Göbekli Tepe – terrorist site of ideological indoctrination
3. THE NORTHERN CAUCASUS & ZAGROS MOUNTAIN CONNECTION – via UKRAINE and SIBERIA
The overhead comet fragment explosion at Abu Hureyra was not an isolated event. Evidence suggests that the northern Levant and elsewhere in the near-east took a cosmic pounding and as a result much of the area went archeologically dead for nigh on 1,000 years. How the slow accrual of the game changing, agricultural-leaning way of being that emerged over time in the Levant up to 10,900BC was then transferred to Anatolia 1,000 years later as the planet again warmed post the YD cold spell, therefore remains something of a mystery. Throughout the long intervening period of repeated trauma and unending seeming cold, the environment simply would not support furtherance of plant cultivation as a sustainable way of life and any survivors therefore reverted back to the old way of life as the only means of survival. Yet someone, somewhere, somehow remembered, and around 9,500 BC the process of slow transformation began all over again, this time further north in Anatolia.
We know there was a form of network that provided continual contact between north and south throughout the many centuries preceding the YD due to the obsessive trade in Turkish Obsidian, reaching even into the southernmost reaches of the Levant, 900kms from its source. This is also suggestive that
a cohesive mining, preparation and distribution network was pre-existent in Anatolia and that further suggests control and management of a prized resource surplus having all the hallmarks of possible secret society oversight.
With this precious item came an esoteric-ideology of meaning and through that meaning, leverage over those who longed to possess it (and be possessed by it). So perhaps in the end
the Natufian stone foundation houses were actually not Natufian at all and not houses, but Anatolian sourced Trojan Horses masquerading as ritual and trading outposts, strung out one by one along a network of waterways and acting as proselytizing enablers of a new set of ideas from north to south rather than south to north. After all, throughout all that time pre the YD event, the Levant rather than the northern mountain planes of Anatolia was where nature flourished the most, with a host of lush habitats rich in food and a growing human resource, (somewhat of a Garden of Eden like environment), full of rich pickings for those of a serpent minded disposition.
Yet paradoxically, from the point of view of an expansive, incipient agricultural ideology, as a result of the ecological flourishing of the region from around 13,000 BC on during the Bølling-Allerød warming, there was actually an absolute glut of game animals of all kinds and in particular of the
Goitered Gazelle, the number one target of the late Palaeolithic hunters.
This graceful creature was quite simply
the wheat of its day. Almost inconceivably large numbers roamed the entire region in gargantuan herds that likely dwarfed the numbers of Wildebeest seen on the planes of modern day Africa. This was the staple food of the people of the time and there was way more than enough to go round. Yet by 4,000 BC, they were entirely decimated and today are categorized in the IUCN Red List as a Vulnerable species. This species collapse owes in some small degree to the changes in ecology during and post the YD, but principally has been driven by excessive human predation beginning in the late Pleistocene and gaining huge momentum during the early PPN. We will come back to this matter anon (and yes, I know that by now I have a long list of matters to ‘come back to’!) but it is important here to plant in your mind the impact that
Kite-technology not only had on these animals but on the mindset of hunter-gatherers of the time, and I suspect the nefarious ‘organization’ that came up with the idea before rolling it out across the near east.
To put it in a grain-shell (sic), I suspect security of food tenure provided by Gazelles was to become seriously problematic competition in the minds of some, and so somewhere, somehow they implemented a long-term final solution.
![3..jpg 3..jpg](https://cassiopaea.org/forum/data/attachments/48/48080-39e61502f5038d48196283eba09e6760.jpg)
Kites were essentially structured and micro-managed killing fields into which at any one time immense numbers of gazelle could be driven before being ritually annihilated – yes, annihilated is the only word, and in such volume that it would have been impossible for the crazed killers and their dependents to consume the sheer volume of dead carcasses that resulted.
Archeologists are only now beginning to grasp (a) their very existence, being previously long lost in the desert sands and only visible from the air (b) the implications of the impact they had on PPN/Neolithic communities down through the ages (c) the industrial scale usage and geographic spread across the entire near-east of these killing fields, and perhaps most importantly (d) the date by which they were first in use.
