Hello, it is nice to meet you here. I know
there are many people from all over the.. world, who said they would be watching
this, so I don't know what to say, shall I.. ..say "good evening", "good morning" or "good day", whatever. Yes, we are now, all over.. ..the world, living such a terrible situation. We all put ourselves in our.. ..homes, and we want this disaster to come to an end as soon as possible, and I wish.. ..everyone to be well, and in order to contribute to the situation that we are.. ..in now, I thought I would use some of my past experience to share with you, so.. ..that we can use our time at home more efficiently. I picked a very interesting subject today, that is Göbekli Tepe. In my.. ..view, and in many other people's view as well, it is one of the most important.. ..archaeological discoveries in the whole world today, of the recent times. But it.. ..is not possible to start with Göbekli Tepe right away. That's why, I first would like.. ..to talk about the situation, which prepared Göbekli Tepe. That's why, I want.. ..to start with Human History and then how Göbekli Tepe today was discovered and.. ..what they found and how the finds from Göbekli Tepe are all interpreted. But I.. ..know some of you are not familiar with me, just to let you know with a few words.. ..my name is Serif, Serif Yenen. I'm a tour guide and I have been doing this.. ..job, still with great enthusiasm, for more than 30 years now, and I also wrote lots.. ..of travel books, maps, travel documentary films, which are available at amazon.com now. And they're in the picture in here, now.. ..and I have an Instagram account, and I
try to share something interesting from.. ..our cultural heritage almost every day.
So, if you want to follow that, this is my.. ..address here: @serifyenen I also have a..
..Facebook page, and the name of my.. ..Facebook page is TravelinTurkey. If you..
..are a Facebook follower, I have lots of.. ..sharings there as well. I try to..
..concentrate on my YouTube channel in.. ..these weeks. I have started making lots..
..of video clips including lots of.. ..interesting information, so my YouTube..
..channel is also under my name Serif Yenen. If we start now, I also would like..
..to start with an orientation first. We're.. ..talking about Turkey, and the lands of..
..Turkey throughout history were named as.. ..either Anatolia or Asia Minor.
Where is Anatolia located? I always ask. See this is the word map and we have..
..here Africa and this is Asia here and.. ..Europe is here. If I asked you the..
..meeting point of these three continents.. ..where would you show? Turkey, as you see..
..in here, is located, right in the meeting.. ..point of these three continents..
..juxtaposition. So as a result of this, of.. ..course, Turkey or Anatolia has always..
..been a crossroads between the East and.. ..the West. Between the north and the south.
So as a result, it has drawn the.. ..attention of many great civilizations.
We can count approximately more than 30.. ..different civilizations that have ever..
..lived in the lands of Turkey, throughout.. ..history, which is such an interesting..
..history. If we look at the map of Turkey.. ..just very briefly, as you see it is..
..rectangular in shape and surrounded by.. ..seas in three sides.
And it is a peninsula. Here in the north it.. ..is the Black Sea. Black Sea is a very..
..interesting sea, it is a closed sea.. ..almost like a lake, but it is not closed.
It has an opening, there is a little.. ..water channel in here, a natural one..
..connecting the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara. The Sea of Marmara is a small sea..
..within the boundaries of Turkey. It is accepted to be the only sea in the..
..world, which is located within the.. ..boundaries of one country only.
Interesting to note, and the Sea of.. ..Marmara is connected to the Aegean Sea..
..in the West with another natural.. ..waterway here and it is the Dardanelles.
Then we have the Aegean Sea and the.. ..other side of the Aegean is Greece.
In the south, it is the Mediterranean Sea. There are many rivers flowing into the..
..Black Sea and the level of the Black Sea.. ..with those rivers flowing into it..
..is rising up continuously, that's why.. ..the Black Sea has to empty its water through..
..the natural waterway here, which is.. ..called as the Bosphorus and then it goes..
..towards the Aegean Sea in here. Turkey is located at the meeting point of Europe..
..and Asia, so the border between Europe.. ..and Asia is here. So the Dardanelles..
