1994 Chauvet Cave discovered
1994 Professor Klaus Schmidt visits Göbekli Tepe for the first time
1995 First digging campaign begins at Göbekli Tepe
1996 The author’s book From the Ashes of Angels published, proposing that the stories of the Watchers and Anunnaki are a memory of the shamanic elite responsible for the Neolithic revolution in southeast Anatolia
2000 Göbekli Tepe’s discovery announced to the world
FOOTNOTES
*1. I would like to thank Richard Ward for his suggestion that the birds represent dodos.
*2. To read more about Franz Gnaedinger’s identification of Chauvet’s Venus and the Sorcerer panel as the Summer Triangle go to www.seshat.ch/home/homepage.htm, and follow the links for Chauvet.
*3. Dates based on an altitude of 2 degrees including refraction and calculated using Stellarium planetarium software.
*4. Dates based on an extinction altitude of Deneb at 2 degrees including refraction using Stellarium planetarium software.
*5. On the subject of which enclosure uncovered at Göbekli Tepe is the oldest, lead archaeologist Professor Klaus Schmidt is in no doubt—it is Enclosure C (personal conversation September 16, 2012). His reasoning is that Enclosure D’s outer perimeter wall abuts that of Enclosure C. Yet a counterargument against Enclosure C being older is easily made. If C was constructed after the latter, then it is possible that D’s preexisting boundary wall was reconstructed in order to allow the completion of C’s own perimeter wall.
*6. Circular porthole stones associated with megalithic monuments exist at the following locations in Western Europe: England (the Tolven Stone in Cornwall and Devils Ring and Finger in Shropshire); Ireland (Cloch-a-Phoill in Ardristan, Co. Carlow); Germany (Züschen in Hesse and Altendorf, Degernau and Schwörstadt in Baden-Württemberg); France (Guiry-en-Vexin in Île-de-France and Trie-Chateau in Picardie/Oise); Spain (Antequera in Andalusia); Belgium (Lüttich and Weris); Switzerland (Courgenay in Jura), and in South Tyrol (Bozen and Riffian in Austria, and Gratsch in Italy).
†7. Examples of dolmens or chambered tombs in southwest Asia can be found in Syria (Ala Safat, Amman, and Tsil) and Jordan (’Ain Dakkar). Here in the Near East they are ascribed dates ranging from the Chalcolithic age, ca. 5000 BC, down to the Early Bronze Age, ca. 3200 BC.
*8. Rimutè Rimantienè (b. 1920) was a friend and colleague of Lithuanian-born anthropologist Marija Gimbutas (see chapter 20).
*9. In the suspected Swiderian level at the Epipaleolithic site of Erbiceni, near the city of Iasi in Romania, evidence of canine domestication has been found.
*10. Obsidian bifaces were found at Laugerie-Haute in France’s Vézère Valley in the Dordogne.
*11. Obsidian sources also exist in Iceland and, possibly, in the Balkans.
†12. A further source of Carpathian obsidian exists in Ukraine, within the Vihorlat-Gutin Mountains, much farther to the east.
*13. This name for obsidian is cited on various Internet sites with the following words: “Ancient people called Obsidian ‘Satan’s claws’ fragments.” This sounds so similar to “Satan’s nail” that it has to be the same.
*14. For instance, my Kurdish contact, Hakan Dalkus, says: “Unlike Genie, the Peri are not our religious beliefs. We, Kurds, believe the Peri were human beings who really lived. I also think they were a beautiful race” (February 10, 2012). He adds: “When I was a kid, my grandmother and some other women from old generation told us many stories of Cin (Genie) and Peri. Those women hardly left the village in all their lives, they could not speak Turkish. They had no influence of the outer world. So their stories wholly reflected old beliefs. I vaguely remember those stories now but I certainly remember that the Peri were human beings. Some kind of super human beings. Human beings could marry the Peri and have kids from them. . . . My knowledge of our old stories is only confined to the region around my village. My village has a proved history of at least 13 thousand years old. On Bingöl road. I read that the region around my village was a center of obsidian trade” (February 28, 2012).
