Tepe or not Tepe ping.
The fact that most of the larger stones are simply a phalus bent over as a lintel pretty much indicates they weren't used as living quarters.
Now, over 12,000 years did somebody in the stone age stop by and cook dinner?
FUR SHUR!
Particularly if they came all that way to deliver a clan members ashes to the clan totem ~ they'd probably camp a few days then move on.
The archaeologist who thinks we can probably READ the stones makes more sense.
My attempt from last winter when I was trapped in front of this computer is as follows:
|
|
Animal |
Type |
Action |
|
1 |
Bustard |
Bird |
Largest Flying Bird |
|
2 |
Crane |
Bird |
Life ~ Start of |
|
3 |
Crow |
Bird |
Wise |
|
4 |
Eagle |
Bird |
Hunter – in sky |
|
5 |
Vulture |
Bird |
Life – End of |
|
6 |
Boar |
Game |
Horn |
|
7 |
Bull |
Game |
Horn ~ Strong |
|
8 |
Deer |
Game |
Horn |
|
9 |
Gazelle |
Game |
Horn ~ Fast |
|
10 |
Horse |
Game |
No Horn - strong |
|
11 |
Rabbit |
Game |
No Horn - weak |
|
12 |
Sheep |
Game |
No Horn |
|
13 |
Canine |
Predator |
No Horn |
|
14 |
Cat |
Predator |
Hunter ~ on land |
Göbekli Tepe ~ in the National Geo article someone bothered to report on how many different "kinds" of animals were shown in one way or the other on the 15,000 different carvings.
Think about it ~ that's a HUGE COLLECTION of stonework dwarfing every public exhibit on Earth.
This was put together by Paleolithic people.
No doubt it was as important to them as the Louvre, Hermitage, Smithsonian, etc. are to us.
So, I took the counts of animals and looked to see if there were patterns that would reflect more recent totem lists.
We have many societies before ours that had assigned totems, and virtually all of them used groups of 12 with subgroups of 3 and 4, 2 and 6.
Even Wales was so militarized in its multicentury effort to keep out the Saxons and others after the coming of the Dark Ages that they ended up with 12 primary clan/family surnames.
The Irish had less pressure until they arrived in Alba (now Scotland) and then involvement with the Vikings also settling there resulted in a similar sort of structuring of Scottish clans.
There were 12 Greek tribes (traditionally), and we all know about the 12 tribes of Israel, and also the 12 tribes of the descendants of Ishmael, and a couple of others.
What a clan does is minimize the destruction to society that occurs with the ever inevitable inter tribal warfare found in low tech agrarian societies of hunters and gathers.
When the battle is over it's not just the tribe's responsibility to bury the dead warriors (and others) it's also his totemic "clan brothers" who may well be found in the victorious tribe. Everybody gets to share in the cleanup. We do not, if we can avoid it, leave dead bodies around to feed the big cats.
Totems are animals with specific characteristics. You have the Eagle, sharp of eye, flying over everything, and on the ground his competitor ~ the (small) cat ~ it also hunts silently, by stealth, and at night. It hunts the same game as the Eagle ~ small rodents! That's the characteristic that makes Eagles and small cats respected!
BTW, I found both the cat and the eagle in the list of animals whose pictures are found in profusion at that temple site.
These folks, BTW, didn't have any BIG CATS ~ they probably still told stories about sabertoothed tigers and they sure didn't want one of those guys coming out of the stones. In fact, the people who built the first "sky boxes" for the vultures here may have been among those who exterminated the last big cats in that region (11,000 years ago).
I found the list had 4 kinds of horned mammals. I found the list had 4 kinds of non-horned mammals. Presumably, given that time frame, ALL of those mammals were looked upon as game ~ including horses and dogs ~ and most likely PARTICULARLY dogs since they don't have horns!
There were 4 additional kinds of birds ~ the LARGEST FLYING BIRD, the bird that brings life (crane/stork story), the bird that takes away the remains of death (buzzard, culture), and the wisest bird.
So, we have three groups of 4 different groupable totems. We have the Eagle and the Cat bracketing them as "special spirits" ~
That gives 14 totemic animals and that's sufficient for COUNTING, determining seniority within a tribe (assuming you can move through the totem cults to senior positions), and probably identifying relative age at death PLUS whether or not someone was honored, e.g. like a tribal chieftain or a totemic or clan elder or shaman.
You can see what i discovered in those counts. BTW, the guys doing the counting found two different kind of "deer". I didn't differentiate by species ~ but instead by "form" or "kind" ~ which is what I figure the ancients were into. They Fur Shur weren't writing science books. They were, instead, praying for food, and seeking the spirits of the totems to aid them in their struggle for survival.
Since they used a base 14 it matters that there are 7 game animals in the list, and 7 non-game animals. That enables you to add up to 14, or maybe MULTIPLY. Could be interesting to see more of the art work to see if there are arrays of animals that can be construed to mean NUMBERS or Counts, plus appellations giving you something like "Old 46" rather like the way so many of those ancient Mayan names translate out!
“the presence of decorative pillars or massive construction efforts”
Massive construction efforts are still employed by the very wealthy of our time-I would think that ostentation among the rich of earlier societies would have been much the same. The same with the decorative pillars and other such details-The Roman Empire puts us to shame with that sort of thing. Personally, I doubt that people have changed that much in their desire to flaunt wealth and influence in 10,000 years or more.
There’s plenty examples of dual use religious temples in history.
There’s also examples where temples were conquered and used for non religious purposes. When Turkey pushed the Greeks out of northern Cyprus, some christian churches were turned into things like horse stables.
Sounds like a palace.
He outlines growing archaeological evidence for daily activities at the site, such as flintknapping and food preparation. “The presence of this evidence suggests that the site was not, after all, devoid of residential occupation, but likely had quite a large population,” Banning said.
- - - - - -
Without reading the actual reports, permanent settlement, even of a large group would not preclude it being a religious site (or temple). Many temples had permanent residents (priests, caretakers, slaves, etc) and served as both houses and sites of worship, even pilgrimage sites. So, quite realistically, they could both be right.
Hey let’s face it, they just don’t know.