..the Sea of Marmara and the Bosphorus straits.. ..make the border between Europe and Asia.
So above here is Europe and below here is Asia. Three percent of Turkey lies in Europe..
..and that part of our country is called.. ..as Trakya in English, sorry in Turkish.
In English it is Thrace. And the Asian part of Turkey..
..throughout history, has been named as.. Anatolia or Asia Minor. I love the word..
Anatolia. It's a Greek word. It means "the land of sunrise", considering..
..the Greeks in the West, this was the land.. ..of sunrise. The Sun rose from here.
That's why, they named it accordingly. As for our.. ..neighbors a little bit, we have two..
..neighbors in Europe. One of them is Greece, and the other is..
..Bulgaria. And we have many more in the East. There is Georgia here.
There is Armenia here, there is a little.. ..land in here, which is called as Nakhchivan..
..part of Azerbaijan, an extended land.. ..not the main part of Azerbaijan. Then we..
..have long borders with Iran. And then Iraq, and then long borders with Syria.
So we have lots of neighbors. As for geography a little bit, the highest..
..mountain in Turkey is Mount Ararat.. ..and it is located near the border in here.
It is close to Armenia, it is close to Iran.. ..but it is within the borders of Turkey.
As you know, Mount Ararat is the place.. ..where Noah's Ark was believed to have landed on.
Then we have the largest lake.. Lake Van in here, almost like a sea.
It's a volcanic area, and the water in.. ..the lake is bitter water, it is soda water.
It is a very rugged and mountainous area there. Then we have two..
..Biblical rivers, originating from the.. ..high mountains of Anatolia, and going..
..down to Syria and Iraq. And one of these.. ..rivers is called as the Euphrates and..
..the other river is the Tigris. These are the rivers mentioned also in the Bible.
And these two rivers, after a certain point.. ..they merge and flow together.
The lands in between these two rivers.. ..has been named as Mesopotamia, meaning..
..between the two rivers. We have the.. ..second largest lake here, it is in..
..central Anatolia. Lake Tuz, "tuz" means salt. It's a salt lake, the water in here..
..has 33% salt in it. And this is the famous region of Cappadocia.
A Wonderland. Everyone in the world.. ..has to be there one day.
It doesn't belong to this earth, it is lunar. Here is the capital city of Turkey..
..the official capital up until 1923. The capital in the Ottoman Empire, in the
Byzantine Empire, in the Roman Empire. It was always Constantinople, Istanbul in here.
And Istanbul is located today on the two.. ..sides of the Bosphorus Strait..
..which means, one side of the city is.. ..Europe and the other side is Asia.
So Istanbul is accepted to be the only.. ..metropolitan city in the world, which is..
..located on two different continents. Up until 1923, Istanbul was the capital..
..but with the founding of the new secular.. ..republic by our founding leader Mustafa..
..Kemal Atatürk in 1923, we moved the capital.. ..from Istanbul to Ankara.
Ankara is the second largest city, and Istanbul.. ..is still the largest city with..
..approximately 17 million people. And it is the cultural capital, it is the..
..financial capital. The third largest city.. ..is Izmir in here, that's also my hometown.
I think that's all for nowW when we speak about place names in my presentation we
know which places to look at. Just to add one more thing the area which is close
to the Aegean Sea is named as the Aegean region. The area which is around the Sea
of Marmara is named as the Marmara region. The lands parallel to the Black
Sea coastline is the Black Sea region. And the Mediterranean region is here.
Southeastern Anatolia is here. Eastern Anatolia is in the east, and central
Anatolia is here. So we know, when we mention these names. Now let's start with
human history and how Anatolia was affected with the history of humanity.
Let's just take a look at some 20 years ago or like maybe 18
years ago. In the year 2002, in a city called Denizli, in the Aegean region,
inner parts of the Aegean region, in a marble quarry, a worker there,
by coincidence found some bones. Without knowing what they were, so he gave it to
the authorities, and then those bones found their way to the scientists and
they understood that they were pieces of a skeleton of a human skeleton and after
lots of surveys and laboratory experiments and so on, they understood
that these bones belonged to the skullcap of Homo erectus.
