Göbekli Tepe - The First Temple On Earth? 10,000 BC // Ancient History Documentary

foreign gods and Mortals once walked the Earth so the old stories must surely once have told [Music] of the rituals festivals and sacrifices of those ancient days we can say little now for certain its people are gone deities cast into the void [Music] what truly happened there we were likely never know [Music] and yet since its rediscovery by The Wider world in the 1990s archaeologists anthropologists and historians have done their best to weave together a flimsy shell of a story to do justice to that low Rising mound in the plains outside of Eartha [Music] utilizing a vast array of data and techniques to mesh together a very basic idea of what the place was and who its Builders had been [Music] more outlandish commenters go further embellishing the flimsy archaeological data set with their own New Age religious leanings preconceived ideas [Music] turning concrete evidence of wild grasses wild grains and as yet still undomesticated prey animals into landing grounds for aliens or the biblical Garden of Eden wonderfully complex genuine hunter-gatherer ancestors into ancient super civilizations [Music] in reality still for the most part Gobekli tepe's Secrets remain hidden [Music] unlike the other most famous discoveries in archaeological history like Tutankhamun's tomb or the Royal burial grounds of UR here there is very little to go on little contemporary evidence to corroborate what happened to explain those 200 or so monoliths arrayed into 20 megalithic enclosures some standing well over five meters high their surfaces coated in bizarre even nightmarish creatures written accounts wouldn't exist for more than 5 000 years to come [Music] in recent years the discoveries of neighboring sites with enclosures similar in scale like karahan Tepe add to the already swelling ranks of a so-called Stone Hills complex in the foothills of the Southern Taurus Mountains sites like navali chori in Shinu [Music] the sheer fact that Gobekli Tepe is not in fact unique but one piece in a much larger picture makes it all the more enigmatic and captivating [Music] thus opening up seemingly endless new lines of inquiry [Music] with its Origins lying well over ten thousand years in the past perhaps it's antecedents even longer [Music] the sheer age of this incredibly Sophisticated Stone Age culture has been enough to solidify its place at the very Forefront of prehistoric archeology even making inroads to the world of popular culture [Music] it's one of the big ones one of the most significant archaeological discoveries and biggest excavations of all time on par with Jericho O'Rourke and the tomb of pakal laughs though found much sooner only in the 1990s obekli tepe's impact on the cultural Zeitgeist has already been as great as that of the Lasko cave art in the 1800s [Music] only time will tell what future discoveries will be made and in which ways the evidence and research will point and yet still Even after spending so much time and effort in excavation we are still for the most part left anselus adrift to ponder and contemplate the outrageously complicated carvings and temples left behind by those people who lived so impossibly long ago it will take many more decades centuries even until the sheer amount of evidence piles up high enough that the mysteries of those ancient days can truly be unlocked and retold [Music] as of 2021 less than five percent of the site has been excavated [Music] and yet utilizing the very latest archaeological data historical stories [Music] the mythological and anthropological theories this is the entire history of not just Gobekli Tepe the world it inhabited you're watching history time as always I'm your host Pete Kelly the one-man team behind the channel if you want to help me out as I continue to make these gargantuan monsters then don't forget to like And subscribe leave a comment letting me know what you think and sign up to my free newsletter where I travel to distant lands visiting the greatest archaeological sites Humanity has ever known please shortly we'll get back to one of those rare greatest of all time sites one of the most mysterious of all it's taken me well over a year to make and it's nearly three hours long [Music] first a quick word from our sponsor thanks to War Thunder for making this ridiculously time-consuming long-form project possible [Music] in the Millennia following gebekli Tepe armored Bronze Age Warriors dominated battlefields like this one found at dendra in Greece but the Medieval Era now mounted on Horseback similarly kitted out soldiers did the same it wasn't until the 1910s and 20s that real tanks would be constructed completely changing Warfare forevermore War Thunder is the most comprehensive vehicle combat game ever made with its incredible graphics and details in 4K resolution authentic sound effects and beautiful music you can immerse yourself in the atmosphere as you choose for more than 2 000 tanks planes helicopters and ships to engage in Dynamic combined arms PVP battles of course one aspect of the game that I like in particular is its historical accuracy and the chance to play as some of the very first clunky monstrosities ever to be built in the Years following World War One the collection of vehicles found in War Thunder spans over a hundred years of fascinating history in fact from the 1920s to today every vehicle being incredibly detailed and modeled down to their individual components offering a highly immersive combat experience use my link in the description below to play now for free on PC Xbox and PlayStation 5. or for you old school people out there you can even play on a previous generation console thanks again to War Thunder for sponsoring this video and now back to the ancient past when the final blocks of cement went into place on turkey's kaban Dam in 1968. millions of liters of water quickly shifted into a torrent [Music] inundating one of the richest archaeological landscapes in the world [Music] Irreplaceable settlements and monuments disappearing under the flood the first of many similar Investments by the Turkish government in order to feed and water the tens of millions of people living in the dry southeast of the country [Music] though widely condemned internationally largely by nations with plenty of drinking water themselves turkey's government was then far from a corrupt dictatorship as in many places in the Middle East [Music] as a result of the reforms of Ataturk some decades earlier a genuine home-grown desire to pursue archaeological investigation had been followed [Music] accompanying the Colossal construction projects to flood ancient river valleys came a number of cutting-edge digs [Music] instigated both by Turkish teams now catching up with the West in terms of sophistication and an invasion of well-funded researchers from all over the world invited in to help with this unique opportunity to rescue in entire Region's ancient past foreign it wasn't long before astounding discoveries began to be made four years earlier in 1964 an American team working at the Neolithic site of chionu had already pushed the clock back in the region by thousands of years under the supervision of Robert Braidwood the settlement had been found to date to well over 10 000 years ago Braidwood would continue to work at Cherno for another 14 seasons but it was at navali chori where headlines around the world would truly be made [Music] hidden in a small side Valley of the Euphrates in a region already earmarked for submersion under another Lake that was planned to be formed navali chori translating rather ominously as the Valley of the plague was initially investigated in 1979 first thought to be early Bronze Age in origin it turned out to be so much older like Cherno navali chori was well over 10 000 years old when excavations began at the early Neolithic site in 1983 it wasn't long before an unusually complex series of massive freestanding Stone buildings began to be Unearthed initially known as the Roman burial from 1987 onwards the digs brought four things never before seen by modern ice a Terrazzo flawed building or enclosure began to be Unearthed elaborately constructed with layers of burned lime and then as they dug ever downwards one of the pillars turned out to be an anthropomorphic being from an even earlier time [Music] unfortunately its head was missing the archaeologists were simply astonished as the place disappeared under the waters of the Ataturk dam in the winter of early 1992. left to ponder the ancestors gods or demons that had once called the place home at around the same time one of the German archaeologists working at navali chori [Music] would often make trips to the museum in sanlierfa his name was Klaus Schmidt [Music] and we will be hearing much more from him soon [Music] with a population of well over a million one of the great cities in world history erfa was given its honorific title of Stanley meaning honored at the dawn of the 20th century after stalwart's defenses against the Russians in the turmoil of that age but long before that name Odessa from this medieval Powerhouse foreign Crusader Lords had carved out a kingdom in the similarly chaotic 12th century the city's fall had been the main catalyst for the Second Crusade [Music] the name itself was brought by Alexander the Great during his incessant March to the ends of the Earth in the 4th Century BC given by his soldiers to remind them of the Odessa in their homeland of Macedon but even in those days the place was already old [Music] foreign [Music] situated around a number of caustic Springs Rich irrigated Farmland stretches out in all directions [Music] just as it has for millennia the great rain providing chain of the Taurus Mountains and the Anatolian Plateau Beyond rising to the north at this gateway to the rolling plains of Mesopotamia myths and legends associated with the place a legion enough for entire libraries of Scholars [Music] though most have been lost down the Millennia more famed than the supposed association with the prophet Abraham patriarch of the three religions of the book said to have venerated the holy Springs here [Music] foreign just how long people had lived around those pools at the center of town the time no one could say but one thing it always abundantly clear has lived many lives on one fateful visit to the museum in 1994 as usual Klaus Schmidt perused the storerooms of the influential Institution [Music] himself for a Time among the Myriad Byzantine and Greco-Roman altars [Music] though it seemed highly Ordinary Day everything in his life was about to change now armed with the newly gained knowledge of navali chori Klaus Schmidt saw something in the urfa museum that shouldn't have been there two naturalistic statues Cotillion in form [Music] erroneously categorized as Byzantine Schmidt immediately knew better recognizing similarities to the vastly more ancient sites he'd been working on [Music] but how had they got to the museum and where had they come from [Music] thankfully someone at the Museum knew exactly and just a few hours