The preference is for a timeline beginning in the PPN B and then reaching its height during the Neolithic but I think this is classic avoidance because in truth they admit they do not actually know a start date because of the paucity of carbon dating finds that enable accurate calibrating at the literally hundreds of sites now uncovered. The greatest clue to my mind lies in their known distribution:
Every black dot on the location map above is a Kite site. The intense usage in the Levant stretching right down into Saudi Arabia is obvious. However, the areas I have highlighted by white rings are to clear anomalies, separated from the main kite territory of the Levant by multiple near impenetrable mountain ranges. The likelihood of them randomly spreading north from here beyond the bounds of the Caspian Sea is remote. More plausibly, (especially given the fact that in the YD period the herds migrated further north), this map is a giveaway that this lethal and highly organized technology – for that is what it was –
traveled from north to south and originated way back in time in the Russian territories around the northern Caspian Sea and also in the Armenian Caucuses before transporting with certain new arrivals down towards Anatolia and the northern Levant.
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE…
Mapping Post-Glacial expansions: The Peopling of Southwest Asia (2017)
Daniel E. Platt, et al
Y-chromosome analysis has identified highest frequencies for J1 haplogroup to be most common in the Saudi Peninsula marking the Muslim expansion with J2 being common in the coastal Levant, and identified early on as a possible marker of the European expansion of the post-Neolithic expansion, while their origins have been identified roughly within Iran, Armenia, Georgia, and/or Eastern Turkey.
… Our Y chromosome and autosomal analysis identified genetic signatures of three likely centers of isolated evolution followed by population expansions. These modern centers correspond to archaeologically known LGP refugia in Southwest Asia. The first, identified by Obsidian sourcing as an expansion center in Georgia/eastern Turkey. Clear evidence of trade, and tool cultures mark the second refuge in the northern Levant… Archaeologically, the time period marking post glacial population expansions through Southwest Asia is associated with the early and middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, the increased reliance on domesticated plants and animals, increased evidence of trade and exchange along the earlier established obsidian trade routes, and coastal to inland trade of marine resources.
… Our study has identified the Caucasus refugium as the likely source for the J1 and J2 haplogroups that now dominate Southwest Asia, and previously appeared to mark the Neolithic Revolution’s expansion into Europe.
In June 2022 Semih Güneri, a retired professor from Caucasia and Central Asia Archaeology Research Center of Dokuz Eylül University, and his colleague, Professor Ekaterine Lipnina,
presented the findings of their long research to colleagues at the ‘Proto-Turks Bearing Culture to the World Workshop” held in Istanbul.
Calling it the
‘Siberia-Göbeklitepe hypothesis’, they presented evidence that by tracking the spread of sophisticated and highly distinctive
micro-blade technology, a clear connection could be made between ice age cultures in Siberia and the 12,000-year-old site of Göbekli Tepe, implying that the origins of the famous PPNA site could well have been influenced
by people migrating thousands of miles from the north-east.
Their suggestion is the migration first started in Siberia 30,000 years ago and slowly moved all over Asia, including westward along the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor as far as the Zagros Mountain region and from there they mixed with the Hunter-Gatherers of SE Anatolia.
“There seems to be a relationship between Siberian hunter-gatherers and native Zagros hunter-gatherers… The results of the genetic analyses of Iraq’s Zagros region confirm the traces of the Siberian/North Asian indigenous people, who arrived at Zagros via the Central Asian mountainous corridor and met with the Göbeklitepe culture via Northern Iraq…”
Prof. Semih Güneri
In their presentation, the two professors pointed to the evidence for three waves of such migration during the transition out of the ice age and going on into the Holocene,
including to Turkey/Anatolia in the first wave. They also pointed out that there are strong indications that there was
a technology and tool transfer from southern Russia to the Göbeklitepe region during the period surrounding the transition from Ice Age to Holocene.
