Karahan Tepe: The Mysteries of The Oldest Known Settlement

[Music] foreign in the 1990s an archaeological site was discovered that changed the way that historians view human history dating back nearly 11 500 years gebekla Tepe pushed back the date of human megalithic architecture by Millennia and this hearkened in a new golden age in archeology one that saw a cradle of civilization here in Southeastern turkey but after the discovery of gobekla Tepe archaeologists set their sights on another location one that they hoped to inform their understanding of gebekla Tepe further however when they began digging there they found that it was unlike anything they had ever seen it is a site Which is far older far less understood and far more mysterious and today it is still not even open to the public however I am proud to say that my team and I have been granted unique access to this ancient site and for the very first time a real archaeologist has been permitted to film here and share the world ladies and gentlemen my name is Milo Rossi and it is a privilege and an honor to welcome you to karahan Tempeh foreign Tepe was initially discovered in 1997 but wouldn't be until 2000 before the site was finally surveyed between 2000 and 2011 the archaeological site was surveyed as part of the chandlerfa city cultural inventory initial excavations of the site indicated that it also had tea pillars leading archaeologists to believe that it may be related to the same culture that bill quebecue Tepe but they found that the construction at this site was completely different unlike the large t-stones at quebeco Tepe which were carved separately and erected in a specialized platform carved into the Bedrock karon tebe is unique in that almost the entire site is carved directly out of the Bedrock itself oh there's a little bit altitude here yeah I'm noticing as you'll remember about quebeco Tepe it also comes at an inflection point where Humanity was just beginning to discover Agriculture and moving away from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle tarahan Tepe has been dated to the pre-pottery Neolithic the same time frame as the much more well-known Gobekli Tepe and this site is also of an immense Antiquity with the site being dated back between 9500 and 10 000 BCE making this ancient site nearly 12 000 years old every site of human occupation pre-dating karahan Tepe is one that was inhabited by transient hunter-gatherers people who were either migratory or were merely passing through the area this means that karahan Tepe is the oldest permanent settlement ever discovered on the face of our planet and if you look over the hill to my shoulder you can see why people would have wanted to live here as a group that we're still primarily Hunters this would have offered a vantage point that you Can See For Miles it's also worth noting that the climate would have been vastly different at the end of the last glacial maximum the world was cooler and wetter than it is today and as we were traveling to get here we passed countless dry riverbeds with massive exposed stones that showed evidence of wear from hundreds if not thousands of years of Rapid water movement and so when we look at this Valley we have to remember that we are seeing it as we see it in our modern climate and not as those who built Cara on tebe would have seen it in their Heyday damn that's amazing yeah and like many of the sites around here water plays a large role as we will see shortly foreign [Music] Tepe is this one which appears to be some form of large pool some archaeologists believe that this was supposed to be intentionally filled with water and there is enough evidence to back that up with several carved channels around it you can actually see one of the channels sort of uh in the rock over there which leads down like a bit of a drainage spout and on this side you can see another one of those drainage channels this one however is a lot deeper this room with the Central Pool also has a bench on the back side and this is the first of many carvings that we are going to see at this site along the base of this bench is a carved image of a serpent which runs from that end all the way to somewhere in the middle here it's a little hard to tell because of how weathered it is however on the far right we can see a carving of a wolf or a dog of some kind [Music] arguably one of the most well-known features of Cara Han Tepe is the penis room carved directly out of the Bedrock this room depicts 10 enormous Stone phalluses however there is one pillar which is unlike the rest while the ten penises are carved out of the stone itself there was only one pillar which was actually moved here if you get a little bit closer you can actually see it it's this long thin pillar which sits right at the center while you can't see it from this angle this pillar is home to the first of many leopard carvings that we will see at this site and is only the tip of the iceberg of the animal significance the penis room shows a similar emphasis as gobekla Tepe did on masculinity It is believed that the tosteppler cultures were ones who put a large emphasis on reproduction and fertility this is likely due to the harsh environment that these people lived in one where their lifespans would have only been around 35 years so in a world as harsh as the one that these people would have lived in it's very likely that a large emphasis would have been put on reproduction in order to continue the cultural Traditions arguably the 11th most prominent feature of the penis room is the head which overlooks the entire site some have claimed that it is a serpent others claim that it is some sort of deity but nobody is certain the thing that I love the most about Quran tempeh is the fact that it's still an active archaeological site and just being here it feels so much more unique to many of the other sites we've been to on