later Schmidt along with two colleagues were in a taxi heading along dirt roads to the Hill Country Northeast of the city [Music] to an obscure plot of land on a desolate Rock known pot belly Hill [Music] and as Schmidt would soon find out its Turkish name Gobekli Tepe was already known to archeology [Music] seven or eight years earlier local landowner Ibrahim yieldis and his son Mahmoud had been clearing scrubland up on the hill overlooking their property when one of their Spades hit something solid strange statues were then pulled up out of the ground but there was a problem in the confused days that followed as one of the statues clearly had a large penis showing the two men kept them hidden as a steady stream of villagers came by to see the discovery not wanting to be perceived as idolatrous and bring shame upon their family eventually the local Imam came to see the finds foreign chastising the men recognizing the potential significance of the finds he encouraged the two farmers to take them to the Eartha Museum [Music] Heading by horse cart along the old road to the West once the two men arrived the museum manager politely informed them the pieces were regrettably not very old nor particularly significant [Music] demoralized thinking the journey had been for nothing in order to not have to pay for another cart ride home [Laughter] they left the pieces in the museum Garden [Music] blame should be placed on the museum staff however nor the farmers for at the time nothing of the sort had ever been found before [Music] and this wasn't the first time the significance of Gobekli Tepe had been missed close to 30 years earlier in the 1960s during Robert braidwood's initial work at chiono another American archaeologist had scoured the region in search of evidence for similar sites [Music] and though his ensuing report dating from 1963 until 1972 ultimately missed the true significance of the place Peter Benedict had spent quite some time at Gobekli Tepe amidst a vast carpet of thousands of Flintstones gleaming under the scorching Sun it found broken pottery pieces Flint blades and stone artifacts many of which had been piled up by Farmers over the span of decades if not centuries and yet Gobekli Tepe was just one tell amongst thousands thank you curiously in the shadow of a great mulberry tree rising from the crest of the Hill Benedict wrote of locating a cemetery site one which has never been found Islamic burial grounds are of course taboo for archaeologists which could be the cause of him writing the place off for further investigation it simply didn't cross Benedict's wildest imagination that practically the entire Hill could be a great man-made tell dating from the pre-pottery Neolithic built up from the refuse of thousands of years of occupation Schmidt arrived in 1994. it wasn't long before he made that exact conclusion [Music] far from a cemetery site the half-buried stones on the top of the hill in the process of being gradually dug out by local Farm Workers were the very same style of t-shaped pillars previously found at navali chori but here they were everywhere he looked [Music] with just a little trial digging artifacts too could be pulled out easily from the ground just like the ones from the Eartha Museum without which the sight might not have been found please when Turkish archaeologist Murat akman arrived at the hill whose previous digging experience included both chionu and at navali chori under Schmidt's Mentor Harold haltman Schmidt didn't have to say anything at all with little more than a look both men knew intuitively everything in their field was about to change [Music] Southeastern turkey could be a dangerous place at that time shaken by Fierce fighting with Kurdish separatist groups and when the local villagers saw a group of strangers wandering around their fields that day they turned up armed and ready to defend themselves eventually through the Diplomatic skills of a Kurdish Taxi Driver the situation became disarmed and the AK-47 wielding Village Guardians backed down on that day Klaus Schmidt realized For Better or For Worse his previous research plans had become utterly irrelevant he had no choice but to dedicate the rest of his life to the place just one year later a massive team arrived and one of the great digs in world history began the farmers already inadvertently in the process of Excavating were paid compensation for their land and even though the damage wrought by spade and plow over the decades and centuries was great sheer scale and preservation of the site was astounding to behold [Music] the Dig was slow and methodical utilizing the very latest in cutting-edge scientific techniques but almost immediately a number of realizations were made not just one area but the entire Hill was coated in megalithic architecture all sides worked carefully by hand not only that but broken pieces were everywhere too many now housed in the so-called garden of stones on one side of the Hill the earliest semi-subterranean enclosures of navali chori meticulously documented in the 1980s did indeed have similar features to those founded Gobekli Tepe they dated from the same time when carbon dated twelve thousand years ago not long after the end of the last ice age [Music] but these were much bigger a couple of Seasons later and Gobekli Tepe was the most famous archaeological site in the world stretching for some 25 acres at least 20 stone circles were Unearthed each containing pillars as much as nine feet tall coated in completely unprecedented elaborate carvings [Music] predating Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt by some 7 000 years the evidence clearly showed the makers of this extraordinary set of monuments to be a people without the technology to create pottery and even more astonishingly just like the earliest levels of navali chori contemporary with it entirely devoid of Agriculture only the remains of wild animals and wild plants being found within eyesight of Eartha somehow having avoided Discovery for all those millennia had once been a place of immense significance [Music] and as the seasons went on and the evidence continued to mount up Klaus Schmidt began to form his opinions of the place as a spiritual center for an affluent nomadic people in a changing World beginning to settle down and farm but here not yet [Music] clearly possessing a complex and well-developed culture and mythology reminiscent of our Paleolithic ancestors this was a sanctuary of profound importance on the border between hunter-gatherers and our settled world to come now some 20 years later Diggs continue and the site which will always get funding only becomes more and more interesting geophysical surveys continue to show vast numbers of other structures still buried under the Earth only five percent of the site having been excavated [Music] today gebekli Tepe remains one of the key sites for understanding the transition from Hunters to farming [Music] and the birth of civilization as we know it [Music] foreign can clearly be seen on the western Horizon its pot bellied silhouette is the highest point on the Windswept earther plain [Music] on first glance particularly in the height of Summer it's it deems an unforgiving place trapped in the Gaze of the boiling Sun without any obvious source of water and yet the probable remains of a Roman Watchtower stand on the hillside clear evidence of ancient quarrying all around [Music] on closer inspection at more than half a meter in diameter it's possible that the large stone rings all over the site could have served as cisterns for Rainwater and from the top of the hill you can see Springs dotted around such as those at nearby balik and perhaps more existed in antiquity long since having dried away what is obvious from walking the Ridgeline on the pot bellied Hill is that it very much possesses a commanding view of a landscape all around the Taurus Mountains to the north and the plains of haran to the South [Music] when arriving from the south in particular the next city of Mardin another vaunted settlement famous from Crusader times can clearly be picked out from a distance of some 20 kilometers or more with the benefit of hindsight it is difficult to understand how such a place was missed the landscape itself seeming to hint at a certain level of significance once you know where you're looking and when the buildings finally began to be stabilized and excavated in the mid-1990s sunken Chambers dug deep into the hillside opening up for the first time in well over 10 000 years the place only became more and more unusual [Music] no obvious fireplaces were found no ovens no trace of domestic life of any sort wrote Klaus Schmidt in an early report concluding the structures to not only be unroofed But ultimately unsuitable for human habitation in stark contrast to navali chori which in its later phases at least was settled by very early sedentary Farmers living in permanent houses with no evidence of settled agriculture whatsoever seemed to be purely ceremonial in character [Music] all of the excavated buildings from the second and third levels at gebekli Tepe had been houses but of the Divine at least in the lower levels built not by early Neolithic farmers but by hunter-gatherers still living from the foraged Bounty of the Earth [Music] just maybe like Greek Delphi or Cusco in Peru sacred navals of the Earth where pilgrims would travel from afar for sporadic Festival activities including the raising of vast monuments to ancient gods ancestors or demons but not living at the site all year round could have been a cultic site [Music] a vast collection of animal remains have been uncovered at Gobekli Tepe including cattle pigs goats and large numbers of gazelle but after intense study by some of the leading experts in the world all of the animals were found to have been Wild and not domesticated variants which have different bone structures same as the plant remains wild almond pistachio and Grains being found in abundance wild variants of which still grow in the area today [Music] the idea that made its way into the popular Zeitgeist in the late 90s posited in part due to the glossed sickle blades and early forms of wild wheat found at the site was the suggestion of Gobekli Tepe having been one of the actual locations where the process of neolithicization began in other words where hunter-gatherers first began experimenting with farming after all when agriculture did begin to take hold analysis of Ancient Grains does seem to place one of its origin points on the earth a plane one early idea suggests the controlled use of cereals and other food stuff to have resulted from over exploitation of local resources as a result of increasingly large groups of people congregating over an extended period of time in his 2004 Masterpiece after the ice Stephen Mithun goes further Conjuring up images of acolytes ritualistically handing seeds back and forth at some long-lost ancient ceremonies before moving on to other locals to spread some foundational message or story foreign we know from elsewhere in the world that stone circles and megaliths are often