What does this mean? As you know, Homo erectus, the earliest ancestor of
humankind started its journey from Africa like 2 million years ago.
Passing through Anatolia, they reached Europe or they reached Asia. So after
this discovery, now it was understood that the Homo erectus that passed
through Anatolia like 1.1 million years ago. Because these bones were dated to be
approximately 1.1 or 1.2 million years old. And they call it as the Denizli Man.
Denizli is the name of the city where it was found and these are the pieces, if
you bring these pieces together, you get one part of the skullcap. This is also
of course a very interesting discovery. This Denizli specimen has been the first
Homo erectus discovered in Turkey today 1.1 million years old.
Speaking about the Denizli man, I have to make a small comparison in here. Although
it is not from Turkey, but it's a good story. In 1974, in Ethiopia
scientists, by coincidence found many bones together. So after studying
those bones they understood that they belong to a hominid and the date was
estimated to be 3.2 million years, and these scientists after this discovery were so
happy and they were having a party in the evening and listening to music and
drinking and dancing. The music playing was repeating continuously and
it was "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" from Beatles. So somehow they decided to
name this skeleton of 3.2 million- year-old hominid as "Lucy". So it is now
called as Lucy. This is approximately, it is not very tal approximately 90 to 100 cm
like maybe 3 feet and 30 to 35 kg. I think this makes like 55-65
pounds and something like that. Now I would like to start with these periods
scientists by looking at the main material used in these ages they divide
these periods with the name of the material so it is first the stone and
then it became copper, and they named the name of the other, the next period as the
copper stone age, and then came bronze which is an alloy, and after bronze came
the iron age. So we're going to look at these ages now starting with the
Paleolithic Age. Paleolithic Age means the Old Stone Age, the word paleo is
old and lithos is a stone; old stone age. So for the case of Anatolia, it is
different in different parts of the world. Things started with
the discovery of Homo erectus in Denizli it starts the Paleolithic Age in
Anatolia, starts in about 1.1 million years ago and it continues up until
16000 so this is the general timeline. But in itself the Paleolithic Age is
divided into three periods; the lower, the middle, and the Upper Paleolithic.
The first one is from 1.1 million up until 125,000 Second one is 125,000
and 40,000 and the third one is between 40,000 and
16,000 and these were the times in which we started seeing the
traces of the Homo erectus first and then the Neanderthal and then the
Homo sapiens. So coming one after another who lived in
this Paleolithic Age, the hunter-gatherers. Who were these hunter
hunter-gatherers? These were the early forms of humankind starting with the
Homo erectus and then it continues like that and they didn't have settled life
they lived in caves and they lived short climate conditions were very harsh and
while they were trying to hunt the wild animals, sometimes they were getting
hunted by themselves. So they didn't live long and their main concern was food
they always wanted to find food, so how did they find food? They either hunted
the wild animals with the simple tools that they made or they gathered the
plants or the plant roots from the nature and this is how they lived.
But unfortunately the food was not plenty, the food was getting scarce once
in a while. As a result, they always had to go after
the food. That's why they couldn't live in one
place, they had to migrate to new places after the food was scarce. That's why
they are nomadic people and they are called as hunter-gatherers and there is
no settled life in this period. This is an example about their very simple life
they would sometimes live, in addition to the caves, in little tents that they
would make from the animals skin and some branches of trees and so on.