this trip for example you can just walk across the surfaces of the Rocks here and you can just find your own carved water channels that still sit in the Bedrock for example we can see two very clearly here that meet in the middle and continue to run underneath these stones and just disappear into the ground there's also this which seems like another man-made carving I don't really know what this is maybe it's part of a larger carving I don't know it looks too thin to be another water Channel but it's definitely something what's so neat about this being an active archaeological site is as you walk around you will just pass a test pit like this where you can just kind of see the tops of some Stone sticking out of the ground and it's amazing to think that we could be back here in a couple years and you know what could be hidden under the ground right beneath our feet now while mine is not the first film crew that has been allowed here mine has been the first archaeological film crew out here although there has been some major developments since the last time anyone has shot here that being that this site has been confirmed to have dwellings in it previous interpretations of this site have relied on it being more of a cultural and ceremonial Center and had no idea that it was a dwelling and they actually have found a couple Graves at this site though they aren't fully understood uh there was one that they were working on Excavating who they believed to be someone of importance but the structural Integrity of the hill was preventing them from digging any further so it is interesting that we are going to be able to learn something about this culture uh within this hill because there are human burials here which is something that I don't believe they have found as of yet at goekli Tepe but one of the most incredible things about karahan tempeh is that it is at most five percent excavated as we walk across this hill the entire site is littered with the tops of tea pillars meaning that what we are looking at is not a small Hilltop settlement but a massive Mountain that was completely covered in a settlement at one time for example people right here if you look at the ground there is a top of a t-pillar literally just sticking out of the floor and so it's amazing to stand here and touch this and realize that underneath us is something that is going to change the way we view this site and I think that that's one of the most important things to note is that anyone who tries to make an interpretation on this place is doing it based on a tiny amount of evidence foreign [Music] I took a wrong turn at Karan Tepe and now I'm in the jungle I was told there'd be fun and games but all I'm getting is eaten alive by mosquitoes it was cooler in my head the observant among you will have noticed that this doesn't look like the Arid foothills of Southeastern turkey and you'd be right about that because it isn't it's the cloud forest of South America I'm currently on a Simon stint in South America doing some work looking at some potential archaeological sites and doing surveys of hummingbirds all of which are things I'm not going to be talking about here but what I do want to talk about is that I'm going to be doing another tour for those of you that don't know all the videos of Turkey were part of a tour that I guided and I am honored to have been asked to guide another one this time to the sacred Valley of Peru the upcoming tours will take place the last week of September and the first week of October of this year of Our Lord 2023. I made that joke when I announced turkey didn't I during this Expedition my guest and I will be exploring some of the mega colossal Incan constructions such as olante tombow saxai woman and of course Machu Picchu tickets for the two archaeological tours in the last week of September and first week of October are on sale now get them while the getting's good you get to come hang out with me my awesome cameraman Henry and it's going to be whale of a time you'll get to kind of see the behind the scenes of the videos and get to see the sites self and the second week of October we'll be doing a bit more of a journey into the mine as I've also been asked to participate in an Ayahuasca Retreat so if I come back ranting and raving about aliens you'll know why so for those of you who are interested in the traditional medicine side of South American culture you can join me for that as well and if you like the sound of all of this there's also a package deal where you can do both the last week of the archaeological tour and the traditional medicine Retreat and last but not least this project is being done with the community garden who do charity work in South America they work directly with and are partly run by indigenous South Americans making sure that the funds are being directed to the right places and that everything is being done ethically and appropriately and because of this all of the excess proceeds that don't go to you know paying the staff and paying for the place we're staying are going to be going to the community garden charity and that is a pretty good cause but for now I am going to be losing my light in about an hour and I have more hummingbirds than I need to take pictures of so let's get right back in the video if you want to know more about the Retreats I will leave a link to the video where I talk about it in the description hope you guys are enjoying the turkey series by the way really really humid here see you guys in a bit as we enter the center of the site we are faced with the largest uh currently excavated room once again this site is also carved directly out of the Bedrock and features benches which are carved into the landscape on the back now we're going to show a picture because from here we can't see it very well but on those three pillars on the back if you look at the leftmost pillar there is a