Category Archives: EUROPE

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Expert Invasion – How the Romans conquered Britain – Roman Rule

The Helmet That Shows Celtic Warriors Helped the Roman Army Conquer Briton

An important find was discovered at an old Iron Age shrine in England. It included coins and other items from both the Iron Age and the Roman era.

A 2,000-year-old unique Roman cavalry helmet was found among the finds. Having been re-examined some 10 years after is first discovered, some believe that the helmet throws an interesting new light on the nature of early relations between Britons and Rome and the development of Roman auxiliary forces.

The helmet was found as part of a treasure that was uncovered by a retired teacher, Ken Wallace, with a hand-held metal detector that he bought for approximately $300 (£260). 

It was found in Hallaton, Leicestershire, in the East Midlands. Mr. Wallace knew he had found something big and he immediately reported his find to the relevant local authorities. Later he was paid $200,000 (£150,000) and the owner of the land where the find was made received a similar amount.

Experts began an extensive dig of the site in 2010 and according to the Daily Telegraph they uncovered “5,000 coins and the remains of a feast of suckling pigs.” There was also found some ingots and fragments of metal that came from a Roman cavalryman’s helmet. The find of the headgear was hailed as very important and it came to be known as the ‘Hallaton helmet’ after the area where it was unearthed.

Hallaton hoard parade helmet

According to the Daily Telegraph, the cavalry helmet was “restored from 1,000 fragments by experts at the British Museum.” It was made of sheet iron and was once ornately decorated with gold leaf designs and had cheek pieces and was most likely worn by a cavalryman. 

The reconstruction of the Roman helmet allowed specialists to study it and they were able to find designs with images of battles, victories and a female figure escorted by lions, probably a goddess. There is also the figure of a Roman Emperor on a horse who is apparently, accompanied by Victoria, the goddess of Victory, on one of the cheekpieces.

Parts of the decorated cheek pieces of the helmet. Remains of 7 cheekpieces in all were found, meaning there were pieces of several helmets left at the shrine.

The helmet pieces were dated to the Roman invasion of Britain (43 BC), which was ordered by Emperor Claudius (10 BC-54 AD) of the Claudian-Flavian Dynasty.

It was something of a mystery as to why the helmet was offered at the shrine and also its origin, as at the time it would have been controlled by local Celtic tribes. There were several theories proposed for the presence of what would have been a highly prized object at the shrine including it was a diplomatic gift or booty from a raid.

Roman Cavalry Reenactment – Roman Festival at Augusta Raurica.

However, the theory was put forward and it was one that had dramatic implications for our understanding of the Roman conquest of Britain. It has been proposed that the helmet did not belong to a Roman but to a Briton and that he deposited it at the shrine. The BBC reported that “its date, close to the Roman invasion of 43 AD, meant it could be evidence of Celtic tribes serving with the Roman army.” 

This theory is very plausible because there are an extensive documentary and archaeological evidence that non-Romans served in the Emperor’s armies as auxiliaries.

These were recruited from tribes inside and outside the Empire and they provided extra manpower to the legions – for example, many Germans fought with Julius Caesar during the conquest of Gaul. 

The reconstructed helmet possibly indicates that Celtic Britons served as auxiliaries during the reign of Claudius.  It is well-known that they served as auxiliaries, but it was not thought that they fought with the Romans at such an early date. Moreover, such an elaborate helmet may show that Britons may even have risen to a high rank in the Roman army.

The discovery led some to conclude that some Celtic tribesmen actually served with the invaders during the conquest of modern-day England.

The helmet provides strong evidence that was even Celts from Briton who served in the Roman army before the conquest, having dramatic implications for our understanding of Ancient Britain and the evolution of the Roman army.