They would use very simple stone tools in their daily life. This is the Museum
of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara in the capital city. Yes, this is a very
very small museum, but in my view, the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in
Ankara is one of the most important museums in the whole world. So it is also
a must-see place. There are so many civilizations exhibited in the same
museum in Ankara. This is the first section in that museum and this is the
Lower Paleolithic Age in here as you see in the lower Paleolithic period which
was 1.1 million and 125,000 the materials that they used, the Homo
erectus used, very simple stones in these times and they were
trying to make the stones to be sharper and they would be able to do that only
by using other harder stones and they would attach a piece of wood to the
stone and it would be a hand-axe and so on. In the lower Paleolithic period the
climate was not so bad it was mild and this was the time when we start seeing
Homo erectus, and Homo erectus in that period used hand-axe and they found fire
but fire was mostly used against wild animals, and whenever they had dead
people they knew how to bury them so they had burials in this period and in
the same museum this is actually the Sanliurfa
Archaeological Museum, this is from the area of Gobekli Tepe and we have more
examples of these simple stones from those times
now the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara again, this is
the next section this section is the Middle Paleolithic Age. Middle
Paleolithic Age is between 125,000 and 40,000
and Homo erectus somehow disappear in this period in Anatolia and instead
there is another kind which is named as the Neanderthal. Neanderthal is not from
the same Homo erectus they come from Europe and they are more used to living
in colder climates and they, most of the times, spend their time in the caves so
they were the real caveman. Actually in this Middle Paleolithic Age, the climate
gets very harsh, glaciers start. The climate also becomes very dry it
becomes very difficult and the Neanderthals are good in that condition and the
Neanderthal, as opposed to the very simple, very coarse stone tools of the
earlier period, as you see, they start using more refined or finer tools and
they also start using arrows and spears you know by making the size of the stone
smaller they can use them as arrows and spears and these Neanderthal people in
the Middle in Paleolithic Age, they also continue with the burials, but they add
one more thing to the burials, they start burying people together with some gifts.
When you bury someone with some gifts it means something. What is the meaning?
The meaning is that, you believe in reincarnation, those people who died that
you bury are going to come back to life, so whatever they might
need in their next life, you want to leave them with those people. This is the
reason that we have gifts with the burials and this continues all
throughout ages. Afterwards fire becomes more common in this period, in Middle
Paleolithic and they start using fire for cooking, so it means they have cooked
food in this period now we're going to look at the last phase of the
Paleolithic Age which is the Upper and Late Upper Paleolithic age from about
40,000 until about 16,000 we are getting close to our time as you see the tools
in here are much much finer and in addition to the stones we start seeing
flint here. Flint tools. Flint, as opposed to normal limestone, is much harder so
you can shape stone with flint stone, it is much easier that way and we also
notice that they were able to make tools from wood, they were able to make
tools from animal bones, and above all these people, the Upper Paleolithic
people were actually the Homo sapiens when we come to approximately 40,000 to
the Upper Paleolithic, the Neanderthal disappeared. So scientists don't know how
exactly the Neanderthals disappeared. It may be the Homo sapiens, it may be the
natural disasters but it is likely that the Homo sapiens destroyed the
Neanderthal. Homo sapiens is coming from the homo erectus.
so Homo sapiens is not the extension of the Neanderthal and in this period the
Homo sapiens were able to make tools to make tools, this is a very big progress
tools making tools this is interesting and important to note. Little by little
in this Upper Paleolithic period, we also see the start of trade, bartering system,
a little bit of weaving, they started making little boats and they started
fishing and they started making pictures in their caves and they painted their
pictures and they sometimes symbolized some interesting things from their lives.
So symbolism started in the Upper Paleolithic Age, which was coming to an
end in about 16,000. After all these three phases of the Paleolithic Age, do
we have any Paleolithic places in Anatolia? Of course, we have lots of
places, but among many others I'm going to summarize two places which are the
most important from Anatolia and one of these is near Istanbul.
It is a cave, when you start driving out of Istanbul, on the way to the Bulgarian
border area or Greek area in the European part of Istanbul, just a little
outside of the city there is a cave called Yarimburgaz. Such
an important place. Yarimburgaz cave has the traces of the Lower Paleolithic
period, the times of the Homo sapiens, sorry Homo erectus. The earliest traces
of settlement in Turkey were found in the Yarimburgaz cave near Istanbul.