depiction of someone with a leopard print pattern on them now recently there has been a misconception that this is supposed to be some sort of depiction of a lost uh civilization who inspired this site however to draw that interpretation from that stone is to completely neglect all of the other discoveries at this site Cara on Tepe is literally with depictions of leopards and now that may seem rather unusual being in Southeastern turkey it's not a place that you would really expect to find leopards but we have to imagine that this climate would have been vastly different than what it is today in fact leopards are not even a stranger to some of the longer residents in this area with there being an endemic species up until the 1970s archaeologists have also noted reoccurring motifs at a lot of these Templar sites for example like quebecletepe there is a huge emphasis on foxes which dominate the pillars all across the site whereas at Quran Tepe the favorite iconography seems to be lepers and there is physical evidence of this as well with leopard bones being found at this site this supports the idea that the image found on that stone is not supposed to be some sort of deity but rather a depiction of ceremony or somebody wearing a leopard skin this is further supported by both quebeco Tepe and karahan Tepe not containing any creatures that are mythical every animal found at these sites is something which exists in reality much like at gobekla Tepe the Builders of karahan Tepe had a fascination with animals not only are there depictions of animals such as snakes and birds found carved into the Rock but there have also been some smaller artifacts found as well among these is a small piece of stone believed to have once been part of a pillar and it depicts three different now broken animal forms the face and hind legs of two different rabbits and the back legs of a gazelle these would have been prolific big game animals for the people of karahan Tepe at the time and still persist in massive quantities in the valley today a second and more elaborate smaller artifact discovered is a large carved Stone head this is a fairly unique Discovery as both gobekla Tepe and karahan Tepe lack a lot of sculptures showing human heads however this carving is quite ornate it shows stylized brow ridges a large nose and even rows of barred teeth what the statue represents whether or not it was once attached to a larger body or whether it was broken intentionally are still unknown however in my opinion the most interesting artifact recovered from carhan Tepe is known as the totem pole it is a small statuette that bears a superficial resemblance to a totem pole from Native American cultures this small carving seems to depict a seated or squatting man carrying a leopard on his back an interpretation which is corroborated by the other leopard iconography found around the site including the large carving of a man with a leopard print pattern on him which some have erroneously claimed is evidence of aliens or some sort of lost Atlantean civilization but is in all likelihood a man wearing a leopard skin the karahan totem is one of two totems found from the tus teplar people with a second small totem being found at Gobekli Tepe this carving depicts what appears to be several people stacked on top of one another and the similarities between these two carvings highlights the cultural diffusion that would have been present in this area at the time leopards are not the only animal whose Bones have been found at this site archaeologists who have been responsible for the research and discoveries at karahan Tepe have also oh my god I've also broken their ankles on these rocks probably have also discovered the bones of crocodiles giraffes wolves and bears again all animals that one doesn't really think of being endemic to the Anatolian step but we have to remember that the environment would have been vastly different at the time archaeologists are still not entirely sure whether or not these were species which were hunted directly here or if they were part of a vast Trade Network and evidence for a vast Trade Network is supported just beyond these bones archaeologists at kurahontepe have also found obsidian tools and with no obsidian occurring anywhere within a 200-mile radius of this site it is clear that they were either going on Long Expeditions or part of a trade Network in order to get it [Music] the other thing that you really notice standing at the site is just how big it is this room is absolutely massive and it's amazing to think about what this place would have looked like in its Heyday before all of these pillars had been collapsed and covered with you know rain and dirt for 12 000 years it's pretty amazing to just be walking around here and just be able to look at the ground and the things that you'll see like this stone is probably something that there's not a paper written about and is something that's probably not going to be talked about in most Publications but just looking at the craftsmanship of this and realizing that this circular Stone was carved by someone and it had an intent and a purpose and here it is after 12 000 years sitting right in front of us man it's amazing I'm bad one of the features of this site that I find the most interesting is this pillar now this is a very recent discovery only excavated within the last year or so and you'll notice on this pillar a similar Motif to one found at Gobekli tebe and that is depicting the pillar itself as being a human torso with two arms on either side well one arm on either side but two arms in total however this one is a little bit different as the hands on each of these arms that come and meet at the uh the front of the t-pillar each have eight fingers and now even though this site is pretty different from gebekla Tepe it's very similar in a lot of ways as well it's also interesting to look at the