EUROPE, FRANCE, WORLD

Paleolithic Art – c. 14000-year-old Bull and Cow Bison found in the Le Tuc d’Audoubert cave, Ariege, France

Museum of Artifacts: 14000 Years Old Bisons Sculpture Found in Le d’Audoubert Cave, Ariege, France

The bison stood next to each other, built from the cave walls, leaning against a small boulder in the darkness.

While they are 18 feet twenty-four inches long, they are beautifully constructed and durability is remarkable.

The bison remained alone for thousands of years in the dark French cave until it was discovered in the early 20th century.

The cave of Tuc Audoubert was discovered by the three sons of Count Henri three Bégouën on 20 July and 10 October 1912.

The artist’s hand signs are still clearly visible and the techniques used to render the face and mane details Objects like these clearly demonstrate that man used clay for artistic expression long before the actual firing of clay was discovered.

The walls of these caves also are covered with drawings of bison and other game animals, marked in carbon from the fires, as well as the earth minerals such as iron oxide and manganese, showing that these ceramic coloring materials that we still use today were known to our earliest ancestors.

The bisons’ shaggy mane and beard appear to be carved with a tool, but the jaws are traced by the sculptor’s fingernail.

The impression given is one of immense naturalistic beauty. The female bison is ready to mate, while the Bull is sniffing the air.

Both animals are supported by a central rock and are unbelievably well preserved (proving perhaps that there was never a passage connecting the Tuc d’Audoubert cave with the Trois Freres), although they have suffered some drying out, which has caused some cracks to appear across their bodies.

Also in the chamber are two other bison figures, both engraved on the ground.

Prehistorians have theorized that a small group of people (including a child) remained in the Tuc d’Audoubert cave with the sole reason of participating in certain ceremonies associated with cave art.

The remote location of the clay bison – beneath a low ceiling at the very end of the upper gallery, roughly 650 meters from the entrance, is consistent with their involvement in some type of ritualistic or shamanistic process.

EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

Construction Workers Stumble Across Old Pots With 1,300 Pounds Of Ancient Roman Coins Inside

Construction Workers Stumble Across Old Pots With 1,300 Pounds Of Ancient Roman Coins Inside

Building companies discovered a hoard of bronze Roman coins concealed in jugs in Tomares, Spain during this week.

19 pottery jugs were discovered in the Zaudin Park when the workers digged ditches. The urns were packed with coins showing an emperor on one side and various depictions of Roman stories on the back reported the Spanish newspaper, El Pais.

According to the Archeological Museum of Seville, where the treasure was carried, the coins weigh more than 1,300 pounds date back to the third or fourth centuries.

The workers were digging a ditch to run electricity to a park when they came across these old-looking pots. These pots are actually called amphoras, and they were made during the time when Rome ruled much of Europe.
There actually turned out to be 19 of these amphoras in the area. All of them were full the brim with bronze Roman Empire coins.
The weight of the coins totaled about 1,300 pounds! There was quite a bit of these thing.

Ana Navarro Ortega, who heads the museum, said that 10 of the jugs broke during the dig.

“I can assure you that the jugs cannot be lifted by one person because of their weight and the quantity of the coins inside,” she said. “So now what we have to do is begin to understand the historical and archaeological context of this discovery.”

Why so many coins would be hidden in jugs raises interesting questions for archaeologists and historians.

Investigators floated the hypothesis that the money was set aside to pay imperial taxes or army levies, reported El Pais. The jugs appeared deliberately concealed underground, covered by a few bricks and ceramic fillers, according to the Andalusian department of culture.

Richard Weigel, a professor of ancient Greece and Rome at Western Kentucky University, told the PBS NewsHour that the coins likely were buried during an era of “great discord in the Roman empire.”

The central authority in Rome broke down in the middle of the third century, he said. Germanic tribes invaded the country from time to time, in addition to other challenges to the various emperors.

Once the coins are thoroughly examined by researchers, they will be placed into the Seville Archeological Museum for everyone to enjoy.
It’s amazing that these amphoras and coins survived hundreds of years buried underground.