Actually one more thing to add here.. Scientists found tools and animal bones
going as early as 300 thousand years before now, and it was understood that
Homo erectus lived in this cave in groups of 20 and 25 people and not only
that, there is a very big kind of bear which is called as Ursus deningeri
and they found the bones of Ursus deningeri in this Yarimburgaz cave.
And they also understood that Ursus deningeri bears and Homo
erectus used the same cave alternatively. This is also something interesting.
In this Yarimburgaz cave, they found traces of Homo erectus but they didn't
find the bones of Homo erectus in here. Let's look at the next cave. Where is
this cave? That is Karain. This is also one of the two most important caves from the
Paleolithic Age in Anatolia and it is on the Mediterranean coast. There is a city
called Antalya, like a resort place, and only like a half hour drive from Antalya
to the north, from the Mediterranean coast
it is the Karain cave and the Karain cave has been the only cave in Turkey with
all three phases of the Paleolithic Age; the Lower, the Middle and the Upper
Paleolithic Age. They have traces or left traces in the Karain cave. In here it was
in this cave that scientists archaeologists found some bones of the
Neanderthal from the Middle Paleolithic Age and also the traces of the Homo
sapiens from the Upper Paleolithic Age in the nearby city of Antalya there is
another beautiful Museum of Archeology and in the Antalya Museum, we can see
these animal bones, teeth and horn and these are from the Middle and Upper
Paleolithic periods and this is even more important because the skull bone
that we see in here belongs to Neanderthal this is also from the Middle
Paleolithic Age, and it is on display in the Antalya Museum.
After the Paleolithic Age comes to an end in about 16,000 there is another age
starting this new age is called as the Mesolithic. mezzo-lithos Middle Stone
Age. Middle Stone Age is a transition period. Middle Stone Age is going to be
like 6,000 years from 6,000 sorry 16,000 until about 10,000 in 10,000. Settlements
will start so 10,000 is the beginning of the Neolithic Age. Mesolithic Age is the
transition from the Paleolithic into the Neolithic and the most important place
from the Mesolithic Age in Anatolia is a cave called as Öküzini. It is
also near Karain in Antalya, very close nearby and they found some pictures of
ox in the cave that's why they named it as the ox shelter Öküzini, so ox cave
was the name for this place and they found micro tiny tools in this
transition period so this is the transition into Neolithic. Things are
getting a lot more serious after this and they also, as I just mentioned they
found some pictures of ox that's why they came they named it as the ox
shelter or Öküzini that is the meaning for it and they found the
carvings of these ox pictures inside the place. Finds from this cave go back
to like 4000 BCE meaning the Chalcolithic Age, so it is not only between 16,00
and 10,000 so people continued using the same cave for
thousands of years. After the Paleolithic Age, the Mesolithic
age hasn't been studied extensively in Turkey yet, but things are going very
fast and I am sure in the upcoming 10-20 years we're going to have a lot more
information than what we know today. Now, let's look at Mesopotamia a little bit.
As you see here is the lands of Anatolia and this is southeastern part of Turkey
and these are the two Biblical rivers that we were just talking about one of
them is the Euphrates River and the other is the Tigris River and as I said
after a certain point they merge and flow together into the Persian Sea the
land in between these two rivers has been named as Mesopotamia meaning
between the two rivers. As you see there is a curvy part in here like this, this
curvy part is named as the Fertile Crescent. Lots of interesting things
happened there. What did happen at the end of the Upper Paleolithic period during
the Mesolithic age in about 15,000 14,000 13,000
the glaciers of the previous ages started melting down, global warming
so especially in the area of upper Mesopotamia or Mesopotamia climate was
becoming wonderful, climate was becoming very mild, moderate, the sun was out and
it was green everywhere and the hunter-gatherers of all the areas around
suddenly were attracted with this area they were going to places where the
weather conditions were better, where the living conditions were easier, so as a
result, they were coming down or coming up to Mesopotamia, maybe from Eastern
Mediterranean region and maybe all the way from Africa as well.
These hunter-gatherers were able to find wild wheat, barley, lentils
in this area and they also found the wild sheep, wild boar, the deer and so on.
