though GT is of distinctive significance, it may not even prove in the end to even be its epicenter (though I still suspect it was). Indeed two other enormous sites – Karahan Tepe (recently excavated) and Ayanlar Höyük (yet to be excavated) may prove to be even larger and equally of ground breaking significance.

The Turkish authorities have identified 12 particular sites as a singularity that they promote under the title Taş Tepeler (Turkish, literally 'Stone Hills') all of which are in near proximity to the city of Şanlıurfa.



12 Taş Tepeler sites

This semi-arbitrary collection, however, is but a small quota of the total and does not include at all the north-eastern upper Tigris sites centred upon Körtik Tepe.



As a generality, it is worth thinking of the north-eastern sites (bordering the Tigris) originating during or the very end of the Younger Dryas and the south western sites (near or upon the Euphrates) appearing post the YD as the climate dramatically armed and changed. Again in general, as the post YD sites emerged in the south west, the north-eastern sites declined in turn and were even abandoned as the weight of effort spread south east.

A further clarification is that only a handful of all these sites – but still many more than people realise – boast ‘T’ pillars as a feature of their design and construction (though all were based upon stone with circular enclosures/settlement style being prevalent - that is until the move to rectangular shapes in the PPN B, but that’s another matter entirely).




To date, a total 11 sites have been identified with ‘T-pillars, many of them with decorated pillars. Of these, three stand out in that the scale and design of their T-pillars dwarfs those of the others (these sites also being smaller in scale and therefore likely representing satellites from the main for various reasons). These three, going from west to east, are Ayanlar Höyük (AH), Göbekli Tepe (GT) and Karahan Tepe (KT).

It is my contention that the designers of these T-pillars – most likely an elite group originating from the north/caucuses – adapted the locally emerging stone culture to their own purposes and in particular stamped their ideological right to determine the future direction of the indigenous PPN A culture by means of these T-pillars and their symbolic meaning.

Little can be said at this stage about AH because to date there have been no major excavations.



However, evidence from initial exploratory digs, ground surveying and materials found at surface level (including T-Pillars jutting out of the soil) suggests that the buried complex was vast.

The same sense of immense scale is also found at KT with again the great majority of the site still to be excavated. However, serious work has now been completed on one small part of the site and look what they found!



Oh boy! KT deserves a thread all of its own, it’s that big of a topic. Again, I won’t go into the matter in detail here or we’ll get side-tracked, but essentially what they have uncovered thus far is a most bizarre complex centred on a very large circular enclosure with two large fallen T-pillars in the middle as well as dozens more surrounding it (AD), along with two enigmatic interconnecting sub-structures (AB and AA), both of which appear to have been in some way connected to water.

It is my contention that unlike at GT, these enclosures were essentially open-aired (with maybe some covering around the edges where observers sat) and was likely an initiation centre and even possibly a public performance space. I am pretty convinced this enclosure did not have a full roof, both because of its enormous size and also because of the extreme erosion of the pillars and other features found, all of which show significant weather damage (unlike at GT which is again one of the main reasons to believe the enclosures there were fully roofed over).

I suspect that the two very strange additional structures (AA, and AB) were originally filled with water and were used for individual initiation with possibly a partial walkway/floor above on one-half of the snake headed shaped AB feature.



My suggested reconstruction of chamber AB at Karahan Tepe.

Whatever the case, the symbolic imagery thus far unearthed at the site is truly remarkable – even at times jaw dropping – and there is absolutely no precedent for it to be found anywhere other than at GT (and even then the difference of emphasis is considerable – and hence I think its purpose was to). As with GT, it is fundamentally centred upon the expression of extreme fear, even terror (think of the terrorising tactics and terrorist nature of secret societies here).

 

[Michael B-C]

POST 6

THE ISSUE OF THE BEAST ON THE BACK

For example, and here comes our first big revelation, take the following starting with an old friend I previously covered from GT.




Remember this? An out of place artifact made from a rare form of jade only found in northern Russia/Siberia? Most importantly, what was this canine pup (or here, maybe lion or leopard pup) doing attached to its back in a manner that suggests the figure is unaware or indifferent to its presence?

Well, at KT we meet this double act again, but this time fully matured in symbiotic relationship – and what a terrifying apparition it has become!




