ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS - Astonishing Revelations at 'Oldest Temple on Earth' // Gobekli Tepe

[Music] gobekli tepe it's one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world the name itself conjuring up controversy and wonder in equal measure [Music] thousands upon thousands of years older than the likes of stonehenge or the pyramids of giza dating to as early as 10 000 bc this may well be one of the oldest religious complexes in the world built during a time when practically all humans still lived a hunter-gatherer existence for credible scholars it's been called the birthplace of civilization the very landscape where our hunter-gatherer forebears came together to settle down to an agricultural life thus beginning the long road to the world we know today for others it's been called a landing pad for aliens and even meeting place for ancient super civilizations [Music] whatever your persuasion if you're interested in the human story no doubt you've heard the name it's one of the most popular comments on youtube after all [Music] well now in 2020 an exciting new era for archaeology with a smorgasbord of new technologies available a team of scientists are reassessing the 12 000 year old stone structures here at this most ancient of temples this cutting-edge research using computer algorithms to identify construction patterns is providing fresh new insights into this incredible site just maybe identifying precisely how and when this place was built let's take a look in 1983 a local farmer in southeastern turkey found a mysterious stone jutting out of the dry anatolian earth animal symbols on its surface it was old he was sure of that but how old he couldn't tell taking it for inspection to the local museum it was assumed to be medieval in origin a relic of eastern roman rule in asia minor around a thousand years before [Music] in the 1960s a team of archaeologists had previously examined other stones in this area coming to the conclusion that this landscape must have been a byzantine cemetery because of the sheer numbers of broken slabs assuming them to be tombstones after all similar animal motifs are found in medieval eastern roman art for decades few thought anything else on the matter until 1993 when german archaeologist claus schmidt saw the stone for himself something just didn't add up and he decided to reinvestigate the site full-on wide scale investigations didn't begin until 2007 but by this time gobekli tepe meaning potbellied hill in the local language was already making headlines all over the world [Music] for carbon 14 dating carried out at the site dated it not to the middle ages but an astonishing 11 000 years before at the time the oldest pre-pottery neolithic site found anywhere to contain religious iconography though many more have been found since due to the sheer brevity of what was found here quebec tepe has been mired in controversy ever since its discovery challenging the widely held presumption that religion followed on from agriculture and urbanized living these in themselves being the catalyst for the rise of civilization and not the other way around the people living here weren't farmers not as we would recognize them anyway here they still hunted wild game and collected wild grasses they were on the road to settled agricultural life enjoying the benefits of animal husbandry but they weren't there yet though they were able to construct these impressive t-shaped pillars meaning monumental architecture pre-dated agriculture sadly klaus schmidt died in 2014 from a heart attack [Music] though of course investigations continue only a relatively small area of the site has yet been excavated but more is being looked at all the time [Music] decades have passed since the initial discovery of gobekli tepe and more is known now than ever before [Music] yet with more knowledge comes more questions though only around 10 percent of the site has been excavated so far we can say a few things with a certain degree of certainty like most sites of religious reverence all over the world this wasn't a singular site during a single space of time stone tools here have allowed the site to be dated to the end of the last ice age beginning from around 12 000 years ago yet this was a temple that was remodeled and changed over the span of generations for thousands upon thousands of years in fact subsequent groups altering and building atop the structures built by the people that came before [Music] before the near constant technological change of the present things moved slowly back then at a glacial pace the pillars and standing stones here often covered by strange animalistic symbols come in a vast amount of different shapes and sizes [Music] interestingly seeming to decrease in size and sometimes complexity over time so far no traces of permanent settlement have been found leading experts to suggest that people didn't live here all year round instead coming in for pilgrimages of sorts at certain times of the year this makes sense after all the site sits on the ridge of a mountain a considerable distance away from fresh water it's not a good site for a settlement maybe even situated in mutual ground between clans and groups living in nearby settlements dating to the same period which have been found some containing the t-shaped pillars such as a quebec tepe maybe it was a shared spiritual belief which