So it was much easier to survive here that's why there were many groups of
people coming over here and living in here. After about approximately maybe 1,000
maybe 2,000 years, these hunter-gatherers somehow were able to
obtain seeds from these wheat, barley or lentils. Such a big change!
Can you imagine they were able to obtain seeds from these crops? They learned how
to replant. Things would or will change afterwards. What will happen? They are not
going to run after the food anymore, why? Because they are able to bring the food
to themselves, so they start settling now they start agriculture, they start the
domestication of animals, and they start settled life, first with villages, later
after a few thousand years, with cities. So this is the cradle of civilizations,
that's why we are going to focus on this area now, in the area of Upper
Mesopotamia, there is a city called Batman like "batman", a little farther away
from Batman 50 km farther away, there is an archeological dig and
the name of the place is Hallan Çemi. Remember this name this is very
important why, because in Hallan Çemi in 11,000 BCE, the end of the
Mesolithic age, it's going to be the beginning of the Neolithic Age, ice age
ends and we start seeing the early phases of settled life for
hunter-gatherers. Hallan Çemi, one of the earliest places where settled
life starts, this is a very interesting information. settled life
starts a new age, the name of the new age is going to be the Neolithic Age.
Sometimes because of the big changes at the beginning of this age scientists
would name it as the Neolithic Revolution, it is like a revolution so
you don't have to run after the food anymore, you are able to
bring the food to yourself, it means you're settling down, the Neolithic Age
roughly speaking starts in about 10,000 in some areas it is 11,000 like in a
Hallan Çemi for example. The settled life do not occur overnight, so in that region it
starts like 100 years earlier in that region
it starts 500 years later, but roughly speaking the beginning of the Neolithic
Age is accepted to be 10,000 for the case of Anatolia and it is going to
continue until about 5500. The Neolithic Age also is divided into periods in
itself, first few thousands of this Neolithic Age is accepted to be pre-
pottery so in the first 2,000 years of the Neolithic Age people, Homo sapiens
were unable to produce pots, they didn't know how to make pottery, they were able
to shape stones and many other things but they didn't do pottery. Pottery
starts in about 8000 BC and it continues until about 5500 and so on.
As you see, this is the Neolithic map of Anatolia. There are so many Neolithic
sites in Anatolia and many of these sites were
discovered only in the last 20 or 30 years. You know why? Very simple, I spoke
about these two rivers Euphrates and the Tigris. This land is very harsh climate
and the summers are really hot, you need a lot of water here, but there are big
rivers, but other than that, not enough water, not enough rain, that's why in the
past 20 or 30 years Turkey has done lots of water projects in this area, like big
dams sometimes for power, sometimes for
irrigation, in those cases when they planned building some big dams they knew
they knew that there were some ancient sites underneath, but they had to make
the dams, so they started making lots of rescue excavations, so as a result of
many of these rescue excavations in the past 20-30 years archaeologists have
found lots of interesting discoveries. Things are going very fast and we're
learning a lot from these new discoveries. Now let's focus on Göbekli Tepe
a little bit. Göbekli Tepe is actually this area, this is an
aerial photo of the area as you see, it is very dry, it is rocky, it is arid, it
looks arid and so on. How did this happen? As you see, there is a little tree in
here, this is probably the highest hill in the whole area, it is approximately
say 770 meters high from the sea level which makes 2500 feet and the hillside
in front of it was was an agricultural land with not enough water but still
possible to get crops from there, just opposite this place is a village called
Örencik and this Göbekli Tepe site is very close to the Syrian border there
is a nearby big city called Sanliurfa like half an hour drive from the
center of Sanliurfa city, if you go to the east, you are going to reach this
area, and this highest hill in here has a mulberry tree and this is what it is
Near the mulberry tree, there are a few burials, some graves and they have been
there for ages. This mulberry tree is called as the Wish Hill and we know that
every year in the equinox time when the spring starts people living around, kind
of nomadic people, they would come here, you see, nothing happens by coincidence,
people from this area every year in spring
they come here with their herds of animals at a certain time during the
equinox and they have some festivities there for fertility, they have some
sacrifices there, they eat and they have fun and they enjoy, so nothing happens by
coincidence, so this place even from before has been known as an important