Here is an idea of the comparative size of this macabre apparition to a live human…



Looking at the length and bushy nature of its tail, I think we here yet again meet our friend the fox – but not a playful, rascally Reynard this time, rather a snarling, predatory, monster who now owns the dwarfed figure upon which he seems to ride and dominate as if it were now enslaved by the ferocious literal overlord that he unwisely allowed to fully spawn on his back.

This was meant to intimidate and shrink the observer. This was no ‘joyous’ hunter-gatherer creation.

The teeth are barred (a common feature across both GT and KT in multiple animal/monster sculptures) and its claws dig into the head of its one time master. This appears to have been a common theme at both KT and GT as well as elsewhere in the region…



Whether predatory canine, raging leonine, of scavenging bird, the image is the same – the stoically featured head is firmly grasped, be they by claws or talons, as the dominant ‘animal’ above takes total control of its ‘human’ prey below.

To make matters abundantly clear, the following from the enclosure at KT…



Though now so badly weathered it is hard to make out clearly, but it is – or was - a giant representation of a sleeping lion/leopard with a supine ‘human’ figure safely tucked under its front left leg (the head is missing but the neck still protrudes), presumably awaiting being eaten when the lion once more awakes and notices it is hungry!

So let us return to the astonishing large-scale totem from GT I discussed in detail before. I am now confident that in its original form it would have looked close to something like this:



my likely reconstruction

To the likes of Graham Hancock and Andrew Collins I say, take a close look at these images and then come back to me if you still believe we are talking about these places being the cradle of a wondrous lost civilisation, one we should regret the passing of because they were so enlightened!

When I suspect the people infected by this terror finally managed to shake off their shackles, they first broke off the faces off many of these statues before burying them deep in the earth (this is separate by the way to the earlier deliberate cult burial of heads, which I will get to shortly). That I think tells you a lot about the likes of Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe. Though I won’t have time to get into the later nearby site of Nevali Çori (PPNB), once again now buried beneath a reservoir, the following image of occult reverence deserves inclusion, for to my mind its STS personified (note once more that the face of this statute was also smashed off in its entire).



It is not radical to state these images are simply not normal. They did not emerge naturally from within an evolving hunter-gatherer society. They were enforced from outside – and I believe by a, (or several) secret societies. The extreme nature of the propaganda seems to me apparent; what was once the force of command in the known universe has been taken over by a terrifying predator who is now utterly dominant and dictates its terms, including when and how it eats its prey, namely us.

Though the implicational threat to us is clear, I do not think the humanoid figure in all these various representations was indeed human. As readers who have followed this thread to date know, my suggestion is that this figure was an anthropomorphic representation of the ‘great god’ who previously oversaw the security, peace and harmony of our world, but who has now been defeated by more ferocious forces and made impotent to intervene on behalf of suffering humanity. I think this was Rule 1 of the new ideologues rulebook:

The old order has been vanquished forever. The powers of destruction have taken over the neighbourhood for good. You now depend utterly on us and our magic charms if you don’t want them to return again next week! ​

 

[Michael B-C]

POST 7

THE ISSUE OF THE HEAD/SKULL

Depictions of ‘human’ heads dominate these sites. They are everywhere in large and small representations, often buried next to T-pillars, or secreted into walls. It appears that in the vast majority of cases they were deliberately broken off a fuller statute before being finally ritually placed into position.

Irrespective of the skill of the craftsman or the medium used, they essentially all follow an identical core symbolic design.

• There are never any eyes.
• There are never any ears.
• There is never hair or a signifier of hair.
• Only very rarely is there ever a mouth, and if so it is invariably stylised as some form of toroid or donut.

It is as if the whole point of the shape is to remind us of its human connection whilst at the same time disguising it for the principle purpose of conveying the dominant, often highly exaggerated feature – the exaggerated ‘T’ formed by the brow ridge and the nose.





Even miniature stone masks were carved to again I think to highlight the ritual/symbolic nature of this device.



It is my contention that this ‘T’ is in fact a Tau cross - and it relates to the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end and the source of all being.



Many millennia later, the ancient Egyptians incorporated the same concept into their well-known symbol of the Ankh.



Here we see familiar themes carried over – the central pillar, the two arms or horns, the shining orb carried aloft, the twins, very specific arm gestures (be they realised or symbolically represented – these arm gestures will appear over and over at places like GT).

These two further heads below from GT bring this into further focus.



The mouth on the left is realised as a toroid, the down curved horns on the right are that of a bull.

Then there is this very interesting (though damaged and eroded) ‘T’ peer at KT hovering over a deep pit where water (or maybe even blood?) once beckoned below.