*15. Intriguingly, the Sámi once played a board game called tablo, whereby one person plays as the wolf or fox and the other as the hunter. Players moved around their pieces, with the hunter attempting “to corner the predator before he or she ‘eats’ all the hunter’s pieces.” See “Sami,” Countries and Their Cultures, www.everyculture.com/wc/Norway-to-Russia/Sami.html#b#ixzz2J0bfenar.
*16. James Torre’s original Latin inscription is as follows: “Lector si Pietatis amator, si Doctrinae estimator, scias quantus sub hoc lapide thesaurus situs est, Marmaducus Carver, Ecclesiae Hartilluncis Rector, C(h)ronologiae et Geographiae scientissimus, Linguarum peritus, concionando prepotens; hic scilicet, qui cum scriptis ad invidiam usque, verum terrestris paradisi locum orbi monstrasset, ad coelestem quem predicando Auditoribus commendaverat, cujus adeunti ingenti desiderio tenebatur moriendo translatus est, die Aug. 1665.”
*17. In 1989 Egyptologist David Rohl, in his book Legend, identified the Pison with the Uizhun River in Iran (the modern Qezel Uzun). Yet realistically this is untenable, as the Uizhun takes its course a full 250 miles (400 kilometers) southeast of Lake Van. Why have the sources of three of the rivers close together, only for the fourth one to be so far away? It just doesn’t make sense, especially given that the heads of the four rivers are said to emerge from a single stream that waters the Garden of Eden.
*18. Many thanks to Jonathan Bright for clarifying the Greek variations of the name for Watcher.
*19. Many thanks to Gagik Avagyan for all facts regarding the etymology and meaning of Bingol’s Armenian place-names, which were gleaned from correspondence in May–June 2013.
*20. The Natufians probably imported figs from Egypt (see Kislev, Hartmann, and Bar-Yosef, “Early Domesticated Fig in the Jordan Valley,” 1372–74), while the presence of cultivated grain seeds in early Natufian settlements argues for a connection with the peoples of the Nile Valley during this time. In addition to this, shellfish from the Nile Valley were found at the Natufian site of Ain Mallaha in the Jordan Valley.
ENDNOTES
INTRODUCTION
1. Michael Zick, “Der älteste Tempel der Welt,” bild der wissenschaft 8 (2000): 60–66.
2. Collins, Andrew, “Göbekli Tepe and the Rebirth of Sirius,” 2013, www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/Gobekli_Sirius.htm (accessed January 13, 2014).
PROLOGUE. IN QUEST OF ANGELS
1. Green, The City of the Moon God, 13, quoting Muhammad Ibn Abd Allah al-Kisa’i, The Tales of the Prophets of Al-Kisa’ i.
2. Lloyd and Brice, “Harran,” 90–91.
3. Budge, The Chronography of Gregory Abû’ l Faraj, the Son of Aaron, the Hebrew Physician, Commonly Known as Bar Hebraeus, vol. I, 7.
4. See Lloyd and Brice, “Harran,” 77–111. They report on surface finds at Harran, including distinctive ceramic ware belonging to the Halaf culture.