place and people, villagers living in that area would go to this place and
sacrifice their animals wishing for more fertility and so on. In 1963,
archeologists, one from the Chicago University and another from the Istanbul
University. From Chicago University it was Robert Braidwood, from the Istanbul
University, there is a lady archaeologist Halet Cambel, they come to this area they
go all around the eastern parts and they see some pieces of stones sticking out
from the fields of the farmers pieces of big stones and they see the
graves there as well and they think this would be a Medieval-Byzantine era
Cemetery so they write it down in their report, but they don't stay there it is
recorded in their report in their survey from 1963 already but not a Neolithic
place, but as a Byzantine place, medieval place. The owner of the land in here is a
gentleman called Shavak Yildiz, this is the guy. This guy, while plowing his
field, he is far away from his village, he doesn't have water there, but he needs
those crops from wheat so he comes here and he plows and while
plowing his land he finds a statue, a statue of a human with a big sexual
organ, he gets surprised he has a few more pieces of these stones. Maybe with
an expectation to obtain some money he puts these sculpture pieces in a bag and
he puts them on his horse cart and he goes to Sanliurfa Archaeological
Museum. Maybe many hours just to get there so when he reaches the museum the
museum director doesn't believe these pieces would be real pieces, you see they
are very coarsely made and he believes that this man, this villager was trying
to get money from the museum and so on. He says take them back we don't need them.
After carrying them in his horse cart for many hours he gets really angry and
he says take them it is all yours I would never carry them back anymore.
Then the museum director understands his seriousness and the museum director
chooses the safest way, he says all right leave them
here and then he calls his men, he makes a report, he writes down everything that
he gets from this man, they put them in a bag.
He buys him a lunch and then puts them in the storage place in the museum, and
this is one part of the story. Now we're going to look at the other part of the
story. This is the Archeological Museum in Sanliurfa, this is the new version of
the old museum. When that farmer went to the museum it was the earlier museum,
it's much smaller than this. This is a section in the museum called as Nevali Çöri
Nevali Cori is the name of an archaeological site and this site
was going to stay under the water of the Ataturk Dam on the Euphrates River so
that's why they had to make some rescue excavations there, the name is Nevali Cori
so excavations, rescue excavations over there took place between 1983 and
1991. One of the archaeologists that worked there was Hauptman, German and the
other one was Klaus Schmidt Klaus Schmidt is the man for us today. So we're
going to talk about him and his discovery of Gobekli Tepe. Klaus Schmidt
worked with Hauptman for the Nevali Cori excavations before the water
filled in the whole area. After the excavations ended there, Klaus
Schmidt, with all the experience that he obtained from Nevali Cori, he was
looking for a new place to excavate. He was going through the literature, he was
going around the villages and so on. One day he was invited for a meal at the
Museum of Archaeology in the earlier, old museum and they are friends with the
museum director and the other employees of the museum and so on. Klaus Schmidt is
finished with his dig, who knows if he cannot find a new place he is going to
go back to Germany, this is the case. But he is very curious, he keeps asking about
new discoveries, new finds, new information and so on. Suddenly during
the meal, the museum director remembers the villager, the farmer that brought
those sculpture. He tells his men why don't you bring that bag which we kept
many years ago in our storage place. So they bring the
bag, they open the bag and Klaus, the moment he sees these pieces of sculpture,
he recognizes because the pieces that he sees there are very similar to what he
found in Nevali Cori. Now he has the experience, now he has the knowledge, now
he can combine it in his mind. He gets excited, he asks where did you get them
from, and he gets, he gathers all of the information and then he goes to the
place. He finds that mulberry tree area and all the flint pieces are glittering
with the sunshine and he sees pieces of rocks sticking out from the field he
recognizes, he identifies this place to be a Neolithic place. He goes back to
Germany and he comes back to Turkey and they get the necessary permissions and
with the permission of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 1995
Klaus Schmidt starts excavating Göbekli Tepe. up until 2014
Klaus worked there hectically and very unexpectedly in 2014,
Klaus Schmidt unfortunately passed away so the excavations are still continuing
there but without Klaus. Before the excavation, this was the area.
