Do These Mysterious Stones Mark The Site Of The Garden Of Eden?

Daily Mail (U.K.) ^ | February 27, 2009

[Steelfish]

Do these mysterious stones mark the site of the Garden of Eden? By TOM COX

For the old Kurdish shepherd, it was just another burning hot day in the rolling plains of eastern Turkey. Following his flock over the arid hillsides, he passed the single mulberry tree, which the locals regarded as 'sacred'.

The bells on his sheep tinkled in the stillness. Then he spotted something. Crouching down, he brushed away the dust, and exposed a strange, large, oblong stone.

The man looked left and right: there were similar stone rectangles, peeping from the sands. Calling his dog to heel, the shepherd resolved to inform someone of his finds when he got back to the village. Maybe the stones were important.

They certainly were important. The solitary Kurdish man, on that summer's day in 1994, had made the greatest archaeological discovery in 50 years.

Others would say he'd made the greatest archaeological discovery ever: a site that has revolutionised the way we look at human history, the origin of religion - and perhaps even the truth behind the Garden of Eden.

[this_ol_patriot]

Do those animal reliefs look vaguely Mesoamerican, more primitive but similar?

[SirJohnBarleycorn]

Gobekli Tepe is, indeed, a 'temple in Eden', built by our leisured and fortunate ancestors - people who had time to cultivate art, architecture and complex ritual, before the traumas of agriculture ruined their lifestyle, and devastated their paradise.

It's a stunning and seductive idea. Yet it has a sinister epilogue. Because the loss of paradise seems to have had a strange and darkening effect on the human mind. A few years ago, archaeologists at nearby Cayonu unearthed a hoard of human skulls. They were found under an altar-like slab, stained with human blood.

Will the nonsense spawned by that idiot Rousseau EVER stop??

Man was never a "noble savage" living in harmony in a state of nature and at peace with his fellow man and environment, only to be "ruined" by society and civilization.

This idiocy was picked up by Marx who claimed that the development of human society had "alienated" man from his wonderful noble primitive self and we need communism to get back to the state of supposed wonderfulness. It's been the constant drumbeat of the Left ever since.

Hobbes and Locke got it right; Rousseau and Marx, not so much.

[TXnMA]

Ping to some interesting archaeology -- with or without the religious interpretation applied in the article.

Good (and interesting) photos at the link, too...

[Steelfish]

Well argued and absolutely correct.

[zot]

Ping to some interesting archeology, although the author’s pontificating is tiresome.

[TXnMA]

Meant to include you in the ping in #23, too...

[RJR_fan]

I think their societies were far more sophisticated than we believe.

There is evidence of prehistorical nuclear warfare.

[Big_Monkey]

"I'd say it's just as likely that the retreating glaciers changed the climate here to that of Saudi Arabia."

I'd say it was probably a little (or a lot) of both. It wouldn't take much in terms of weather pattern or rainfall changes coupled with complete deforestation to destroy the ecosystem.

I've seen it happen in huge areas of the Philippines, which is clearly a tropical setting with rabid vegetation growth. But, with no land management regulating the harvesting of natural resources, things like complete or deforestation occurred throughout the second half of last century. Now nothing, not even weeds grow in some places. Erosion of the topsoil accelerates leading to complete collapse of the ecosystem. It's quite something to see in person.

Now, if that happened in this area coupled with some mild weather pattern shifts, I could see how it could easily be catastrophic. I'm not a enviro-whacko, but I do believe we should take reasonable care of what God gave us.

[OneWingedShark]

>Now, if that happened in this area coupled with some mild weather pattern shifts, I could see how it could easily be catastrophic. I’m not a enviro-whacko, but I do believe we should take reasonable care of what God gave us.

Well, He did say that we’re to tame the Earth and subdue it... IE something like a Head Gardener for an estate back in “Ye Olde English Dayes”.

[hinckley buzzard]

Yep. Life in paradise was "nasty brutish and short."

[SirJohnBarleycorn]

The odd beak and head on the bird in that particular carving calls to mind the Dodo bird.

[dr_who]

Whatever the answer, the parallels with our own era are stark. As we contemplate a new age of ecological turbulence, maybe the silent, sombre, 12,000-year-old stones of Gobekli Tepe are trying to speak to us, to warn us, as they stare across the first Eden we destroyed.

Gaia worship barf alert. This isn't what I would call objective journalism.

[Bellflower]

There is evidence of prehistorical nuclear warfare.

Say, what?

[Eternal_Bear]

Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars - Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyberborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west

[DieHard the Hunter]

(BIG GRIN!!)

[ansel12]

There is evidence of prehistorical nuclear warfare. Chariot of the Gods stuff Erich von Däniken

[DieHard the Hunter]

“...Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet.”

[ansel12]

This is an odd thread, it is such a great article and the link down thread to the national geographic article about this find was very good also, unfortunately I get the impression that only a few people read either article.

[tanuki]

I agree, there is a distinctly paleo-american air to me. The animal reliefs remind me of Tiahuanaco. And that reptile they unearthed reminds me of reliefs from that giant lake in Nicaragua.

[DieHard the Hunter]

> This is an odd thread, it is such a great article and the link down thread to the national geographic article about this find was very good also, unfortunately I get the impression that only a few people read either article.

As articles go, I thought they were amazingly cool. It is seldom that archaeologists find artifacts such as these that tip on its head our idea of what Civilization was, and when and how it formed.

I have long thought that Civilization is older and more marvelous than we have yet conceived. Robert E Howard may have come closest with his “Conan” fictions...