5. Yardimci, Mezopotamya’ya açilan kapi Harran, 362–64.
6. Book of Jubilees, 8:1–4.
7. Josephus, “The Antiquities of the Jews,” bk. I, ch. vi, verse 4.
8. Hommel, The Ancient Hebrew Tradition, 292–97.
9. Segal, Edessa, p. 2 n. 2.
10. Ibid., p. 2 n. 4, 106.
CHAPTER 1. A LIFETIME’S WORK
1. Hony and Fahir, A Turkish-English Dictionary, s.v. “göbek.”
2. Schmidt, “The 2003 Campaign at Göbekli Tepe (Southeastern Turkey),” 5.
3. Benedict, “Survey Work in Southeastern Anatolia,” 150–91.
4. Schirmer, “Some Aspects of Building at the ‘Aceramic-neolithic’ Settlement of Çayönü Tepesi,” 378.
5. Cauvin, The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture, 172–73.
6. Schirmer, “Some Aspects of Building at the ‘Aceramic-neolithic’ Settlement of Çayönü Tepesi,” 382.
7. Dates for the PPNA and PPNB taken from Cauvin, Birth of the Gods, 76.
8. Schmidt, “Göbekli Tepe, Southe
astern Turkey,” 46.
9. Ibid.
10. Cauvin, Birth of the Gods, 91.
11. See Lewis-Williams and Pearce, Inside the Neolithic Mind; Hancock, Supernatural.
12. Schmidt, “Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey,” 46.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Schmidt, “Göbekli Tepe—the Stone Age Sanctuaries,” p. 241, n. 1.
376
CHAPTER 2. MONUMENTAL ARCHITECTURE
1. Schmidt, Göbekli Tepe, 216. This is the 2012 English language edition of the book Sie bauten die ersten Tempel: Das rätselhafte Heiligtum der Steinzeitjäger, published in 2006. All references will be taken from the English edition. See also Collins, The Cygnus Mystery, 209–14, which explores the possibility of psychoactive substances, mushrooms in particular, being used at Göbekli Tepe.
2. Harner, “Common Themes in South American Indian Yagé Experiences,” 160–64.
3. Ibid., 162, 164.
4. Mann, “The Birth of Religion,” 48.
5. Schmidt, “Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey,” 51.
6. Ibid.
7. Schmidt, “Göbekli Tepe—the Stone Age Sanctuaries,” 242.
8. Schmidt, “Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey,” 51.
9. Mann, “The Birth of Religion,” 57.
10. Waverly Fitzgerald, “Transformation Mysteries of Grain and Grapes,” School of the Seasons, www.schooloftheseasons.com/pdfdocs/harvestsample.pdf (accessed January 15, 2014).
11. Peters and Schmidt, “Animals in the Symbolic World of Pre-Pottery Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, South-eastern Turkey,” 214.
12. Karapetyan and Kanetsyan, “Pre-Urartian Armavir,” 52.
13. Schmidt, “Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey,” 48.
14. Ibid.
15. Peters and Schmidt, “Animals in the Symbolic World,” 179–218.
16. Schmidt, “Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey,” 48.
17. Heun, Schäfer-Pregl, Klawan, et al., “Site of Einkorn Wheat Domestication Identified by DNA Fingerprinting,” 1312–14.
18. Schmidt, “Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey,” 48.
CHAPTER 3. FROZEN IN STONE
1. Schmidt, Göbekli Tepe, 140–1.
2. Banning, “So Fair a House,” 619–60.
3. Schmidt, Göbekli Tepe, 148.
4. Dietrich, Köksal-Schmidt, Kürkcüoglu, et al., “Göbekli Tepe,” 30–31.
5. Çelik, “A New Early Neolithic Settlement in Southeastern Turkey,” 3–5; Çelik, “Hamzan Tepe in the Light of New Finds,” 257–68.
6. Çelik, “Sefer Tepe,” 23–25.
7. Çelik, Güler, and Güler, “Türkiye’nin Güneydoğusunda Yeni Bir Çanak Çömleksiz Neolitik Yerleşim” 225–36.
8. Çelik, “A New Early-Neolithic Settlement: Karahan Tepe,” 6–8.