erected at times of great turmoil and change by 2014 Klaus Schmidt had published a number of Articles and a detailed book on the initial finds at gebekli Tepe and another was on the way still only three or four percent of the site having been excavated though already making it one of the top archaeological destinations in the world making its way into all sorts of pseudo-archaeological theories in the process for 20 years ever modest and patient Klaus Schmidt had been a willing servant to the site devoting all of his energy to speaking tours and tourism the fighting misinformation and spreading awareness of archeology to the General Public [Music] always making himself available even when publicly attacked by Fringe theorists and dogmatic aging archaeologists alike finally by 2014 it all came to an end one Sunday afternoon in a swimming pool back in his native Germany Klaus Schmidt's heart gave out by the time of his death in 2014 Klaus Schmidt had already cemented his place in the annals of archeology his dig will go down as one of the most famous in all of history [Music] completely altering our understanding of the origins of civilization as we know it [Music] like Troy Olympia and the great Mayan ruins of Copan Diggs will likely go on for another Century or more the place will never struggle to get funding [Music] most amazing of all by that time and in the years since yet more similar sites have been Unearthed to perhaps most famously at karahan Tepe but a whole host of others being dug too partly by an entire new generation of eager Turkish archaeologists inspired by the likes of Klaus Schmidt the results are astonishing far from an isolated phenomenon Gobekli Tepe was part of an entire culture similarly built by hunter-gatherers many of whom look at chienu and navali chori turned ultimately to incipient agriculture by the end of the lifespans of their settlements [Music] when compared to the common model of previously discovered early farming communities in the near East generally located further along the levantine shore to the south at places like Jericho though Beckley Tepe and its sister sites offers a very different point of view here rather than domestic dwellings the utmost effort seems to have been placed in creating monuments of a non-utilitarian nature vast amounts of time and energy going into creating more than 200 t-shaped pillars the largest of which stand three or four times taller than the height of a person intricately arrayed into at least 20 stone circles coated in carvings stretching for some 25 acres the place was clearly of the utmost importance to all who took part only to be intentionally filled around 8000 BC consigned to Oblivion at the end of its life even more Paradigm breaking was the fact that it was the earliest levels that yielded some of the largest and most impressive pillars and animal carvings in complete Defiance of conventional logic the monoliths seemed to get smaller and more modest over time [Music] far from a hypothesized beginning of all things Berkeley Tepe seems curiously like an end hinting of a great mythological tradition stretching far back into the perennial Mists of the Ice Age it's even possible that long-lost wooden circles preceded it similarly once wanted monuments that rotted away to Oblivion so many thousands of years in the past the Claus Schmidt ever living in Hope of finding a foundational Cemetery site under one of the enclosures and partly in light of arms and hands having been found adorning some of the pillars they perhaps having once represented individuals foreign the site may have been a monument to revered ancestors clearly whatever its purpose this was a place built with great skill and care the seven meter long threaded pillar still lying in its quarry on the Northern Plateau tells us that much with other Quarry sites found around the hill though it wasn't only Construction Technologies that were in use here but logistical support networks just as well developed as the mythology and ritual lives of this most ancient of prehistoric societies far from long-standing construction projects put together over lengthy periods of time the archeology suggests each enclosure having been raised in a singular weeks or months-long event without animal power nor metal tools Schmidt hypothesized that around 500 people would be required as labor further speculating on the existence of some kind of a Priestly class to plan organize and contextualize the work [Music] perhaps either intentionally or inadvertently United in a singular purpose it had the effect of binding the group together a form of communal worship operating as the social glue Schmidt's death an increasingly wide range of alternate hypotheses have been discussed too far away in the midst of the distant Pacific Ocean experiments with the megaliths of Easter Island have shown that the moai there could in fact have been crafted and erected by significantly smaller groups of people than Schmidt's hundreds in one experiment just 12 men were able to raise a 20-ton statue in just under three weeks [Music] it is plausible though by no means definitive that Schmidt overstated the amount of Labor needed at quebecue Tepe [Music] just a few dozen individuals potentially have inquiried and erected the monoliths there [Music] given the sunken nature of the enclosures and the particularly impressive flaws within it is also possible that the megaliths did indeed once support roofs an artificial cave rather than Temple to the star-studded sky [Music] like at navali chori and Shinu the flooring found in the enclosures at Gobekli Tepe was made in a style known as terrazzo the earliest such examples found anywhere in the world laboriously created by layering burned lime and Clay over and over again to create a smooth luxurious surface at navali chori and chianu however only one example has been found at Gobekli Tepe they appear over and over again in one case four terrazzo floors having been built directly on top of one another Down The Long Generations for all the work of an army of scientists and Scholars it of course remains impossible to fully reconstruct the interactions of that long gone culture today of how the people at Gobekli interacted with Cherno navali chori karahan and the others whether they borrowed elements from each other into their own way of life whether they already shared the same culture and stories however the same themes do crop up again and again most obviously in the Myriad carvings and baz reliefs that March crawl and fly over every visible surface almost all of the depictions are of animals appearing so fully formed and so near unfathomably old to be difficult to comprehend it is these exceptionally artistic carvings that give us the best chance of bringing back from Extinction just a little of that clearly well-developed ancient culture giving us some insights into just why this place came into being some inkling into the long road to our world which may have been forged in the process in 1993 just before the discoveries at gebeckley Tepe construction workers digging around the balakugal area of the Eartha City Center came across something they weren't expecting [Music] a stride the ancient deep water Springs known today as the pools of Abraham blank lifeless eyes stared back from the foundation Rubble [Music] prominently displayed today in The Cutting Edge new museum at the Heart of the City the urfa man stands at 1.8 meters tall [Music] around 11 000 years old it is the oldest life-sized naturalistic sculpture of a human ever discovered in the world and though very heavily damaged by construction work down the long Millennia since its creation when briefly investigated in 1997 before construction work was finished the Earth around the statue turned out to be a pre-pottery Neolithic settlement with similarities to quebecley Tepe concrete evidence of the deep Antiquity of the city [Music] and yet the sculptures at Gobekli Tepe are quite different from even the pre-pottery Neolithic world at the very beginning of agriculture [Music] theirs was a symbolic landscape populated almost entirely by the wild thank you on all of the excavated enclosures particularly on a b c d e and f powerful animal forms are displayed often depicted with prominent penises for some reason unlike in early near contemporary farming societies the female form is almost never depicted no clay so-called Earth Mother figurines are to be found [Music] here in a quite different culture to that of the South at places like Jericho the Ferocious world of the hunters took precedent [Music] in enclosure C where three concentric rings of walls were successively built up one after the other over the years gradually receding the size of the interior feral pigs dominate [Music] in this so-called House of the boars wild pigs bear their teeth menacingly another lies on its back deceased perhaps almost all of the animals are male [Music] several depictions of human skulls are found too ranging from the small to Larger than Life some also displaying prominent and erect penises unexplained holes stepping stones and small cups are found too with suggestions being made of stands for small fires Delight the enclosure during the night interpretations of the enclosure range from the cultic house of a clan utilizing the boar as a heraldic totem to a nightmarish depiction of beasts guarding the entrance to the underworld [Music] [Applause] [Music] enclosure d which Klaus Schmidt fondly referred to as the Stone Age Zoo is a much more varied affair veritable Smorgasbord of fauna on display [Music] like enclosure C Fox can be seen darting around the other creatures oh this one has snakes coming out where his penis should be [Music] long scene is particularly wise animals in later Mesopotamian myth and Beyond and with links to potentially even earlier shamanic beliefs from all over the world suggestions are often made of Illusions to shape-shifting rituals and trances with the fox representing the figure of the shaman [Music] elsewhere gazelle Gallop across the stones judging by their frequency on the pillars in many of the enclosures and in the skeletal remains they seem to be of particular importance [Music] vultures are seen too creatures long associated with the realm of the Dead but other birds proliferate too cranes a type of migratory Waterbird are common perhaps suggesting some appreciation for the particularly striking dance periodically undertaken by these animals [Music] among the more frequent motifs depicted at Gobekli Tepe is the snake cultures all over the world often associated with the underworld [Music] the late 1980s one of the most striking finds made at navali chori was the so-called snake Bearer [Music] a larger than life statue with a poisonous Viper bursting forth from the back of his bald head though the face had unfortunately been broken off long ago it's nearby cortic Tepe many such Serpentine images are found too scratched on Stone vessels as well as scorpions another animal associated with the realm of the Dead found also at Gobekli Tepe similarly on the middle Euphrates at the important