tops of these stones and see how weathered the very tips are when we walk around over on some of the surrounding Hills we're going to see these tops of stone sticking out and they are not the brown color that you see in the excavation site but that kind of white weathered rock that you can see at the top and so when we see the tops of those stones sticking out of these fields I want you to try and imagine what's below it literally 95 of a site that is completely unexcavated it's really compelling to think about and one that just lets your mind run wild since kurohan Tepe is only about five percent excavated you can walk pretty much all over this you can walk pretty much all over this hill and find evidence of all of these sites that have yet to be uncovered now it's a little bit hard to tell about the stones in our feet but what I can tell you is that this hill over here absolutely contains another archaeological site on the edge of this hill is a very obvious circle of stones you can see what I mean here about the top of the weathered tea pillars as sort of this more gray color but around my feet is what is undeniably another extension of this archaeological site I wish I had more things to say while standing here you know give some sort of academic Spiel but really all I can do is just be absolutely baffled by the fact that I am standing on this site right now and knowing that somewhere below my feet is something that could completely change the way that we think about human history Henry get over here touch this rock rock touch all right much like Gobekli Tepe karahan Tepe also shows evidence of being buried and just like gobekla Tepe the burying seems to have taken place through a combination of intentional burial and landslides some have claimed that these structures were buried as some sort of Time Capsule to warn future civilizations about their impending doom but that is a little bit ridiculous and if we use just a tiny bit of critical thinking it makes much more sense to understand that this landscape would have been shifting at the time that these buildings were constructed large Earthen walls exposed to erosion would slide down and bury these sites leaving the inhabitants with the option of whether to try and excavate the whole thing again or simply finish the job themselves and bury the rest of it enclosures that show evidence of being entirely intentionally buried were likely just finished being used and were therefore covered up to reclaim the land as the people went on to work on other greater newer projects and if you follow me down here you can see more of these pillars sticking out of the ground this right here is actually evidence of an illegal dig now I don't think they got deep enough to actually affect anything but they did manage to uncover this top of the t-pillar so this confirms that the things that are standing around us are probably just more of these I'm hoping to be able to come back here as soon as possible and be able to monitor the excavation as it goes on and it's amazing to think that I'm standing on top of something that I may be able to return in a few years and have it excavated and know what I'm standing on top of right now there's more of them down here I'm not going to walk all the way down there because we got other stuff to look at but you can see these little pillars just sticking out all over the Mountainside and so when you try and use your mind's eye to reconstruct this place you're not just looking at one small Enclave on the side of the hill over there you are looking at a mountain that was completely occupied something which was totally dominated by this culture that decided to build all across it the evidence for Flint working is literally everywhere if you come to the ground right here at this sort of exposed uh washout you could find little tiny pieces of Flint just all over the ground and most impressively this wasn't found by me this was found by someone else that we're here with a uh a hand ax just here is sitting for about 12 000 years ah that's amazing I need to like get some of its power into my like soul I cannot believe this I need to take a picture of that oh my God I want to be professional and you know give some talk about this but I can't I'm holding a 12 000 year old hand ax sitting on top of the oldest settlement that we've ever discovered I I don't really have I don't really have a professional speech to give right now oh my God this is cool let's see what else is around here yeah there is just evidence of these look at this that's like a very obviously flaked piece of flint with a really sharp edge on it it is it's just like looking through an old like stone hand ax tool Factory and hand axes are not the only things that we're finding here there's also pieces of bone and this is not something you know from the last 50 years this is a very very old piece of bone it's so hard it practically has the consistency of stone I'm not nearly good enough with bones to be able to tell what this is in fact even if I was this is probably not enough bone to go off of but it's amazing that this you know could be you know some animal that hasn't lived here in the last 10 000 years well I guess this guy hasn't lived in the 10 000 years no matter what actually there's a dirt pile over here and we're gonna see if there's anything floating around that has been sticked up so it seems like people have been making a little pile here of all of the Flint tools they've been finding but these are just beautiful I mean the craftsmanship on these look at the you can see that in the Sun the ridges on that and yeah oh my God look at that that is just amazing history baby look at this there's another drainage cut here and here well something that I think is important to note is as we've been walking here this I've been repeatedly referring to the people that build karahan Tepe and that's