9. Verhoeven, “Person or Penis? Interpreting a ‘New’ PPNB Anthropomorphic Statue from the Taurus Foothills,” 8–9.
10. Aurenche and Kozlowski, La naissance du néolithique au Proche Orient ou le paradis perdu, figure 13.
11. Izady, The Kurds, 23.
12. Schmidt, Göbekli Tepe, 235.
CHAPTER 4. STRANGE GLYPHS AND IDEOGRAMS
1. Reichel-Dolmatoff, Basketry as Metaphor, 33.
2. Personal communication with Kelly Delaney Stacy and Amadeus Diamond in March 2013.
3. Ibid.
4. Baldwin Spencer, Across Australia, 402–3.
5. Ibid., 401.
6. Ibid., figure 278 opp. p. 403.
7. Çelik, “An Early Neolithic Settlement in the Center of Şanlıurfa, Turkey,” 4–6.
8. Cauvin, The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture, 123–25.
CHAPTER 5. GATEWAY TO HEAVEN
1. Schmidt, “Göbekli Tepe Excavations 2005,” 100.
2. David Frawley, “Vedic Origins of the Zodiac: The Hymns of Dirghatamas in the Rig Veda,” American Institute of Vedic Studies, www.vedanet.com/2012/06/vedic-originsof-the-zodiac-the-hymns-of-dirghatamas-in-the-rig-veda/ (accessed January 15, 2014).
3. Rao, Lothal, 40–41.
4. Callataÿ, Annus Platonicus.
5. John A. Halloran, “Sumerian Lexicon: Version 3.0,” Sumerian.org, www.sumerian.org/sumerian.pdf (accessed January 15, 2014), see “ùš” (placenta), “úš” (blood, death, etc.), “uš” (foundation place, base).
6. King, African Cosmos, 53.
7. Williams, Spirit Tree, 147–48.
8. Roscoe, The Baganda, 235.
9. Ibid., 236.
10. Ibid., 236; Frazer, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, vol. 1, 196.
11. Rice, Egypt’s Making, 108–9. See also Long, “The Placenta in Lore and Legend,” 233–41.
12. King, African Cosmos, 53.
13. Griaule and Dieterlen, The Pale Fox, 153–59.
14. Frazer, Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, vol. 1, 195.
CHAPTER 6. WINDOW ON ANOTHER WORLD
1. Belmonte, “Finding Our Place in the Cosmos,” 2052–62.
2. Rappenglück, Eine Himmelskarte aus der Eiszeit?
3. Ibid. See also Belmonte, “Finding Our Place in the Cosmos.”
4. See Collins, The Cygnus Mystery.
5. Mellaart, Çatalhöyük, 178.
6. Dietrich, The Origins of Greek Religion, 106–7.
CHAPTER 7. TURNED TOWARD THE STARS
1. See Schoch, Forgotten Civilization, 53–57.
2. Magli, Giulio, “Possible Astronomical References in the Project of the Megalithic Enclosures of Göbekli Tepe,” Cornell University Library online, http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.8397 (accessed March 20, 2014).
3. Ibid.
4. Collins and Hale, “Göbekli Tepe and the Rising of Sirius,” 2013, www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/G%F6bekli_Sirius.htm (accessed January 15, 2014).
5. Ibid.
6. See Collins, The Cygnus Mystery, and the references therein, for a full exegesis of this topic.
7. Ibid.
8. Schmidt and Dietrich, “A Radiocarbon Date from the Wall Plaster of Enclosure D of Göbekli Tepe,” 82–83.
9. Ibid.
10. Oliver Dietrich, “PPND—The Platform for Neolithic Radiocarbon Dates,” Ex Oriente, www.exoriente.org/associated_projects/ppnd_site.php?s=25 (accessed January 15, 2014).
11. Ibid.
12. The mean azimuths of individual buildings are based on Özdoğan and Özdoğan, “Çayönü,” 65–74, using an extinction altitude for Deneb of 2 degrees including refraction.
