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Andrew Curry on "The World's First Temple?"
- By Jesse Rhodes
- Smithsonian.com, November 01, 2008, Subscribe
Andrew Curry is a professional journalist based in Germany with degrees in international relations and Russian and East European studies and is a contributing editor to Archaeology magazine. You can find more of his work at www.andrewcurry.com. Rebecca Miller
What drew you to this story? Can you describe its genesis?
Since I'm based in Berlin, I talk a lot with German archaeologists. There was a lot of buzz over here about Gobekli Tepe, and this story had been reported in Germany, but not in the English language media. Because it's such an incredible find, Schmidt's under a lot of pressure, so it took me about a year to arrange my visit for a time when he was digging in Urfa.
What was your favorite moment while covering Gobekli Tepe?
Watching the sun come up over the stones was an incredible moment. They're huge, and it's hard to imagine how primitive hunters carved them without metal tools. And yet there is a sense of mystery about them that I found a bit off-putting. I wanted to feel some deep connection or resonance, but the symbols and shapes are so far removed from anything I am familiar with that I felt like a total stranger.
Have any problems arisen since they started excavating the site?
Schmidt had good reason to be worried about the press: A major German magazine ran a cover story on the site last year suggesting it was the historical basis for the Biblical story about the "Garden of Eden." Because Muslims consider Adam a Muslim prophet (like Abraham, Moses and Jesus) when the Turkish media got a hold of the story there was a lot of pressure for him to stop digging at "Adam's birthplace"—a holy site. So Schmidt was very intent on stressing to me that the area was a very nice place to live in prehistoric times, but not literally "paradise," for fear I'd give the misunderstanding new legs.
Were there any interesting moments that didn't make it to the final draft?
I also spent some time talking to people in Urfa about the site. Most locals have never been there, and have a lot of strange ideas about it. Most of all, they see it as a way to bring in tourists. Urfa is in a fairly poor part of Turkey, so cultural tourism is a big deal. But the site's not ready for a flood of visitors—it's still being excavated, it's on a hill at the end of a bad dirt road, and the only people there are archaeologists, who are working as fast as they can to figure out what the site is all about and don't have a lot of time to show visitors around. When they're not excavating, the archaeologists cover a lot of the pillars up with stones to protect them from the elements. One local tourism official asked me why Schmidt was working so slowly, and when I thought he could start sending tour buses to the top of Gobekli Tepe. I didn't have a good answer. Schmidt's trying to find money to build a visitor's center nearby, and perhaps build walkways or something so that tourists can see the stones without damaging the site.
Are there any theories about what led to the site's abandonment?
Schmidt thinks society outgrew it, sort of. His theory is that they served the needs of a hunter-gatherer culture somehow, and as those hunter-gatherers developed agriculture and domesticated animals their spiritual needs changed radically enough that the temples at Gobekli Tepe no longer served their needs.
Why was the site initially dismissed by academics?
The big broken stones on top of the hill—actually fragments of pillars—were mistaken for medieval gravestones, and the academics doing the original survey in the 1960s simply didn't look any deeper. The site is remote enough that only a few archaeologists had ever been there. Usually prehistoric settlements in the region are found near water sources or rivers, so finding something like this on top of a dry plateau was really surprising.
Since I'm based in Berlin, I talk a lot with German archaeologists. There was a lot of buzz over here about Gobekli Tepe, and this story had been reported in Germany, but not in the English language media. Because it's such an incredible find, Schmidt's under a lot of pressure, so it took me about a year to arrange my visit for a time when he was digging in Urfa.
What was your favorite moment while covering Gobekli Tepe?
Watching the sun come up over the stones was an incredible moment. They're huge, and it's hard to imagine how primitive hunters carved them without metal tools. And yet there is a sense of mystery about them that I found a bit off-putting. I wanted to feel some deep connection or resonance, but the symbols and shapes are so far removed from anything I am familiar with that I felt like a total stranger.
Have any problems arisen since they started excavating the site?
Schmidt had good reason to be worried about the press: A major German magazine ran a cover story on the site last year suggesting it was the historical basis for the Biblical story about the "Garden of Eden." Because Muslims consider Adam a Muslim prophet (like Abraham, Moses and Jesus) when the Turkish media got a hold of the story there was a lot of pressure for him to stop digging at "Adam's birthplace"—a holy site. So Schmidt was very intent on stressing to me that the area was a very nice place to live in prehistoric times, but not literally "paradise," for fear I'd give the misunderstanding new legs.