There, our landmark is the mulberry tree that's why I always point at the
mulberry tree so that we know where we are looking at. And when the excavations
started this is what happened in the same area. Where is our mulberry tree? In
here, let me go back, you see the mulberry tree is here, and this is all empty, look
what happens the mulberry tree here and they started excavating this area first
and then more around here, around here and here the whole area, the excavation
area of Gobekli Tepe is approximately 300 meters by 300 meters, this is such a
large area so by feet it is 1,000 feet by 1,000 feet, in this land we could fit
12 soccer fields, football fields so imagine the size. Only like 5% maybe 10%
of the whole area has been excavated so far. They started with this section first
in the earlier times of the excavation this is what I remember, this is a picture
that I took many years ago. I used to take groups there as a tour guide and we
would be able to walk in this very primitive walkway, getting very close
to the pieces that they excavated. There you see these are my American
travelers who are looking at things from so close
see the reliefs of animals on the t-shaped stones and so on this is how it
was today it has become like this you know in archeology as you dig things get
vulnerable when you take things out when the winter comes, harsh winter conditions
snow, wind, rain so they damage the place that's why they had to protect the place
with a cover with their roof like this with some international funds a few
years ago they were able to make this awning now they made a walking path
still underneath the awning, you can walk around it, but you cannot go into the
place anymore. So what did they find in this place? What did Klaus find in the
excavations of Gobekli Tepe? He found gigantic size t-shaped megaliths
gigantic stones, steles so as you see it makes a t-shape and they are very big
and they are placed like in circles and so on Klaus
couldn't locate any traces of living in this area and he also noticed that the
date of these megaliths would go back to 10,000 BCE 10,000 is the beginning of the
Neolithic Age it is 12,000 years before now, and although Neolithic Age started
here and there obviously he couldn't find settled life traces in this area so
especially the first 500 years of Gobekli Tepe was thought to be pre-
agriculture, because domestic seeds appeared only
500 years later, so the beginning of Göbekli Tepe today is 10,000 and
first 500 years of Gobekli Tepe is nomadic and no living traces and no
traces of agriculture, more hunter-gatherer type of people, only 500
years later we start seeing the domesticated seeds and we understood
that it was still the time of hunter-gatherers in the first five
hundred years of Gobekli Tepe. Let me show you a plan of Gobekli Tepe, so
this is the whole area 12 soccer fields would fit in here. The mulberry
tree should be somewhere here, the first four of the enclosures with the t-shaped
stones placed in the circle were found in here and they named these enclosures
in the time that they excavated. This is enclosure A, and then they excavated
enclosure B, and then enclosure C, D, E and F. Although they didn't excavate the
other parts yet they did the georadar scanning of the whole area
what is underground to be able to understand that and they found that
still underground there were many more of these circular enclosures underground
unexcavated and the total number of circular buildings would be more than 20
altogether, but so far it is six circular enclosures and each circular building
each enclosure has about 10-12 T-shaped stones in the circle. 10-12
T-shaped stones in the circle
and two of these t-shaped stones in the center, did I say
10-12 around the circle, and 2 of them would be in the center and these
two are higher than the ones around so if you calculated all of the megaliths,
t-shaped stones in the whole area it would make totally like 250 or 300
stones. These megaliths, these t-shaped stones, these steles are about
1.5 - 6 m high, so a maximum 6 meters high, that would make
from 5 to 20 feet and the maximum weight of these stones per each will not be
more than 20 tons, so this is the situation that we have. Here comes our next
question, these t-shaped stones what are they made of?
What kind of tools did they use? And how did they shape them? [Music]