13. Yakar, “Anatolian Chronology and Terminology,” 67, summarizing Damien Bischoff, “CANeW 14C Databases and 14C Tables: Upper Mesopotamia (SE Turkey, N Syria and N Iraq 10,000–5000 cal BC),” 2006, www.canew.org; and Damien Bischoff, “CANeW Material Culture Stratigraphic Tables: Upper Mesopotamia (SE Turkey, N Syria and N Iraq 10,000–5000 cal BC),” 2007, www.canew.org.
14. Schmidt, Göbekli Tepe, 141–42.
15. Schmidt, Göbekli Tepe, 99.
16. For an examination of this subject, see Koster, The Late Roman Cemeteries of Nijmegen: Stray Finds and Excavations 1947–1983.
17. See Avetisian, “Urartian Ceramics from the Ararat Valley as a Cultural Phenomenon,” 293–314.
18. A house with a seelenloch in the Tyrolean village of Serfaus in the Landeck district of Austria can be viewed here with a description: Serfaus Intern 4/2011, www.serfaus.gv.at/gemeindeamt/download/222301657_1.pdf (accessed January 15, 2014).
19. For an overview of Caucasian dolmens and their dating, see Trifonov et al., “The Dolmen Kolikho, Western Caucasus,” 761–69.
20. For a good introduction to holes used by shaman to reach the lower and upper world, see Harner, The Way of the Shaman, 31–35. See also Eliade, Shamanism, 259–60.
21. For an examination of the celestial symbolism of bi and pi disks see Shu-P’Ing, “The Original Significance of Bi Disks,” 165–94.
22. Czaplicka, Aboriginal Siberia, 211–22; Walter and Fridman, Shamanism, vol. 1, p. 611. See also Lombard, “Bored Stones, Lithic Rings an
d the Concept of Holes in San Shamanism,” 25.
CHAPTER 8. THE PATH OF SOULS
1. Tedlock, Popol Vuh, 356; also Jenkins, Maya Cosmogenesis 2012.
2. Hatch, “An Hypothesis on Olmec Astronomy, with Special Reference to the La Venta Site,” 1–38.
3. John Major Jenkins, “Commentary on Stuart and Houston’s Study of Mayan Place Names in ‘Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology 33, 1994,’” Edj.net, http://edj.net/mc2012/fap11.html (accessed January 15, 2014).
4. For a full review of these Native American star myths, see Greg Little, “Can the Alignments of the Giza Pyramids be Explained from Moundville, Alabama Artifacts?—Part 2” Archaeotrek, Alternative Perceptions Magazine, http://apmagazine.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=273 (accessed January 15, 2014). See also the various internal texts of Reilly III and Garber, Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms, for a fuller account of this subject, especially Lankford, “The ‘Path of Souls’: Some Death Imagery in the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex,” 174–212.
5. White, Babylonian Star-lore, 159–60.
6. See “MUL.APIN 1.2: The 33 Stars on the Path of Enlil, within the Ellipse of the Milky Way,” MUL.APIN Tablet No. 86378, British Museum, column 1, line 28, Lexiline: A Renaissance in Learning, www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi173.htm (accessed January 15, 2014).
CHAPTER 9. CULT OF THE VULTURE
1. Schmidt, Göbekli Tepe, 131–32.
2. Mellaart, Çatalhöyük, 104.
3. Allen, Star Names and Their Meaning, s.v. “Cygnus.”
4. Hodder, Çatalhöyük, 196.
5. Uyanik, Petroglyphs of South-eastern Anatolia, 12.
6. Ibid.
7. Klaus Schmidt, television interview by Dr. Graham Phillip, “Death Cult Temple and Bog Bodies of Ireland,” Ancient X-Files, National Geographic Channel, 2012.
8. Solecki and Solecki, “The Zagros Proto-Neolithic and Cultural Developments in the Near East,” 120.
9. See Solecki, “Predatory Bird Rituals at Zawi Chemi Shanidar,” 42–47.
10. Solecki and Solecki, “Zagros Proto-Neolithic and Cultural Developments,” 120.
Gobekli Tepe Page 38