site of jerf el akmar pictograms are also seen they are also found even as far away as tell caramel to the south in Mesopotamia proper where Mighty prehistoric Towers like those of Jericho are found too foreign s between Gobekli Tepe and the plains to the South seem to have been a Borderland of converging cultures and ideas a Melting Pot of different yet not isolated cultural trajectories and ideas the more we learn about the world around gebekli Tepe filling in the vacuum that existed in the early 90s the more incredible the tale becomes however tempting it may be to speak of the serpent tempting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden any such allusions to far later stories May well be entirely illusory quite simply though many would beg to differ with elaborate intellectual journeys of shamanic rituals and totemic creatures for the most part the images at Gobekli Tepe have lost their meaning [Music] the intricate often crowded Gatherings of creatures be they Guardians culture heroes or symbolic representations to ensure hunting success May well also be Illustrated storytelling aids for fables once as famous as those we all know today long before Adam and Eve who's to say that to the ancestors they wouldn't have made total sense no explanation needed like the Buddha Jesus or McDonald's today visitors to the site still tie strips of cloth to a mulberry wishing tree perhaps a remainder of a custom from long ago when visitors arrived to pay their respects and beseech the Divine for terrestrial favor though we can't say for certain what the purpose of the stone carvings was they remain powerful representations of a clearly elaborate mythology the most astonishing example in fact of a spectacularly profound creative explosion that took place here at the headwaters of the balik valley twelve thousand years ago Schmidt one sculptured High Relief carving in particular totally outclassed the rest [Music] the Masterpiece of a stone age Michelangelo [Music] and just like the Earth for man there is freestanding sculpture too though much remains in a very poor state of preservation [Music] one colossal Stone head May well have originally been part of a totem pole-like composite found also at navali Jory and karahan Tepe but of course most famously in the Pacific Northwest of the United States [Music] but out there on the remote Pacific Edge such totemic Creations lined the thresholds of domestic homes as much as houses of the Gods since Klaus Schmidt's death in 2014 another academic idea that has gained in prominence is the suggestion that the enclosures at Gobekli Tepe may not only have been roofed after all but could in fact have acted as sleeping quarters as much as temples whilst completely true that the structures at gebeckley Tepe look nothing like previously documented houses from the pre-pottery Neolithic it could be that they are simply a previously unknown example with no precedent discovered anywhere before [Music] pre-partery Neolithic buildings were often built with the apparent intention for them to act as focal points for rituals feasts initiation ceremonies and the deaths and burials of members of the community it's not impossible to suggest that they could have acted as houses in other times too or maybe at all times Iroquois longhouses or the Mead Halls of an early medieval Chief [Music] but did the people of Gobekli Tepe actually live there permanently in recent years Klaus Schmidt's assertions of no domestic activity at all being carried out at the site have been challenged after all there are significant amounts of tools related to domestic activity present at the site as well as ostentatious animal remains as for drinking water Rock Cut cisterns and pools are found all over the hill and in the more humid Boreal period of some 12 000 years ago the water table May well have been considerably higher [Music] with the possibility of other water sources located nearby all in all it's not completely outlandish to suggest that a small permanent staff could have lived on the site all year round swelling to a much larger population at certain times of the year for festival activities [Music] perhaps including the raising of monoliths in ancient Egypt for example the very act itself being sacred [Music] but what of those people who lived and worked at Gobekli Tepe human skeletal evidence remains extremely rare just a few hundred scraps of Bones having been recovered two-thirds of which are skull fragments few of them show evidence of decapitation and deflashing ominously three have holes drilled into them perhaps to be hung up or mounted on a pole [Music] it's a tiny potentially nightmarish window into those ancient days [Music] though equally the fines May well represent the venerated remains of dearly loved ancestors [Music] perhaps relating to the so-called Cult of the skull which continued on in the Levant for thousands of years and even predates gebekli Tepe at natufian sites to the South [Music] however equally probable evidence at nearby chianu cannot be overlooked there on a blood encrusted altar ritualistic human sacrifices May well have been carried out [Music] perhaps shedding light on a darker side of the Gobekli Tepe phenomenon though no direct irrefutable evidence has yet come to light and the Chia new finds are ever open to revised interpretation by around 8200 BC whether a community of complex hunter-gatherers had indeed lived at Gobekli Tepe permanently or not life at the site came to an end foreign reminiscent of the so-called house-closing rituals of later Neolithic sites like chateau hoyuk and admire cities alike the very last Stone Circle made up of human-shaped pillars much smaller than its predecessors was just like the previous circles had been the intentionally buried under up to three meters of Earth [Music] though it's possible people continued to come to the place in the Years After very little could now be seen above ground it's likely that symbolically the place was dead [Music] many conclusions have been drawn as to the end of Gobekli Tepe ranging from violent conflict drought starvation and zoonotic disease to new conditions of sedentism making the old ritual places of the hunters irrelevant the reality Reigns a total mystery but in examining the context of the birth of the Neolithic and how gebekli Tepe came into being in the first place we can uncover yet more clues [Music] [Music] as the Colossal ice sheets that had held Europe enthrall for tens of thousands of years finally began their long retreat back to the frigid Arctic wastes by around 12 000 BC the foothills of the Southern Taurus Mountains were Awash with green [Music] Lush river valleys ran tracks past verdant prairies ever expanding forests of pistachio and Oak spreading along the open Frontier to previously Barren plateaus and patches of scrub-studded desert [Music] and into this new Eden came vast herds of gazelle along with wild boar making their homes in the Woodland all manner of goat or rock and bird wandering the hills and riversides it was a landscape teeming with life and for the previously isolated communities of late Paleolithic humans often restricted to sheltered refuges in the wake of harsh climatic conditions must have seemed Paradise [Music] climate models built up from prehistoric ice cores over the last 80 years or so suggest a significant increase in both rainfall and temperature following the last glacial maximum of around 13 000 BC thus Paving the way for the emergence of a new way of life those still wide roaming people were beginning to settle down into territories Landscapes they knew extremely well more so than ever before Landscapes of dangerous carnivores and poisonous reptiles of Swift running game waterfowl and furry scavengers this was the world inhabited by the Builders of Gobekli Tepe [Music] to the west and North the snow-capped peaks of the Taurus range Loom to the South the haran plain stretches all the way to what is now Syria and Iraq Beyond [Music] to the Northeast the great mountain of karaka dog sprawls always prominent extinct volcano from where some of the earliest evidence of cultivated Ein corn wheat has been found Perhaps it is no coincidence that in a great Arc around gebeckley Tepe some of the most important early Neolithic sites found anywhere have been discovered at tell caramel Jeff El akmar and chianu to mention a few evidence speaks of a world on the verge of agriculture [Music] it's evidence that the great early 20th century prehistorian V Gordon child could dreamed of when he first coined the term Neolithic Revolution in the 1930s and yet far from being a simple picture the story only becomes more and more complex [Music] 1800 BC a relatively brief yet still centuries long return to cold dry conditions of the last pleistocene was ushered in potentially lasting for a thousand years since its initial Discovery well over a century ago the younger dryas period has loomed large in accounts of the origins of agriculture [Music] with the suspicion that many newly swelled communities would have had to change their Lifestyles yet again congregating around water supplies and possibly intensifying their food production strategies According to some theorists beginning to experiment with sewing and tending crops and cereals and eventually to trap and keep animals in recent years the picture has changed yet again with the recognition that early theorists like child succeeded in explaining the how but not the why or perhaps most importantly the when [Music] just in the last decade vast amounts of new empirical data has continued to stack up creating an increasingly fine-tuned account of the transition from foraging to farming [Music] the evidence overwhelmingly suggesting not one origin but many places and many times some ultimately unsuccessful attempts taking place long before Gobekli Tepe [Music] rather than a revolution per se eliciting the idea of some kind of an overnight transformation the initial shift from hunter-gathering to farming took place at its very quickest over multiple Generations with Myriad experiments tipping points failures and even regressions along the way [Music] one particularly early example of attempted plant domestication was found on the shores of the Sea of Galilee [Music] at Ohio 2 the remarkable remains of a Paleolithic settlement yielded an impressive array of seed grasses and legumes along with the tools needed to thresh and cultivate them you are thus by the time the first monoliths were erected in the southern foothills of the Taurus Mountains humans had already been experimenting with farming for over 10 000 years [Music] the evidence from this one very small community 's to detract from the hypothesis of population pressure being the primary driver of sedentism and agriculture animal husbandry was different as we have seen no domesticated animals at all have been found at gebekli Tepe and very few before that time anywhere else in the world the process of domestication which actually changes the physiology of the animal in question is only even possible with a very small number of animals and even then