Again, for those who have followed this thread, we have previously met this T-Tau on faces in the Levant in the period before the YD.

Though human skeletal remains at GT are thus far comparatively rare, (one of many reasons to suspect that certainly at its establishment, GT was not primarily a settlement with only a limited residential population, most likely those who served its cult purposes and perhaps early 'converts'), fragments of three human skulls have been unearthed, each of which show significant signs of adaptation for ritual purposes.


Tentative Reconstruction by Archaeologists.

The flesh was cleaned off and holes drilled through the cranium, which it is believed would have enabled the skulls to be suspended.

All in all, I think it is safe to suggest that the fixation with the head – and its connection to the T meaning system was a dominant feature of the culture. This brings to mind the C’s suggestion that the cosmic battle for STS dominance is played out in and through us. It also has echoes of the C’s suggestion that the obsession with skulls originated from Kantekian culture and an energetic feeding.

Whatever the case, I believe the elites here recognised that the mind of man was what was at stake. By connecting this to the fallen ‘god’ who abandoned the world, meant they were able to take up the position previously held by the god as the rightful overseers of the localised terrestrial power of the divine and thereby exert control over the people through terror. They could not erase the memory of the ancient divinity so they appropriated and twisted it to fit their own purposes by projecting back on to it its weakness and failure to defend the people against the forces of darkness as a sign that it could no longer save the people – only these new elites could with their dark blood magic. One can’t but wonder if the high leaders of this group were somehow aware of the left/right hemisphere divide issue that I think is inbuilt in to the matter of the Tau. Either way, the human head, the divine bull, the pillar god, are all to my mind inextricably interlinked.

 

[Jefferson]

Excellent work @Michael B-C ! Fascinating! Thank you for the research and sharing it with us!
(Tenatively posting here waiting for more text )

 

[Channa]

Many thanks for all the exciting research and good luck on the new professional road
Channa

 

[Michael B-C]

POST 8
GÖBEKLI TEPE & ENCLOSURE ‘D’

With all the above in mind, let us now return to our point of original departure - Göbekli Tepe (GT).



The principal enclosures at Göbekli Tepe sitting atop the bedrock, view down to the Plain of Harran.



Site map of excavations undertaken, with 6 of the 8 enclosures covering PPNA to PPNB marked in green (to the right) and light blue (to the left). The main focus of most examinations of GT focus on the closely packed enclosures A-D


INTRODUCTION – SPECIFIC THOUGHTS ON GÖBEKLI TEPE

Firstly, some contextualising observations/argument:

• The site, built directly on the bedrock, stands at a height overlooking the distant Plain of Harran.
• No source of local water has yet been discovered. Whilst specially constructed pits and large carved basins have been uncovered (suggesting means by which to collect falling rain water), the lack of large amounts of readily available flowing fresh water all year round remains a major obstacle for the idea this place originated and even primarily functioned as a large-scale domestic settlement.
• The choice of the specific location remains a mystery. However, the site’s close proximity to the substantial, readily available limestone deposits required for the carving of T-pillars is assumed by many archaeologists to be the defining reason. I suspect this is fundamentally correct. In other words, the purpose was conceived first and the site was then found that best delivered upon this fundamental driving need (with say the dearth of water dealt with as a necessary ‘evil’ of the geological importance of the location).
• The initial archaeology revealed the tightly packed ‘special purpose buildings’ that are the GT everyone thinks they knows. However these unique features are surrounded by a complex of ‘domestic’ style dwellings, the earliest of which date from the earliest levels. It is to these dwellings that the contemporary archaeology continually now turns to prove its case that GT was primarily a settlement and that the ‘special purpose buildings’ (a long winded way of saying Temple, a word they now hate) were in fact ‘multiple use communal buildings’ (a long winded way of saying Civic Community Halls, a phrase they now love). Because what modern archaeologists fear more than anything is any hint of the extreme unknown, especially to do with ‘religious’ of ‘occult’ matters. The original excavator, Klaus Schmidt, was privately convinced GT was primarily a cult centre, that it was made by people from elsewhere, and that he even hinted at his suspicion that they were connected to the ‘Watchers’ of ancient Armenian legend. Such an idea sends shudders down the spines of those that have followed in his footsteps who now rarely discuss the well-known enclosures, preferring instead to focus on what they interpret as the domestic nature of the community who lived there. This bias gets stronger by the year and they are becoming expert at dancing through multiple hoops to promote this message (and the likes of Graham Hancock and Martin Sweatman are only adding to their determination to do so).
• The determination to normalise makes them blind to the implications of why the ‘domestic’ buildings packed in close to the enclosures show complex signs of ritual and what one might call cult practice in miniature. For example, many of the houses have miniature T-pillars embedded in their structures – sometimes more than one (e.g. pairs side by side in the middle of a special purpose room, mirroring the central pillars of the enclosures). When I look at the evidence, what comes to mind is something like a gothic cathedral complex where the streets and buildings surrounding the main monument comprise the living quarters of the administrative servants, clerics and bishops who ‘work’ and govern there and where they practice what they preach. Only this time I think these religious types were fanatical secret society members.
• The sure sign to me that we are dealing with a cult epi-centre of immense power and importance at the time is that by far the greatest number of finds at the site are the simply astonishing numbers of stone mortars thus far uncovered – over 10,000 of them! So many so that they have had to line them up in dense rows in a separate outdoor area like the output of some giant car factory!

