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Can the enclosures of Göbekli Tepe be seen as examples of the earliest recognized shrines, even temples, that completely exclude domestic functions? What was the social organization of the community that gathered their efforts to carve out large pillars, up to 7m tall, and occasionally to dress them with elaborate images of mainly wild and male animals? To what end was such a large labor pool mobilized? How big was the area around the site from which people were drawn in order to construct and/or visit this particular place? Was there a connection between broadly contemporaneous examples of intentional intensification in the use of wild plant resources across

Symbolism and Sacrifice at Göbekli Tepe Catalhöyük, dating from 6,400 to 6,200 bce, presents evidence of one of the earliest human settlements: its construction, its social organization, its symbolic, artistic, and ritual life. A lesser known, but much earlier and potentially even more signiicant link in the evidential chain of the story of “how we became human” is provided by another archaeological site, situated some 450 miles east-southeast of Çatalhöyük. his site, generally recognized to be a temple complex, has been discovered at Göbekli Tepe (literal translation: “Potbelly Hill”) in southeastern Turkey, near the present-day frontier with Syria. It lies about fifteen kilometers northeast of the present-day city of Şanlıurfa,

Göbekli Tepe and the Identification of Temples in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Near East Archaeologists have proposed that quite a number of structures dating to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and B in southwest Asia were nondomestic ritual buildings, sometimes described specifically as temples or shrines, and these figure large in some interpretations of social change in the Near Eastern Neolithic. Yet the evidence supporting the identification of cult buildings is often equivocal or depends on ethnocentric distinctions between sacred and profane spaces. This paper explores the case of Gobekli Tepe, a large Pre-Pottery Neolithic site in Turkey that its excavator claims consisted only of temples, to illustrate weaknesses

Göbekli Tepe is a prehistoric, man-made megalithic hill site in today’s south- east Turkey which is riddled with walled circular and rectangular enclosures lined by and surrounding T-shaped monolithic pillars proposed to represent supernatural humanoid beings. We examined if H-shaped carvings in relief on some of these pillars might have a symbolic meaning rather than merely depicting an object of practical use. On Pillar 18 in Enclosure D, for example, one such “H” is bracketed by two semi-circles. An almost identical symbol appears as a logogram in the now extinct hieroglyphic language of the Bronze Age Luwians of Anatolia and there it meant the word for “god”.

Many ancient compositions were overlaid upon a template of a Body. The Bodies need not have been human but could also be based on animals, insects, or even plants and inanimate objects. The “T” shape of the pillar was based on the basic gesture sign that represented, below1 (the surface). That, in itself may be enough of a clue to tell us that the Pillar's form was not that of a human. The “T” Form was also compounded to include a horizontal rectangle and a vertical rectangle. These signs indicated a horizontal plane or place and a vertical plane or place (one having height and depth). Gobekli Tepe

The Plaquette appears to have been made from a schist like stone. Such a stone would sparkle in the Sun and would attract attention. An association may have been made with the sparkles and the appearance of water particles and (red) female-spirit signs glistening in the sunlight. This would have been congruent with the ancient cosmology that involved evaporation of water as a sign for ascension.

The Balikligol Statue, also known as “Urfa Man”, is a 13,500-year-old statue that is 5’8” (174 cm) tall. The Female figure from Sardinia is approximately 6, 000 years old and is 8.8 inches (21 cm) tall. The Female ‘s Legs, the walks, are in the Form of arising signs, positional, in the east and west,1 while the Male Figure doesn't have Legs but the area is in the Form of the sign for, the place of arising, in the east and west.

Recent Discoveries and New Interpretations The most famous Pre-pottery Neolithic site of Anatolia, Göbekli Tepe, since 1994 has been the subject of intensive studies due to its peculiar characteristics, linked to the presence of both circular buildings and the so-called anthropomorphic T-shaped pillars. It was supposed that its discovery would have been one of a kind, but in the next few years scholars revealed the existence of similar settlements in the area of Şanlıurfa Province. These sites, still far from being investigated, share with Göbekli Tepe the same archaeological evidences, including chronological features, size and architectural and iconographic traits. The aim of this article is to focus on the

After discarding, on historical and structural grounds, the idea that Neolithic sumptuary buildings could represent temples, it is assumed that the pillars of Göbekli Tepe relate to a system of belief illustrated by a mythology featuring interacting mythical beings. Like a mirror, the form taken by this symbolical interrelation must reflect something of that society’s own form of internal social relations. Numerous ethnological studies, like the work of Lévi-Strauss, have shown that among primitive societies2, the exchange of women is the most crucial subject of social interaction. These matrimonial rules exist under a great number of forms, but there is one universal principle determining them all and it

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