the shock and Trauma of captivity very often creates infertile or deformed offspring if procreation is even possible at all in short animal domestication requires a great deal of effort with very little return in the short term [Music] there are some indications that gobekli's neighboring site of chionu was somewhat successful with the domestication of wild boar with remains having multiple indicators of Domesticity by around eight or nine thousand BC by which time the place had been a permanent settlement for quite some time the evidence for farming being the main cause of sedentism keeps getting smaller and smaller even at chatal hoyuk a vast Neolithic protocity of at least five thousand people that developed much later than Gobekli Tepe There is almost no evidence of domesticated animals hunting still playing a huge role in the ritual and domestic life of the community to the south of gebekli Tepe along the levantine shore not far from Ohio too can be found some of the best evidence for the origins of so-called neolithicization for here in a surprisingly well-studied region people seem to have begun to truly settle down towards the end of the last ice age [Music] this was the time a batufians incredibly there is good evidence here for a revolution not in farming Technologies but in the mind you first discovered by pioneering archaeologist Dorothy Garrett in the early 20th century named after the type site of Wadi al-natuf in what is now Palestine like Gobekli Tepe the astonishing culture of the natufians May headlines all over the world [Music] the natufians still lived a largely hunter-gatherer existence but seemed much more of a complex State than groups before they lived in set areas in settled Villages where they returned to bury their dead engage in elaborate burial rituals and create impressive works of art traits which probably reinforced cultural identities and links to the land [Music] perhaps one of the first complex societies found anywhere thank you so then was it culture human creativity rather than economics that spurred on the adoption of agriculture foreign just how far back does the evidence go [Music] the first visible glimmerings of human creativity in the archaeological record appear on the southern tip of Africa as much as a hundred thousand years ago in the form of ocher pigments and later in crafted shell decorations [Music] as much as a hundred thousand years after the first evidence of anatomically modern humans identical to us today capable of complex forms of communication for the first time however it is only after around 45 000 years ago that evidence for Creative complexity really begins to be found in isolated pieces like The Lion Man of Holland Stein stadel scattered Venus figurines and ultimately in the cave paintings of the upper Paleolithic arguably it is only with the likes of the natufian some 15 000 years ago and perhaps the cabarron before it that evidence of societal formation really begins of larger groups of a hundred or more living permanently together in close proximity all year round the question of why it took so long for anatomically modern humans to develop such artistic and cultural ideas and objects has been defined by British archaeologist Colin Renfrew is the Sapient paradox Anthropologist Robin Dunbar has argued for a certain numerical threshold in population tending to occur in human groups all over the world at which point groups naturally tend to Splinter away from one another it may be that in order to get past dunbar's number of around 150 individuals a great leap forwards in the psyche was necessary for late Paleolithic hunter-gatherer groups bad story or Collective idea spurred on not by biological evolution but by culture a hypothetical revolution in shared symbolism which would eventually spur on Mastery over nature division of labor increasingly impressive artistic achievements and population growth a revolution which began in the mind the creative explosion of the upper Paleolithic most commonly represented by cave art and the famous Venus figurines is well known in popular culture less well-known are the vast amounts of worked items that went alongside them signaling the apparent Newfound harnessing of a vast amount of raw materials such as bone antler Ivory shells and minerals the latter being especially common in natoofian settlements still considered hunter-gatherers who invested significant amounts of time into creating such artistic pieces given the sheer amount of time and effort invested such pieces must have been immensely important [Music] just maybe early indicators of a shared culture to unite a people together such as that so clearly and strikingly depicted at Gobekli Tepe the organizational abilities required to deal with ever more seasonal and changing environments in the past has long been identified as a key factor in human advancement the work of Robert Braidwood went further seeing agricultural emergence as a manifestation of human ingenuity our ability to make life better through technology by creating a surplus such as can be seen with the natufians and at Gobekli Tepe surpluses which could eventually be appropriated by people in positions of authority for individual rather than Collective gain leading to the hierarchical societies usually favored by farmers [Music] for Robert Braidwood then this settling in process allowed for a deeper understanding of the environment than ever before and the development of requisite Technologies to manipulate it allowing humans to bring plants and animals under their control and yet despite the mounting evidence gathered over the last 200 years and more the enlightenment vision of the noble savage first conjured up by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau is still the prevailing view of hunter-gatherer Societies in popular culture of simple people living simple lives with very little culture to speak of ethnological studies of very unique groups such as the Kalahari and mabuti pygmies in the 1960s further complicated the picture seeming to somehow represent all hunter-gatherer groups that have ever existed the reality as we have seen is very different and much more varied and complex far away in the dense heart of the Amazon rainforest anthropologists began studying another hunter-gatherer group to survive into the 20th century making their home deep in the Brazilian wilderness the Namba kawara still regularly alternate between densely settled villages in the wet season and wandering bands in the dry between strict hierarchies and loose egalitarianism depending on which particular mode suits the current situation best the reality is that human culture is exceptionally malleable when beings never simple let us now consider even earlier examples of organized communal sites and markers of complexity for this we must go back even further deep into the midst of the last ice age [Music] around 25 000 years ago now why dark from what is now Spain to the open step land of Siberia an extraordinary flourishing of human culture took place in those millennia just before the last glacial maximum the very height of the last cold period of the Ice Age it was a world utterly unrecognizable to today a world surprisingly full of life in the summer months in particular near never-ending seasonal Parklands would open up along the river valleys and ahead of glaciers thank you populated by vast herds of migrating bison deer and a wide variety of Mega fauna much of which is now extinct moments of calm amidst the brutal unforgiving cold [Music] of course one of those creatures is much more famous than the rest largest of all and absolutely vital to the survival of humanity in that harsh environment for this was the land of the mammoth step [Music] and in this often surprisingly lush world of fast river valleys and colossal herds some of the earliest evidence of human sedentism and even very early tenets of so-called neolithicization have been found modest Clans and tribes sheltered in the life-filled pockets between Tundra and Forest zones first defined by Dorothy Garrett in the 1930s the archaeological culture we know today is gravityan lasted for over ten thousand years in that bitterly harsh environment almost as much time from quebeckley Tepe to today and yet though today the image of a perennial struggle to survive for our Ice Age ancestors is fixed in the public imagination this was clearly not always the case the gravityans spent significant amounts of energy in creating art [Music] almost all of which is lost [Music] though the famous Venus figurines over a hundred of which are known give some small hint of the lives of these people arguably for the very first time beginning to live in settled long-lasting communities the Eastern variant of the gravityan nestled in the pavlovian hills of Southern Moravia also lived settled lives but here they did so in vast open-air settlements remains of which have survived to the present [Music] though multitudes exist in a rich archaeological landscape stretching far out into what is now the plains of Russia one of the most famous and important is in the modern day Czech Republic its name is dolney vestanice and it is in this region that we get not just some of the first evidence for large settlements in the world but of burials too [Music] Niche is an impressive site the midst of a mighty perimeter fence of mammoth bone a massive bonfire burned [Music] surrounded by elaborately built circular structures also made of mammoth bone [Music] lightly covered in skins and hide rendering within the perimeter fence and of an abundance of artistic depictions of humans and animals have been found alongside significant evidence of vegetal remains too all manner of smaller animals caught in Nets also inside the enclosure alongside an abundance of Art and symbolism is found not only the earliest evidence of weaving found anywhere but shells originating in the distant Mediterranean evidence of far-reaching contacts or actual wide roaming Journeys outside of the perimeter fence slightly up River was a sunken structure containing a hearth and the remains of some 2 300 Clay figurines perhaps evidence of a separation between Domesticity and ritual life further to the east in an isolated Enclave in the depths of Siberia the similar Malta buret culture went about their lives also living in massive mammoth bone structures in the open air and also spending significant energy in the creation of artistic works it is at sites like this from as early as around 25 000 years ago the several Innovations appear to suggest burgeoning movements toward the harnessing of agriculture the great human experiment in full force though as we know now perched in an environment particularly susceptible to environmental change the odds were stacked up against them and those Mammoth structures themselves as we shall see could often be much larger sometimes being referred to as monumental costenki in Russia a recently discovered example of megalithic mammoth bone architecture has been uncovered [Music] originating in the Oregon Nation period of around 40 000 years ago this site