Were there any interesting moments that didn't make it to the final draft?
I also spent some time talking to people in Urfa about the site. Most locals have never been there, and have a lot of strange ideas about it. Most of all, they see it as a way to bring in tourists. Urfa is in a fairly poor part of Turkey, so cultural tourism is a big deal. But the site's not ready for a flood of visitors—it's still being excavated, it's on a hill at the end of a bad dirt road, and the only people there are archaeologists, who are working as fast as they can to figure out what the site is all about and don't have a lot of time to show visitors around. When they're not excavating, the archaeologists cover a lot of the pillars up with stones to protect them from the elements. One local tourism official asked me why Schmidt was working so slowly, and when I thought he could start sending tour buses to the top of Gobekli Tepe. I didn't have a good answer. Schmidt's trying to find money to build a visitor's center nearby, and perhaps build walkways or something so that tourists can see the stones without damaging the site.
Are there any theories about what led to the site's abandonment?
Schmidt thinks society outgrew it, sort of. His theory is that they served the needs of a hunter-gatherer culture somehow, and as those hunter-gatherers developed agriculture and domesticated animals their spiritual needs changed radically enough that the temples at Gobekli Tepe no longer served their needs.
Why was the site initially dismissed by academics?
The big broken stones on top of the hill—actually fragments of pillars—were mistaken for medieval gravestones, and the academics doing the original survey in the 1960s simply didn't look any deeper. The site is remote enough that only a few archaeologists had ever been there. Usually prehistoric settlements in the region are found near water sources or rivers, so finding something like this on top of a dry plateau was really surprising.
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Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/andrew-curry-contributor.html#ixzz1XeXPDCqc
Comments (27)
Nothing springs from nothing, the people, the skills, the material needed would take time to accrue. What prompted its building at a time when primitive man needed all of his time and energy just to survive as a hunter gatherer, what would cause them to stop, learn skills, and build such a monument?
This could not be the builders first building, it appears too sophisticated, where were earlier models?
One thought that occurred to me is that when people had no use for a construction, from the colliseum in rome to the Sphinx, they simply left them, the didn't cover them up, many times they reused the building material. Maybe this was built by someone not a local, someone who didn't want it either discovered or reused, who when they were through with it found burying it quite appropriate.
So many questions, so few real answers, I look forward to reading more about amazing find, we should not jump to conclusions.
Mike
Another commenter suggested that space men built Gobleki Tepe. I think this is nuts. I think that believing that space men did it reveals a disbelief in the ingenuity and vast imagination of human beings. We as a race have done incredible things when rightly inspired. One person with the right idea at the right time can alter a society.
I would like to comment on Armando Busick's comment (November 15/08. His remark about the fear of nature being caused by "something" intrigued me. Perhaps that "something" was planetary-wide catastrophes that accompanied the end of the last Ice Age about 12,00 years ago.
In modern times, the terror generated by a single tsunami is enough to make believers out of people. Imagine then if you will, the terror that would ensue if the whole planet were to be racked by earthquakes, volcanoes , massive flooding, raging firestorms, hurricanes, mudslides, tornadoes etc., all going on at the same time.
These manifestations of a world gone mad would be more than enough to engender a fear of nature that would last through the ages. The animal carvings could then be seen as representating the terrifying forces of nature.
My own feeling about the place favours the idea that this was where ancestors were honoured, and where memories of times past were recalled in story and song.
Perhaps Gobekli Tepe was erected by survivors of a terrifying cataclysmic event. Consequently, there would be a lot of food for vultures and scavengers of every kind. But then, gradually, as conditions settled down and normalized, agriculture and animal husbandry would take over from the need to hunt. Still, for a long time afterward, people would continue to make pilgrimages to the site to give thanks, or to gain inspiration and insight from oracles, priests or priestesses.
The alternate view that I have is that the site might have been built during the period of the Ice Age and somehow survived the violent ending of that Age.
I find, however, the debate on whether this discovery leads to an ideological origin of the "Neolithic Revolution" or not, extremely potent - and this is where the so-called archaeo - astronomers might present us with a couple of interesting ideas. I am looking forward to hearing anything about that. Good luck!