brought these people together perhaps even linked to their food sources which were found here in abundance [Music] finally wild species of grasses and grains have been found both here and in surrounding villages along with wild animals gazelle or rock and goat no domesticated animals have been found here though a few that would eventually tread that path was it here that these wild beasts first entered into a symbiotic relationship with man a covenant leading to our world today we can't say for certain but it remains a real possibility that the temple here and perhaps others throughout the fertile crescent where we know agriculture and animal husbandry first stemmed were integral in how the first settled communities in this part of the world came into [Music] being now in 2020 researchers at tel aviv university have just finished the initial stages of a new exploration of the site using cutting-edge computational algorithms based on standard deviation mapping to produce a detailed analysis of the architecture and geometrical layout of the site specifically the three most prominent stone circles the largest of which being 30 meters in diameter these complex anthropomorphic limestone pillars thought by some to represent deities have long been considered highly unusual for a society thought to be mostly hunter-gatherer in lifestyle it had previously been assumed that these roughly circular ceremonial structures once adorned with human skulls had been built over time gradually built on and added to over generations however this new analysis published in the cambridge archaeological journal in may 2020 suggests an unusually precise positioning for the stone circles almost mathematical in its precision the central pillars of each of these circles actually form an equilateral triangle with sides measuring 63 feet long [Music] the rest of the circles don't make a triangle just the central pillars heavily suggesting that the oldest structures may have all been built at the same time the labour of hundreds of people perhaps working for a centralized authority it's even been suggested the beginnings of a hierarchical state rather than a spontaneous coming together of people this site may in part have been a top-down process carried out by specialists utilizing very advanced construction techniques for the time perhaps also having something to do with the transition from circular to rectangular houses which we know also happened during the early neolithic the existence of decapitated heads on display here perhaps revered ancestors or enemies defeated in battle further hints at a link between quebec tepe and the skull cult found at other early neolithic sites such as at jericho a large settlement often called the first city in history [Music] if you're interested in learning more you can watch my full-length documentary on jericho here and don't forget to subscribe [Music] though architectural planning during this period and its cultural ramifications have not been studied extensively it was generally previously thought that architectural planning methods such as geometry and floor planning came about much later than the time gobekli tepe was first built the most important and basic methods of architectural planning thoughts to have been devised in the levant as part of the natufian culture a singular archaeological culture that spanned much of the region during the period following gobekli tepe's construction with many other sites scattered across the landscape and no doubt many more lost down the millennia [Music] this new research suggests that the methods of architectural planning abstract design rules and organizational patterns were already in use during this formative period well over ten thousand five hundred years ago when hunter-gatherers first turned into food producing farmers this research may open up the way for fresh interpretations of this site and others the researchers plan to use the same method to investigate other archaeological sites throughout the levant [Music] as always investigations continue watch this space hello folks pete kelly here i'm the one man team behind this channel and history time in a different world i'd be gearing up right now to go and visit gobekli tepe to make a full-length documentary on the place unfortunately for obvious reasons this won't be happening for some time nor any other trips for that matter this doesn't mean less videos if anything it means more but obviously i won't be able to incorporate on-site footage i hope you're enjoying the videos i'm putting out anyway on here and on history time there's some really epic stuff on the way in other news me and my brother david who runs voices of the past are using the lockdown to start a brand new channel covering the entire history of our planet two episodes are out already and you can go and watch them right now and don't forget to subscribe you've been watching archaeology news don't forget to like subscribe share and let me know in the comments what you'd like to see covered in the future and i'll see you on the next one

Channel: Pete Kelly

Views: 521,672

Rating: 4.8040476 out of 5

Keywords: Gobekli tepe, oldest temple, religion, where civilization began, civilization, ancient aliens, super civilziations, graham hancock, natufians, natufian, jerich, jerucho, jericho

Id: gMuc0d_f9ug

Length: 16min 36sec (996 seconds)

Published: Thu May 28 2020