because we don't have another name for them despite the cultural similarities between the people at karahontepe and quebeco Tepe they have not been assigned a culture and these two sites are just the tip of an iceberg there are 40 other confirmed Hill sites which have structures just like this on them and that estimate goes as high as 120 and those are just the ones we know about and yet despite all of this material evidence they still have not been given a cultural name and as an archaeologist it puts me into a bit of a weird position where what more do you need to define a culture we are standing on top of a hill that contains the oldest dwellings in the world worked into the Bedrock of the mountain itself it is a site that is Advanced and sophisticated one that has boutiques that are bound at sites that are upwards of 50 miles away and yet we still don't have a name for these people and it's kind of easy to see here how archeology still has a very modern European bias where just about every culture in Europe no matter or how small their footprint is has a name and it kind of blows my mind that there has still not been a name assigned to these people if I were to go out on a limb I would assume that it will probably be the test Hepler civilization considering that that's what these ills have been called but as of right now they are nameless despite leaving behind more evidence that many civilizations in Europe but why does it matter to give this civilization a name you could argue that it doesn't really matter and that the presence of this site is one that is confirmation enough that this group of people existed but I think that the real crime is that by not giving them a name it removes the human aspect from this site it allows us to let our minds wander to much more fanciful and outlandish interpretations of the things that we see here by not giving a name to these people it can let people grasp at straws to try and explain this in a way which is completely unreasonable as I've mentioned before many of these sites in Southeastern turkey have had countless misinterpretations of them peddled on the internet but each and every one of them operates by removing the human aspect of these sites it is much easier to explain these sites as the works of people who were inspired by some lost Advanced civilization and it's much more complicated to try and look at the actual cultural development of these sites and so by stripping these people of a name to their civilization we open the door for them to be completely bastardized you never see anyone questioning the origins of Ancient Rome or any of those places civilizations which are well documented and have countless instances of cultural depictions left behind and this site is no different I promise you within the next 10 years we will know more about this civilization than many in Europe and the sooner that we are actually able to begin to look at these sites as culturally connected to one another and not as isolated incidents we as a species will be able to learn more about our history [Music] one of the particularly interesting features of karahan Tepe is this an unfinished tea pillar it still sits in the Limestone Bedrock around it and was never actually removed or placed anywhere and it's still if you look under here you can see that it's still completely connected but they had started to cut into the Rock underneath and up around this side you can see that they had fully managed to actually excavate around it oh my God is this another hand ax I don't know it's just a lake this looks like something man-made though look at this this one also has some interesting kind of circles in it don't mind the you know 12 000 year old hand ax Shard here there's like this kind of circular indentation and a hole in the center no one is exactly sure as to why they never uh you know finish this tea pillar but I do think that this is a case of the simplest explanation being the most likely just look at how big this thing is they probably started we're like well I don't want to move that that's way too big so they just made a smaller one [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] garon Tepe is one of the most fascinating archaeological sites that I have ever heard of as a kid I grew up thinking that I lived at a time when everything had already been discovered that every blank corner of the map had been filled in and that there was nothing left to learn but in the tuskeppler hills of Southern turkey we learned that this is not the case because even today there is more to be discovered and within our lifetime the idea of human history is going to be completely Rewritten I'd like to thank you all very much for watching and I cannot express what an honor it has been to be able to come here to the cradle of civilization itself to talk about some of the oldest settlements ever discovered it is truly a dream come true and to be able to share with you all is something that brings me an immense amount of Joy it is truly an honor and a privilege to be able to film here and to be able to convey the significance and the exciting history of this site to you all once again I would like to thank you all very much for watching ladies and gentlemen my name is Milo Rossi remember to stay curious staying poisoning and remember that there is still so much left to discover [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Miniminuteman

Views: 166,147

Keywords: History, Archaeology, science, education, documentary, ruins, ruin, ancient, discover, discovery, interesting, video essay, adventure, fact, turkey, classical history, explore, world history, news, geopolitics, mystery, mysterious, tomb, fun fact, anthropology, bones, cool, creepy, gobekli tepe, gobeklitepe, deep dive, rabbit hole, essay

Id: 8EaKFKYPXVk

Length: 27min 27sec (1647 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 11 2023