Late Pleistocene human genome suggests a local origin for the first farmers of central Anatolia (2019)
Michal Feldman, et al., 2019
Anatolia was home to some of the earliest farming communities. It has been long debated whether a migration of farming groups introduced agriculture to central Anatolia. Here, we report the first genome-wide data from a 15,000-year-old Anatolian hunter-gatherer and from seven Anatolian and Levantine early farmers. We find high genetic continuity (~80–90%) between the hunter-gatherers and early farmers of Anatolia and detect two distinct incoming ancestries: an early Iranian/Caucasus related one and a later one linked to the ancient Levant. Finally, we observe a genetic link between southern Europe and the Near East predating 15,000 years ago. Our results suggest a limited role of human migration in the emergence of agriculture in central Anatolia.
The subject of DNA tracking throughout the region is mighty complex but it is clear from testing of PPN human remains at early sites around Göbekli Tepe, that whilst the first Anatolian farmers were 80-90% genetically indigenous,
10-20% of their DNA came from partially from a gene pool related to early Iranian Zargros sources and also from the Caucasus region, with both these tracing back in time to more northerly roots. In other words, people originating from somewhere far, far away did interbred with local Anatolians in significant enough numbers to introduce widespread DNA markers, albeit comparatively small, that had no real business being there.
So who could these remarkable travelers be and why did they come in such small but significant enough numbers to leave still a recognizable genetic, technological and likely cultural trace of their outlandish origins?
Let us begin with the Caucuses link.
SUSPECT NO.1: THE SWIDERIANS - HUNTERS FROM THE NORTH
“…perhaps there was some kind of connection or communication between the societies of Turkey and those around the Black Sea and the Crimea… there is a similarity between the style of game hunting in southeast Anatolia in the period of Göbekli Tepe’s construction and the reindeer hunters of the North.”
These remarkable comments made during a 2009 BBC documentary by original director and excavator of the site Klaus Schmidt have been since ignored by most archaeologists and historians and he never again elucidated further on them. However In the late Upper Paleolithic age, reindeer hunters who occupied the forests and plains of Northern Europe, often operating on the sandy terrains of loess left behind by the melting glaciers, started using different hunting strategies as
the reindeer herds abandoned their old territories and moved ever northward and north-eastward. Even with the onset of the Younger Dryas mini ice age, ca. 10,900 BC, the reindeer kept moving, even though the worsening weather conditions were forcing human populations to migrate ever southward.
As part of their change in strategy, the reindeer hunters adopted the use of a very specific type of weapon, usually made of flint and known as
the tanged point. These points have distinctive “shoulders,” or “tangs,” delicately chipped away from the base so that they could more easily be attached to an arrow shaft. Clearly,
the use of the bow and arrow gave these Paleolithic hunters the advantage not only during the chase but also over any human competitors.
In her book
Plato Prehistorian, Mary Settegast, recognized that during the Younger Dryas period major migrations were taking place all over Europe, and among all those on the move was
a specific group of reindeer hunters known as
the Swiderians. All evidence suggests that as they pushed further and further eastward and southward, they left behind a noticeable trail of finely carved tanged points, stretching all the way from the Carpathian Mountains of Central Europe right across to a northerly extension of the Black Sea,
in what is today Ukraine (or should I say Russia) and even on into Georgia right on the borders of the Armenian northern edge of Anatolia. She noted also that around this same time strikingly similar tanged points
started to appear at Epipaleolithic and proto-Neolithic sites in the Near East, something that is unlikely to be a simple coincidence.
Eastern and southerly migration of tanged/shouldered points belonging to the Swiderian culture, which emerged ca. 11,000 BC.
The standard explanation as to what exactly these Paleolithic hunters were up to journeying so far from their home territories is that they were simply forced by ecological changes to follow the changing migratory patterns of their prey. Yet as Settegast herself noted, many of their campsites show very little evidence of spoils of the hunt, so clearly something else was driving them on.
And let us not forget, the reindeer were moving ever north as these reindeer hunters moved ever south.
Supporting the idea that the Swiderians reached even beyond the Caucasus Mountains is, as noted by Mary Settegast, the fact that a great many tanged points strikingly similar to those manufactured in Europe have been found at Epipaleolithic and early Neolithic sites across the Near East. Indeed,
leaf-shaped tanged points that easily compare with those created as part of the Swiderian tradition have been found at Göbekli Tepe. There is also the important evidence that pressure flaking was being used in eastern Anatolia by the PPNB (ca. 8,700 BC-6,000 BC) and was present in numbers at the Neolithic proto-city of Çatal Höyük by 7,000 BC.
