Göbekli Tepe - The Oldest Temple in the World
Göbekli Tepe, in southeastern Turkey, is a site now being excavated that bridges the Paleolithic and the Neolithic. Dating back to 11,500 BCE, it is the earliest known candidate for the origins of both agriculture and institutional religion. It contains as many as 20 stone circles composed of sculpted megaliths of 10 to 50 tons each.
Göbek is Turkish for belly, navel, core, heart, center, or midpoint. (Göbek dansı is Turkish for belly dance.) Göbekli is the adjective derived from it, meaning something like paunchy, potbellied, naveled; with a heart; with a central design. Tepe means hill, here it means an archaeological mound, the equivalent of a "Tell." The name of Göbekli Tepe, literally 'hill that has a navel' could also be translated as 'a mound with a heart' or 'the mound that is the Omphalos'.
It's an extraordinary archaeological find, pushing the dates of architecture and religion several thousand years back into the Mesolithic. Göbekli Tepe is a few hundred miles east of Çatalhöyük, in southeastern Anatolia, the region where Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Anatolia meet-- the upper Euphrates basin, the northernmost tip of the Fertile Crescent. Southeastern Anatolia is where the earliest forms of agriculture first began, during the centuries after the founding of Göbekli Tepe.
The archaeological evidence here indicates that the socioeconomic changes resulting from the institutionalization of religion are what caused the rise of agriculture. The site is thought to have played a key function in the transition to agriculture, as the necessary social organization needed for the creation of these structures went hand-in-hand with the organized exploitation of wild crops. In fact, recent DNA analysis of modern domesticated wheat compared with wild wheat has shown that its DNA is closest in structure to wild einkorn wheat found at a mountain called Karacadağ, 20 miles away from the site, leading one to believe that this is where modern wheat was first domesticated.
Gathering together for religion meant that they needed to feed more people. So they started cultivating the wild grasses. But this switch to agriculture put pressure on the landscape; trees were cut down, the herds of game were dispersed. What was once a paradisaical land became a dustbowl. This switch took place around 8,000 BCE. The temple of Göbekli Tepe was deliberately covered with earth around this time.
Miriam Roberts Dexter, in her paper "Ancient Felines and the Great-Goddess in Anatolia: Kubaba and Cybele," traced the iconography of the Anatolian Great Mother goddess (known as Cybele in Classical times) as far back as Göbekli Tepe. A "display" sort of female figure, dating to ca. 8,000 BCE, was found carved on rock in an area between pillars containing depictions of felines. The Great Mother always appears as a woman with lions throughout Her depictions from 8,000 BCE to 500 CE. A sculpture of Her with Her lions was found at Çatalhöyük dated to ca. 6,200 BCE. The discovery of the felines-and-woman sculpture at Göbekli Tepe pushes the origin of this iconography back another 1,800 years.
Religious sculptures at Göbekli Tepe show a tradition of shamanism and its relation to wild animals. The date of the felines-and-woman sculpture is from near the end of Göbekli Tepe culture. The origins of Göbekli Tepe go back to a late form of Paleolithic religion, a shamanism of wild beasts practiced by hunter-gatherers, whose origins are as old as humanity itself. At that site, in the late stage of its culture, the human-beast interface developed into the image of a woman with wild cats, the "Mistress of Animals." This was the form in which She would continue to be known through the ages. It is therefore no coincidence that the Anatolian worship of Magna Mater down to Classical Greek and Roman times was associated with wild things and wild places. In the Homeric Hymn to the Mother of the Gods, which dates from the earliest stratum of Greek literature, She takes delight in
ευαδεν ηδε λυκων κλαγγη χαροπων τε λεοντων
ουρεα τ' ηχηεντα και ‘υληεντες εναυλοι.
the cry of wolves and bright-eyed lions,
the echoing mountains and the wooded glens.
Göbekli Tepe is the missing link between Paleolithic hunter-gatherer shamanism and the religion of Magna Mater, which with its roots reaching back 10,000 years is the world's oldest religious tradition.
Göbek is Turkish for belly, navel, core, heart, center, or midpoint. (Göbek dansı is Turkish for belly dance.) Göbekli is the adjective derived from it, meaning something like paunchy, potbellied, naveled; with a heart; with a central design. Tepe means hill, here it means an archaeological mound, the equivalent of a "Tell." The name of Göbekli Tepe, literally 'hill that has a navel' could also be translated as 'a mound with a heart' or 'the mound that is the Omphalos'.
It's an extraordinary archaeological find, pushing the dates of architecture and religion several thousand years back into the Mesolithic. Göbekli Tepe is a few hundred miles east of Çatalhöyük, in southeastern Anatolia, the region where Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Anatolia meet-- the upper Euphrates basin, the northernmost tip of the Fertile Crescent. Southeastern Anatolia is where the earliest forms of agriculture first began, during the centuries after the founding of Göbekli Tepe.
The archaeological evidence here indicates that the socioeconomic changes resulting from the institutionalization of religion are what caused the rise of agriculture. The site is thought to have played a key function in the transition to agriculture, as the necessary social organization needed for the creation of these structures went hand-in-hand with the organized exploitation of wild crops. In fact, recent DNA analysis of modern domesticated wheat compared with wild wheat has shown that its DNA is closest in structure to wild einkorn wheat found at a mountain called Karacadağ, 20 miles away from the site, leading one to believe that this is where modern wheat was first domesticated.
Gathering together for religion meant that they needed to feed more people. So they started cultivating the wild grasses. But this switch to agriculture put pressure on the landscape; trees were cut down, the herds of game were dispersed. What was once a paradisaical land became a dustbowl. This switch took place around 8,000 BCE. The temple of Göbekli Tepe was deliberately covered with earth around this time.
Miriam Roberts Dexter, in her paper "Ancient Felines and the Great-Goddess in Anatolia: Kubaba and Cybele," traced the iconography of the Anatolian Great Mother goddess (known as Cybele in Classical times) as far back as Göbekli Tepe. A "display" sort of female figure, dating to ca. 8,000 BCE, was found carved on rock in an area between pillars containing depictions of felines. The Great Mother always appears as a woman with lions throughout Her depictions from 8,000 BCE to 500 CE. A sculpture of Her with Her lions was found at Çatalhöyük dated to ca. 6,200 BCE. The discovery of the felines-and-woman sculpture at Göbekli Tepe pushes the origin of this iconography back another 1,800 years.
Religious sculptures at Göbekli Tepe show a tradition of shamanism and its relation to wild animals. The date of the felines-and-woman sculpture is from near the end of Göbekli Tepe culture. The origins of Göbekli Tepe go back to a late form of Paleolithic religion, a shamanism of wild beasts practiced by hunter-gatherers, whose origins are as old as humanity itself. At that site, in the late stage of its culture, the human-beast interface developed into the image of a woman with wild cats, the "Mistress of Animals." This was the form in which She would continue to be known through the ages. It is therefore no coincidence that the Anatolian worship of Magna Mater down to Classical Greek and Roman times was associated with wild things and wild places. In the Homeric Hymn to the Mother of the Gods, which dates from the earliest stratum of Greek literature, She takes delight in
ευαδεν ηδε λυκων κλαγγη χαροπων τε λεοντων
ουρεα τ' ηχηεντα και ‘υληεντες εναυλοι.
the cry of wolves and bright-eyed lions,
the echoing mountains and the wooded glens.
Göbekli Tepe is the missing link between Paleolithic hunter-gatherer shamanism and the religion of Magna Mater, which with its roots reaching back 10,000 years is the world's oldest religious tradition.