Posted on 04/21/2008 3:24:52 PM PDT by blam
Turkish site a Neolithic 'supernova'
By Nicholas Birch
April 21, 2008
Archaeologist Klaus Schmidt was among the first to realize the significance of the Gobekli Tepe site, which is 7,000 years older than Stonehenge.
URFA, Turkey - As a child, Klaus Schmidt used to grub around in caves in his native Germany in the hope of finding prehistoric paintings. Thirty years later, as a member of the German Archaeological Institute, he found something infinitely more important: a temple complex almost twice as old as anything comparable.
"This place is a supernova," said Mr. Schmidt, standing under a lone tree on a windswept hilltop 35 miles north of the Syrian border.
"Within a minute of first seeing it, I knew I had two choices: go away and tell nobody, or spend the rest of my life working here."
Behind him are the first folds of the Anatolian Plateau. Ahead, the Mesopotamian plain, like a dust-colored sea, stretches south hundreds of miles to Baghdad and beyond. The stone circles of Gobekli Tepe, his workplace since 1994, are just in front, hidden under the brow of the hill.
Compared with Stonehenge, they are humble affairs. None of the circles that have been excavated, four out of an estimated 20, is more than 100 feet across. Two of the slender, T-shaped pillars tower at least three feet above their peers.
What makes them remarkable are the carved reliefs of boars, foxes, birds, snakes and scorpions that cover them, and their age. Dated at about 9500 B.C., these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge.
Nevermind wheels or writing, the people who erected them did not even have pottery or domesticated wheat. They lived in villages, but were hunters, not farmers.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
This was posted yesterday.
The forth and last links that you posted refer to the findings of the current article. If you know how to post a link on the article I referred you to, it has some great photos.
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