Anatomically speaking, the Swiderians have been described by the likes of Marija Gimbutas as being
unusually tall and at least some of them having rather unsettling cranial and facial features. In 1956 she detailed the discovery of a partial cranium, (uncovered minus its lower jaw), at Kebeliai, near Priekulė in Lithuania and dating to the end of the Palaeolithic age, when Swiderian settlements covered the area. She described it as being:
“..massive, dolichocephalic [that is, long headed], with strong proclivity of the forehead, prominent and massive brow ridges and a narrow forehead.”
In her opinion the strange skull “was sapiens, but
had Neanderthaloid elements, in other words,
[it] was a Neanderthal-sapiens hybrid.” Gimbutas also described a “closely related” cranium dating again to the end of the last glacial age, this one discovered on the Skhodnia River, northwest of Moscow, where Swiderian groups are known to have existed at the time.
Whatever the complex issues that undoubtedly exist concerning interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, the reality is Neanderthal markers do exist somehow in human DNA and as we all know, they are possibly - or even very likely -
the source of human emergent psychopathological traits. Well, here we have a group of suspect hunters heading south from the Russian/Ukrainian steppes with perhaps members of their elite (?) possessing physical features that to Gimbutas at least are highly suggestive of significant residual signs of previous Neanderthal-sapien crossbreeding; and these may be some of the very people who made their way down the Caucuses to Anatolia bringing with them a totally new mind-set about how to deal with the world post the Younger Dryas.
Among the recent finds (but still not widely known) at the lesser reported on site of Karahan Tepe, (a near neighbour of Göbekli Tepe), is this highly unsettling, large scale carving of a head in which we should note the elongated, long and narrow faced skull and the
highly prominent and massive brow ridges :
I will come back to the implications of this fearsome face in a future post as well as the clear similarity to the elongated head that the top of the famous T-pillar’s likely in part at least represents:
Central T Pillar, Enclosure D (Left) so called Kilisik Sculpture (Right)
It should also be noted that the Swiderians are also possibly inheritors in some way of the knowledge and technology of the
much earlier Solutreans who also mastered the use of surface pressure flaking to create highly unique willow-leaf-shaped projectile points and much larger, laurel-leaf-shaped lance heads, which share similarities to the Swiderians’ own leaflike points. The fact that a number of these unique blades have been found in groups within caches and are regularly
made of nonlocal, exotic materials has led to speculation that they were not used for any practical purpose but
instead served some ritual or symbolic function.
The other think to note about the Solutreans is that they are the only known culture of the Palaeolithic
to carve immaculate animal images into stone friezes in caves.
The above, found in the vallée de l'Echelle, in France, were first discovered in 1927 and dates to around 17,000 BC, which could make them within striking distance of the Magdalenian art of Lascaux. Yet whilst Magdalenian cave art is painted, these animal images are exquisitely carved into the sandstone rock faces of caves to a level of expertise we will not see realised again until some 7,000 years later at Göbekli Tepe. Whilst it is impossible to imagine such skills being transferred, seemingly unused in the intervening period, over such inordinate lengths of time, it does raise questions considering the close similarity of profile representation, sculpting technique and subject matter.
Of particular note is this freeze above, which shows the body of a bison (large bull) whose head is suggested by archaeologists to have been re-carved into
the face of a wild boar. The implicit relationship between
the bull and the boar may well come back to haunt us at Göbekli Tepe. As will this highly distinctive form below of
a semi-crouching ‘human’ whilst being threatened by a horned bison:
For anyone fascinated by these remarkable images,
I recommend a look at this page where multiple quality images are analysed.