shows signs of an impressively lengthy series of habitations from then onwards thank you in just one find within an astonishing archaeological landscape in around 23 000 BC the remains of at least 60 mammoths had been arrayed into a massive circular structure over 12 meters in diameter [Music] it is quite simply one of the most impressive Paleolithic finds ever made research at another Russian site eudenovo suggests that these so-called Mammoth houses may not in fact have been dwellings at all in the conventional sense but carefully planned and built to commemorate a great Mammoth hunt the meat hides and Bones of which must have created a sizable Surplus for the community also undertook Artistic Endeavors and exchanged animal pelts Amber and seashells over great distances all begs the question could sites like dolny vestanice kostenki and eudenovo have been seasonal congregation places where people came together annually to trade to swap stories to feast in the safety of a winter sanctuary perhaps even create elaborate monuments and artistic works just maybe an early form of Gobekli Tepe the only constant in those days was change and before it could fully develop into fruition the lifestyle of the Mammoth Hunters was extinguished in the wake of advancing ice sheets rolling down from the north to the last glacial maximum of around twenty thousand years ago the only westerniche and many other sites like it were abandoned their people forced to move ever southwards to escape the certain death of the permafrost by around 18 000 BC however permanent settlements of considerable scale once again began to form in areas particularly abundant in life but the sites of mezin and mazarich in Northern Ukraine found on the banks of major river systems with the annual north-south migrations of horses reindeer bison and Mammoth could easily be hunted [Music] spectacular permanent mammoth bone structures again became the norm dating to around 18 000 and 13 000 BC respectively this was the age of a second apogee for the settled complex hunter-gatherers of the mammoth step especially in the regions in what is now the Russian plain and Eastern Europe again heavy Stone industry artistic flourishes the separation of domestic spaces from those considered to be ceremonial carefully curated burials and the importance of vegetal food can be found of course most impressively solid and very large elaborately made structures built of Mammoth bones [Music] today we call this era the epigraphetian [Music] during those Millennia from around sixteen thousand to ten thousand BC in a great Arc from Krakow to Moscow people again lived permanently in impressive circular houses of mammoth tusk and Bone [Music] described by Anthropologist Olga sofa as pleistocene public works many of them go far beyond the needs of Domesticity a raid in rhythmic patterns that swirl artistically what happened inside remains a mystery but is often theorized to be at least in part of a ritual nature again we must ask the question are these the prototypes for the sunken temples of Gobekli Tepe [Music] in Western Europe too in the land of the cave painters an archaeological culture we know today as the magdalanian the world was also changing by around 15 000 BC as the ice finally withheld its hold on the continent for good the days of the woolly mammoth were numbered in its place came an abundance of reindeer pick wide roaming seasonal migrations of these sub-arctic animals might not seem conducive to a semi-settled way of life for those following them and yet there were places The Hunters went back to year on year on year [Music] several so-called magdalanian era Mega sites have been found winter enclaves of the French paragord and Spain's cantabrian Coast with deep records of human activity [Music] where sizable groups of people may have annually congregated to take shelter during the Early Autumn before moving on in Spring [Music] during the time of the magdalanian Lush animals and plants flooded in to replace the baron tundra in the centuries following the last glacial maximum Southwest France was to become one of the most heavily populated areas in Europe bolstered by the vast numbers of fauna available to hunt between around fifteen thousand and ten thousand BC these were people living complex lives with a wide variety of hunting strategies Gathering techniques and artistic and cultural Pursuits including of course cave art [Music] found in an abundance of locations but famous from sites like Altamira and lusco [Music] masterpieces of Paleolithic art [Music] at French sites like La Madeleine and Abby Pato Marine shells animal pelts and significant quantities of Amber speak of trade or at least exchange networks spreading far and wide across the continent [Music] such winter times according to the work of archaeologist Randall White studied reindeer teeth and antlers there is evidence of heightened cultural creativity in the form of cave art carvings and ornaments and very possibly social differentiation it is at least possible that these winter communes gave rise to or facilitated already known rituals and religious rights [Music] carried innately with the Clans down the Millennia [Music] set of Customs not vastly different to certain Inuit societies of the last 200 years in the early 20th century French Anthropologist Marcel Mouse spent significant amounts of time studying the Inuit communities of the subarctic Americas and Eurasia [Music] finding them to organize their Societies in certain unique ways very different to the settled agricultural societies that cover most of the globe [Music] during the winter a relatively authoritarian structure would form dictated to and governed by confraternities of priests Nobles and commoners in the spring individualistic egalitarianism would arise once more people spread out into the landscape again to forage and hunt before eventually the next autumn perhaps in a Timeless scene that Echoes down the ages they would gather again for intense communal celebrations of cosmic order and the cycle of the world in their recent book The Dawn of everything Anthropologist David Graber and archaeologist David wengro entertain the notion that similarly structured societies and Customs may have actually been the driving force behind the creation of the Gobekli tape phenomenon destruction of enclosures now even being linked by isotopic evidence to periods of annual super abundance vast herds of gazelle would descend on the haran plane creating an immense surplus of food for the hunters living nearby as we have seen time and time again our ancestors weren't just our equals in cognitive capacity but in intellect even philosophy too and so we turn back to the megalith Builders of the Eartha plain despite their impressive size and the great skill of their Construction the enclosures at Gobekli Tepe seem only to have been used for a relatively short amount of time merch less for example than some of the previously discussed Ice Age sites they're raising and ultimately ritual deaths and burials often within just a few Generations May well have been the point [Music] hierarchies raised to the sky only to be torn down again as part of some long-lost ceremony [Music] just maybe it is Festival activities at sites like these the very first beginnings of larger societies and Nations first began to coalesce United by stories and the links fostered during those communal times [Music] indeed the abundance of Flint shards found all over the surface of gebekli Tepe many of which were brought in from afar suggests trading or exchange activities with distant groups or even full-blown seasonal migrations whether the stones themselves were taboo for most of the year access denied to anyone but a hypothesized temple Elite but given free access during Festival times we can't be sure [Music] to conjure fleeting visions of a medieval Carnival of Roman saturnalia where societal roles were switched the world turned upside down there is however concrete evidence in the Abundant remains of gazelle bore goat Red Deer sheep oxen vultures ducks and an entire menagerie of birds most of the animals depicted on the monoliths that Gobekli Tepe was very likely a sight for feasting events [Music] but what did those feasts actually look like [Music] turning to the far edge of the world in the Pacific Northwest of the United States another land of totem poles a wash with memory and the customs of long venerated ancestors the quackatul people have exercised a mid-winter ceremony for as long as anyone can remember yeah people came from afar to congregate and regroup under the harsh grip of an icy black Sky if a shifting ritual of so-called bear dancers and fool dancers replace the usual social hierarchy scenes reminiscent of Roman saturnalia and the medieval Carnival the mid-winter is a time when the lowest of the low are elevated to the highest positions in society and vice versa though of course separated by vast Gulfs of distance and time perhaps some small similarity may be found with those purported festivals on the southern edge of the Taurus Mountains so long ago for evidence of the festivals themselves in that so-called Stone Hills culture we can look to quebecally tepe's sister sites too [Music] in particular is a site which is yielded an unusually Rich array of artifacts of many types one rare engraved Stone Basin on the floor of one of the houses has even been suggested to be a sacrificial altar it was carved with an unusual sensual figure originally interpreted as a turtle opinions have shifted since to interpret the scene as a woman in dance feet pointed down her arms raised to the sky [Music] if true this would be one of the earliest dancing scenes in all of history an activity very often tied up in festival and religious activities found in almost every society in history we even have evidence of musical instruments too stretching far back into the Paleolithic a form of bull roarers clappers rattles and scrapers when reconstructed and played today they recall primordial sounds of Travelers dancing to the drum of the Divine pilgrims even come from nearby and distant lands to sacrifice to feast and to celebrate in the shadow of the obelisks [Music] foreign 's significance extended far beyond the Eartha plane [Music] obsidian deposits originating in Cappadocia to the Northwest and Beyond perhaps brought by traveling specialists viewing items and themselves with power and energy for the year to come [Music] other Travelers at the dawn of settled life entertain us heal us storytellers cannot be proven [Music] any evidence that might have once existed long ago having disappeared into nothing [Music] though can speculate nonetheless since the very earliest days of archeology and anthropology Scholars have sought an understanding of how our world came to be one of the most enduring and popular ideas was an ominous one that Warfare lay at the heart of everything social complexity spurred on by fear and hatred above all and yet in recent decades this concept has been undermined by a Thousand Cuts again and again new discoveries at sites like Chorale in the