• There is simply no model of settlement size at that time that requires the production and use of this technology on this scale. Mortars (with pestles) were an ever present aspect of the later stage evolution of hunter gathers into settled people and they predate the advent of formal agriculture by many, many centuries. Their use for grinding cereals, seeds and other vegetable foodstuffs into digestively receptive resources such as those suitable to make a form of porridge or stew appears to have been at the very heart of the slowly evolving diet of the time. Phytolith analysis confirms the massive presence of cereals at the site, and according to a major paper on the subject published in 2019:

“Contextual analyses of the distribution of the elements of the grinding kit on site highlight a clear link between plant food preparation and the rectangular buildings and indicate clear delimitations of working areas for food production on the terraces the structures lie on, surrounding the circular buildings. There is evidence for extensive plant food processing and archaeozoological data hint at large-scale hunting of gazelle between midsummer and autumn. As no large storage facilities have been identified, we argue for a production of food for immediate use and interpret these seasonal peaks in activity at the site as evidence for the organization of large work feasts.”

• Setting aside the later date of these ‘rectangular building’s for now and also discounting the idea that the feasts were for workers building the sites, the principle is clear. Food production on an industrial scale seems to have been the main practical function of the site. But why? And for whom?
• Well, we have large scale feasting, we have large-scale use of cereals, we have large-scale glut of meat all focused on a seasonal peak. It is my suggestion therefore, that these mortars were ritual gifts or temple dues that each male hunter - because I suspect this was principally a male activity - brought with them to utilize at the site (having required countless hours of painstaking production) before leaving them behind as ‘offerings’ after they completed a specific ‘ritual initiation’ feast in which their particular mortar was utilized and when what was likely an orgy of food taking accompanied with considerable intake of alcohol took place (there are large many large basins that have been identified as likely for porridge making and fermentation vats). I think these feasts were intimately linked to the spread and micromanagement of Kite hunting grounds which I wrote about before here (many of which surround GT and the neighbouring sites). The vast qualities of meat sucked them in, the dopamine rich porridge gave them a high, and the alcohol pushed them over an edge. Something like that.
• And what part did the enclosures play? Think Virtual reality immersion. When the ‘audience’ was ready, whether singularly (for clan leaders) or maybe in select groups, they were taken into a subterranean ‘other world’ and experientially indoctrinated into whatever level of performed and danced story the puppet masters had devised so that when they came out the other end, they never saw the world the same way again.
• That’s why the enclosures were roofed over – for total underground sensory submersion – like being in a cave – and they thus entered an ‘other world’ where they saw things, heard things, took part in things, that literally rewired their brains.
• I think sex was likely used (it' worth noting here that the one an only female image in the whole of GT found thus far is a piece of grotesque sexual graffiti), I thing substances were likely used and I also think blood sacrifice – including likely human sacrifice – and maybe even forms of cannibalism (whether feigned or real). The full gamut of secret society terrorist techniques as documented in minute detail by Prof. Brian Hayden in his book ‘The Power of Ritual in Prehistory: Secret Societies and Origins of Social Complexity”.
• The ultimate aim was to break the hold the old way of believing/ thinking/being had over the people and to spread a new creed with ‘sacrifice’ at its heart that led inexorably to the abandonment of hunter-gathering, to settlement, the establishment of agriculture, a new dependency on the secret societies and their esoteric magic powers and the beginnings of what we call ‘social complexity’.