In 1996, whilst proposing a single grouping for the various North European cultures that thrived in the Upper Paleolithic, Lithuanian archaeologist Rimutè Rimantienè did not in the end include the Swiderians yet he still admitted that “
the relations with the Solutrean are outstanding, though also indirect.” The reason he failed to include them was simple – the Swiderian culture did not enter the scene until the beginning of the Younger Dryas period, ca. 10,900 BC, 3,500 years after the Solutreans vanished from the pages of European history, to either make way for the Magdalenians or perhaps, as some have suggested, depart France for the North European Plains when the reindeer herds migrated northward at the end of the last ice age. It is of course from here that the Swiderian’s were to emerge at the height of the Younger Dryas.
Fascinatingly, others have also claimed they were expert mariners and have entertained the possibility that they took to the high seas, ending up in North America, having navigated the southern limits of the sea ice, re-emerging in time as
the doomed Clovis culture of the Younger Dryas comet impact event, which also produced laurel-leaf-shaped blades very similar to those manufactured in Western Europe. But that’s a whole different story.
SUSPECT NO.2: THE SIBERIAN CONNECTION
Paleolithic stone tool expert Bruce Bradley, Ph.D., of the University of Exeter, and his colleagues have proposed that the Solutreans’ highly sophisticated stone technology originated among a culture which thrived between ca. 30,000 BC and 19,000 BC and covered a region stretching from the cold forest steppes of the Black Sea as far north as Siberia. Known as the
Kostyonki-Streletskaya or
Kostyonki-Borshchevo, these advanced people produced stone tools and projectile points with close parallels to those manufactured by both the Solutreans in central and southwest Europe and the later Swiderians.
At a Kostyonki-Streletskaya site on the Klyazma River on the outskirts of the city of Vladimir, a hundred miles northeast of Moscow, three remarkable human burials were uncovered in 1956 dating to around 30,000 BC. Among many anomalies, one of the skulls,
with its prominent brow ridge and pronounced jaw, bore a striking resemblance to the Neanderthal-human Swiderian hybrid skulls found elsewhere in Russia and Lithuania and dating much later.
One of the twentieth century’s most notable prehistorians, V. Gordon Childe, hypothesised in his landmark book
The Prehistory of European Society that both
the Swiderians and Solutreans did indeed derive their characteristic toolmaking capabilities from the Kostenki-Streletskaya culture of northern and central Russia.
A cluster of 25 seemingly interconnected
sites with occupation for thousands of years have been discovered on the western banks of
the River Don.
- Stage 1 dates from 34,000 to 30,000 BC
- Stage 2 is 30,000 to 25,000 BC
- Stage 3 is 23,000 to 18,000 BC
Stage three is technically Gravettian but much of the archaeological assemblages show no Gravettian characteristics at all.
They constructed large scale, circular highly complex mammoth bone buildings that show no signs of having been domestic housing and are termed ‘special purpose’ buildings as with those at Göbekli Tepe. They also carved many so called 'Venus' statues, some of them
in limestone; this one
dating to 23,000 BC has remarkable overtones of what was to come later in Anatolia at Göbekli Tepe.
Note for now the position of the arms (clearly
crooked at the elbow though now lost) and resting on what appears to be a fully pregnant belly. Note the interesting circular like ‘chain’ device around this area and the oversized, prominent ‘belly button below. I have said previously that I am convinced these figures are
not meant to represent humans; whist using familiar human representational forms concerning that dreaded word ‘fertility’, they are rather cosmic (and in that sense asexual or even hermaphrodite in intention) and are not grounded in some narrow, gender derived terrestrial concept.
The artisanship of these people was remarkable; here again something or note, being a delicately carved headband:
What strikes me is the similarity in close-up to a very important
geometric detail on the infamous Pillar 43 (Vulture Stone) at Göbekli Tepe (version for comparison at the bottom, below).
One final telling Kostyonki example that again shouldn’t be there is the below image, taken from a Russian archaeological book from the 70s (hence the poor quality picture) which shows examples of Kostyonki miniature carved heads.
Now where have we seen this
distinctive Tau T-nose and eye ridge with big, mostly blank crescent lower jaw before…?
Previously we explored the Natufian version
(bottom left) – which I now suspect wasn’t actually Natufian in origin but came south with certain ‘instructors’ from further north – well you may not be surprised by now to learn that the later Anatolian PPN A sites are also laden with them
(three of many examples, right).
(to be continued below in next post)