Americas and now at Gobekli Tepe lying at the very beginning of settled societies show no evidence of any kind of fighting instead a new theory has increasingly risen in stature [Music] the concept that it might actually be ritual that led to the adoption of agriculture and stratification and its initial development [Music] though they weren't quite there yet the affluent Hunters of the stonehills culture would be soon and just maybe they needed a revolution in the mind in order to be able to do so after all ritual and a strictly followed set of ideas are necessary for a farmer Society ideas which often give no instant gratification like that of the hunters instead immense amounts of work has to be invested in some ill-defined and sometimes even illusory goal [Music] early agrarian societies needed a high level of social cohesion and management simply in order to motivate their people to get past this first step could it be that such powerful Bonds were fostered at sites like gebekli Tepe where shared stories and myths unite people with feasting as the ultimate social glue towards the end of the 20th century basing his ideas on a lifetime of research in the field Anthropologist Brian Hayden took this idea further with the concept of competitive feasting in his hypothesis any surplus of food resources could be amassed by small emerging hunter-gatherer hierarchies invested to gain a labor force in a traditional Society of hunter-gatherers skilled Hunters are able to leverage immediate social capital in the form of their skill set alone the unskilled are dead weight farming Society actual skills are less important it is physical capital goods that are valued above all Goods which can be inherited and significant wealth accrued with no skills involved at all [Music] eventually when the latter groups grew in power everything was to change inherent inequality going forth Hayden's hypothesis continues that once competition for influence between Rivals begins experimentation in farming is driven forwards as the potential to produce a much larger Surplus is realized individuals can then pursue Prestige and power through favors owed to them and yet feasts are clearly not always competitive in nature the norm may even have been the complete opposite of Hayden's idea that feasting was egalitarian in nature aimed at counteracting Tendencies towards the formation of unequal hierarchies moating the obligatory sharing of food [Music] though it may well be that feasts had little to do with the harnessing of agriculture after all animals and Grains were all wild at Gobekli Tepe the origins of Agriculture could well be entirely separate from that nearly 12 000 year old sanctuary of megaliths [Music] nevertheless regardless of the origins of agriculture it is clear that when societies knew how to organize their members effectively they gained an evolutionary advantage a great deal of energy going not into obviously productive work or even food producing but in formulating a sense of unity shared identity [Music] instance of Agriculture then could be tied to investment in ideology a greater societal good that would allow willingly for the tolerance of inequalities and hierarchy to form the same sort of sentiment that some 7 000 years later would lead far-flung people to bring their cattle to durrington walls near Stonehenge even later at Delphi and Cusco and at modern festivals too where people still go to hear news from Neighbors to meet husbands and wives and to inadvertently spread communal culture [Music] but of course there is often another aspect to it as well [Music] chance to reason with the other world and the divine [Music] in 1955 Russian Quarry workers digging pits some 200 kilometers east of Moscow Came Upon something they weren't expecting the ruins of an ancient settlement buried in the clay when the radiocarbon dates came back the group of experts called in from the Russian Academy of Science could scarcely believe the results [Music] uttered over five kilometers on the edge of a remote Russian Riverbank prehistoric settlement of Sun Gear turned out to be one of the earliest recorded sites of anatomically modern humans found anywhere in Eurasia dating to somewhere between 32 and 28 000 BC though still largely unknown in popular culture particularly in the west due to the disconnect of the Cold War over the next 20 years of excavations the wildly significant discoveries kept coming in perhaps most astonishing of all both in terms of their state of preservation and their contents were the grave sites also some of the earliest ever found in Eurasia and as we shall see among the most unusual Grave 2 consisted of a pair of adolescent children laid down facing one another Head to Head along with an adult leg bone filled with ocher grave one contained an adult male similarly coated in red ocher a substance associated with religious rights and death rituals all over the world from the very beginning to today but most amazing of all were the thousands upon thousands of intricately crafted Ivory beaded pieces of jewelry clothing and Spears among other items quite literally coating the bodies some thirteen thousand beads in all having been uncovered [Music] an artistic effort that would have taken an estimated 10 000 hours to produce truly vast investment as well as being taken as some of the earliest direct evidence for religious practices in Eurasia The Sun Gear burials are also often seen as a particularly early example of a highly developed systems of rank existing deep in the Paleolithic past it is a view further bolstered by a similarly ancient find in Italy known as El Principe adorned with a similarly incredible array of grave Goods [Music] yet further investigations into Paleolithic burials from the or ignacian to the gravityan to the magdalanian from Spain to Russia to the Levant May hint at more unusual reasons for having such ornate burials after all no fortifications store houses palaces or any other evidence of conventional Chieftains have been found let alone anything resembling a state that we would recognize elsewhere in Eurasia during the Paleolithic a striking number of burials contain individuals with unusual physical characteristics sometimes placed in Striking and unusual poses spiraling outwards crouched or laid out facing other deceased individuals [Music] crems in Austria identical twins were found their bodies flanked by great mammoth tusk glances and coated in beads and ocher [Music] at remoto in Calabria an individual with dwarfism was discovered and at Grimaldi cave an extremely tall individual with gigantism was given Special Care in recent decades British archaeologist Paul petite has argued for significant efforts being made by those interring the dead to pin certain deceased individuals down mouth bones wooden planks stones or vast amounts of decorated ornaments often tightly binding the bodies in place rather than reverence the evidence sometimes suggests more a Culture of Fear just like in societies throughout history lasting well into the modern era perhaps beseeching the dead to stay in the afterlife even making certain precautions to stop them from coming back the moche pyramid Builders of the Peruvian coast to the passage Graves of Neolithic orkney throughout history and all over the world particularly in ancient shamanistic societies individuals who are different in some way either mentally or physically have often been thought to possess unusual Supernatural powers deemed closer to the Gods perhaps the so-called princely burials might have been different in some way too maybe they were albino autistic or another genetic condition otherwise unseen in the archaeological record weighed down with objects to celebrate them but also maybe to contain their Dangerous Powers after death just maybe they are evidence of some of the earliest shamans in human history [Music] turning back to the Mammoth Hunters of the Moravian Hills a number of burials were also found at the site of dolny vestanice one in particular deserving special mention absolutely coated in ocher laid to rest beside a mighty mammoth bone and with a hand resting on a fox the remarkably complete skeleton of a woman around 40 years old was found and like the other Ice Age burials of the Paleolithic she had several striking features in addition to her relatively Advanced age old enough to have been a grandparent from birth the left side of her face had very visible deformities [Music] was this so-called Elder of dolney vesteniche considered to be touched by the Gods as we have seen a number of Venus figurines were found at the site including an isolated spot around 80 meters Upstream containing well over 2 000 Clay figurines of various animals most of them in fragments perhaps magical items created to be ritualistically broken [Music] the most incredible of all however had exactly the same facial abnormalities as the Elder making it very likely to have been a model or representation perhaps to remember her in future Generations it begs the question do all the Venus figurines represent actual individuals who lived so many Millennia ago given the discovery of the Elder alongside a fox an animal often associated with ritualistic shape-shifting trances she is often thought to have been a shaman perhaps The Dugout was her proto-temple [Music] whether she was an early Oracle or Ice Age Prophet clearly she was someone to be commemorated remembered [Music] and perhaps most importantly not to be brought back to bring her wrath upon the living [Music] and there is much more evidence of shamanic activity in the Ice Age [Music] in 1939 an astonishing Ivory statue was found in a German cave [Music] when carbon dated The Lion Man of Holland Stein stadel was found to be as much as 41 000 years old [Music] yeah though interpretations of this striking figure vary extensively one argument is that it depicts a half-animal half-man figure [Music] just maybe in the midst of a shamanistic trance foreign [Music] shifting often considered to be an integral part these deer antler head dresses from Star Car in northumbria dating to roughly the same time as gebekli Tepe but also often seen as evidence for shamanic activity as is this roughly contemporary cave painting from Southern France known as the sorcerer which may well depict a shamanistic ritual in process even the shreds of evidence we've seen from the very beginnings of Humanity's journey in Eurasia to the ends of the Ice Age and Beyond for the last 50 000 years or so at least it seems likely that ritual and religious experience have always been a part of the social fabric a hypothetical creative explosion linked with the need for social cohesion in the cold North maybe this was how smaller family units were able to congregate into larger Clans and tribes at certain times of the year bound together by links to the ancestors religious rights and perhaps even the worship of common deities Culture by that time well and truly having outgrown biological evolution as far as the elaborate so-called princely burials of Ice Age Europe are concerned hereditary systems of rank seem the most improbable interpretation of all again this begs the question is there a missing piece of the puzzle at Gobekli Tepe like in ancient Peru and Egypt where the erection of monuments was a holy task in itself a form of worship dictated by a priesthood [Music] was there a shadowy cabal pulling the strings in the foothills of the Eartha plain not hereditary Chiefs but a meritocratic theocracy [Music] in the year 2000 the translation into English of a relatively unknown French Scholar's work not only caused a stir in the archaeological community but ever elusive ripples into the realm of popular culture [Music] ever since Gordon child's Oasis Theory and the like in the early 1900s the majority of attempted explanations for the so-called Neolithic Revolution a focused on economic reasoning geographical needs and material circumstances dictating growth into agricultural societies enter Jacques kovan [Music] in the early 1990s after more than 50 years of research involving digs that some of the most important early Neolithic sites in the near East kovan went public with a completely different idea in the birth of the Gods and the origins of agriculture Jacques kovan suggested not Material reasons for the shift from hunter-gathering to agriculture but a transformation that began in the mind [Music] thank you profound cultural transformation within the human psyche from around the 13th to the 10th Millennia BC primarily involving a shift in perspective from seeing Humanity as a part of nature to being outside of it eventually with not only the potential to dominate the natural world the right [Music] in other words in order to become a farmer you have to think like one first perhaps like all later religions beginning as a single creative Spark [Music] rather than economic need environmental shift or even individual social promotion the collective Epiphany expressed in new symbols and ideas [Music] with the very dawn of civilization though of course it remains completely untestable if even at all true and it could go alongside other theories to a certain extent Jacques kovan's birth of the Gods would solve Colin renfrew's Sapient paradox of why Humanity only began the road to True societal complexity by around 10 000 BC after being anatomically modern for as much as three or four hundred thousand years kovan's death the very next year in 2001. only added to the Allure of the theory which remains immensely influential amongst archaeologists today far from the rigid economic reasoning of Braidwood and child Jacques kovan evokes distant ancestral memories of ecstatic dance beneath the Colossal t-shaped pillars of Elder days from the early 20th century to today a number of sociologists and anthropologists alike have studied the nature of religious ecstasy commonly observed all over the world and in all walks of life perhaps most notable being the work of Mercia eliad and Emile durkheim [Music] for them the effervescence and Elation of religious ceremony has a tendency to ferment a sense of belonging and contentment in a community very possibly in prehistoric and historic times allowing forever larger conglomerations of people to coalesce than ever before sometimes ultimately resulting in asymmetrical power structures beginning to form an expert in world religions messiah elliard in particular talked of the Pursuits of ecstasy being an integral part of the religious experience a transformative feeling of awe for example being one that goes hand in hand with music monuments Landscapes and nature [Music] music and dancing in particular often inducing trance-like Altered States and a sense of unity all of which were present at Gobekli Tepe of course by their very nature Jacques kovan's ideas remain entirely untestable [Music] little more than hints of a shamanic Council leading a societal Revolution a wash with ore and ecstatic devotion building on time-honored ideas stretching back tens of thousands of years into the origination imbued with Newfound immediacy Annual Festival centers apparently common in older hunting societies for exchange and verbal communication ever growing and ever spreading the new word thank you even possible the domestication of plants and animals ultimately came about in part as a means of feeding increasingly large groups of people drawn to holy sites to build and to worship domesticated plants and animals showing up slightly later at sites like navali chori and chianu the art of which still very much echoed that found at Gobekli and karahan Tepe and their own older levels of course another equally possible Theory favored by Klaus Schmidt holds that religion actually kept the hunters of Gobekli Tepe from pursuing agriculture where others to the South did so [Music] being a last holdout of a Resolute culture of hunters on the precipice of new beginnings [Music] in the late 1800s German philosopher Karl Marx one of the most influential thinkers ever to put pen to paper implied religion to be a conscious invention of the elite to control the masses [Music] the reality as usually is the case seems to be far more complex [Music] religious ideas conceived of until relatively recently as a form of science seem to have been utterly intertwined with Humanity since the very beginning [Music] we humans are a curious and immensely creative species [Music] and as French Anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss first pointed out in the 1950s and 60s in prehistoric societies mythological thought and religion were the only ways of explaining and exploring the world and the bigger questions Within Above All Else the individuals who built Gobekli Tepe were our intellectual equals possessing exactly the same mental capacity that we have today just with a more basic cultural tradition and knowledge base but no less colorful creativity to draw from a shadowy elite controlling the masses like scientists and doctors today early shamans or proto-priests would very likely have spent their days attempting to help their communities to intervene with Spirits perhaps ancestors ultimately acting for the greater good if they didn't they probably wouldn't have been in their positions for much longer the Greek classical age perhaps going into psychedelic trances to draw out near impenetrable yet nonetheless useful prophecies for those in need and maybe like the Vespas at Delphi such trances took an obvious toll on their bodies even killing them after a Time and of course much more than today death was very much a part of life in those days [Music] and sometimes just like in practically all societies that ever evolved at one stage or another situation might be serious enough so as to Warrant or require a sacrifice there is a certain hittite ritual for a second millennium BC recorded on cuneiform tablets which can still be read today speaks of a time-honored tradition in ancient Anatolia where members of a community would symbolically pile up sources of evil and anxiety onto a male goat the sorry animal would then be chased out into the desert and left to its fate thus relieving the Society of its troubles for a Time it's been argued that pillow one at Gobekli Tepe could indicate a similar ritual of course the origins of the idea of a scapegoat a ritual carried out unconsciously time and time again throughout human history in almost every society on Earth still very much in use today of course in many cases much more than a goat is metaphorically forced out into the desert as we have seen at chiono a potential altar has been found which may well suggest human sacrifice one argument being that sacrifice of animals and sometimes people became necessary to relieve societal pressure during hard times [Music] a placebo sometimes being effective as a morale boost or deliverer from stress indeed from its very Beginnings the act of sacrifice does seem to have been an integral part of settled agricultural societies perhaps a means of psychologically being able to come to terms with the strange situation of delayed gratification and occasional failure of harvests [Music] easy feeling that something has to be done to mediate with the divine [Music] and in the aftermath very often creating a sense of unity and community much more so if things do eventually turn around [Music] ultimately as agriculture transformed their way of life the newly sedentary Neolithic peoples of the Southern Taurus Mountains ceased to make the pilgrimage to the festival sites of the ancestors covering the circles in soil never to be seen again [Music] clearly by around 8000 BC the world had changed t-shaped pillars Irrelevant in the face of new religious epiphanies whether any memory of their existence survived Down The Long millennia we can only speculate [Music] somewhere along the line many thousands of years later by the fourth millennium BC the late Paleolithic shamans had become a priesthood [Music] whether any elements of deep-seated law from the t-shaped pillars survived into those days just as they had from the upper Paleolithic we were likely never know [Music] though it remains at least possible skull removal and decoration for example continued in use for thousands of years after the stonehills culture disappeared just as it had done before with the natufians [Music] and there are two-headed Janus figures at Gobekli karahan and gaziantep just as there continued to be in much later Millennia and today perhaps representations of The Duality of existence by the time of ancient Sumeria in the third millennium BC when stories began to be recorded in writing for the very first time all manner of much older spoken Tales managed to survive too finding their way into the cuneiform Archives of long deceased city-states and forgotten Kings laughs one of those Tales speaks of a sacred Mountain Dooku home of the ancient Anora gods a sacred Mountain sometimes associated with the hilly region around the Taurus and Zagros range on the very Northern edge of the Mesopotamian world [Music] it's a long shot but Klaus Schmidt thought it at least possible that some shadow of the anthropomorphous pillars of Gobekli Tepe ultimately survived down the ages passed down by individuals from one generation to the next become myth and Legend after all what else do we have but stories thanks for watching as always I'm your host Pete Kelly another massive thank you to War Thunder for sponsoring this video download the game now using my link in the description below and if you're looking for more history from me I also have a self-titled Channel where I explore the world's greatest archaeological sites and a free newsletter just input your email address and you'll get monthly stories from me on my Adventures bringing you along for the ride thanks for watching and I'll see you next time foreign

Channel: History Time

Views: 5,451,158

Keywords: history time, history, documentary, ancient history, archaeology, anthropology, mythology, early medieval, early middle ages, learning, history documentary, ancient history documentary, history medieval, medieval

Id: vXJc-Y3Mf5w

Length: 170min 57sec (10257 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 05 2023