The part of southern Spain where the coins were discovered would have been considered a distant land to emperors before it became a normal part of the Roman Empire, said, Weigel.

“The suggestion that they were collected to pay taxes to the Roman Empire is, of course, possible,” he said. “But I suspect that they could have been stored to pay one of the Roman legions in the area and to hide the money from invaders in the region.”

Once the emperors on the coins are identified, he continued, it should be easier to date the coins and put them in the context of military activities and invasions.

EUROPE, GREECE, WORLD

Greek Farmer Finds Ancient Cemetery Full of Naked Statues

Greek Farmer Finds Ancient Cemetery Full of Naked Statues

A farmer in Atalanti, Central Greece, wanted to plant olive trees but found an ancient statue of a Kouros instead.

While the farmer was preparing the soil in his plot, his tools hit something that looked like a statue.

He informed authorities that started a broader excavation and the result was: four Kouros statues and a part of an Ancient Greek cemetery that suggests it belonged to the ancient city of Opus.

A Kouros is a name given to free-standing ancient Greek sculptures that first appear in the Archaic period in Greece and represent nude male youths. In Ancient Greek kouros means “youth, boy, especially of noble rank”.

Although Kouroi have been found in many ancient Greek territories, they were especially prominent in Attica and Boiotia.

The discovery of the first Kouros statue took place in the middle of October, the Greek Culture Ministry said in a statement, adding that the excavation the followed discovered more amazing findings.

Archaeologists unearthed four limestone statues of natural size and a part of a base for a statue.

After the first statue was discovered, the head of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Fthiotida and Evritania instructed archaeologist Maria Papageorgiou to conduct field trials.

Two more statues were unearthed.

The archaic statues were not intact and the parts that were found had a height of 0.86m to 1.22m.

The excavation was conducted in a small part of the field only. In earth layers deeper than where the sculptures were found, an organized cemetery with so far seven graves has been discovered.

The graves seemed to have been used from the 5th century BC until the 2nd century BC. The existence of the ancient cemetery in proximity to the modern city of Atalanti suggests that part of the organized cemetery of the ancient Opus has been probably identified.

Opus is the ancient name of Atalanti, believed to be one of the most ancient towns in Greece.

Pindar’s ninth Olympian ode concerns Opus. It was said to have been founded by Opus, a son of Locrus and Protogeneia; and in its neighborhood Deucalion and Pyrrha were reported to have resided.

It was the native city of Patroclus and it is mentioned in the Homeric Catalogue of Ships as one of the Locrian towns whose troops were led by Ajax the Lesser, son of Oileus the king of Locris, in the Iliad.

EUROPE, SPAIN, WORLD

Archaeologist Busted for Faking Artifacts Showing Jesus Crucifixion

Archaeologist Busted for Faking Artifacts Showing Jesus Crucifixion

An archaeologist accused of forging a trove of Roman artifacts that allegedly show a third-century depiction of Jesus’ crucifixion, Egyptian hieroglyphics and the early use of the Basque language. 

The Telegraph also announced that archeologist Eliseo Gil and his two former fellow members were present in a criminal court this week in the Spanish Basque Country’s capital Vitoria-Gasteiz.

Their allegation is that they have created forgeries of ancient graffiti on hundreds of pieces of pottery, glass, and brick that they claim was found in the Roman ruins at Iruña-Veleia, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) west of Vitoria-Gasteiz.

Gil claimed the graffiti on the artifacts showed very early links between the Roman settlement in Spain and the Basque language; he also claimed that a drawing of three crosses scratched on a piece of ancient pottery was the earliest known portrayal of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. 

But other archaeologists have disputed the finds. Among other major discrepancies, they pointed out that some of the languages of the graffiti show that it was made in modern times. 

Gil and his former colleagues, geologist Óscar Escribano and materials analyst Rubén Cerdán, say they are not guilty of any deception.

Gil and Escribano are facing five and a half years in prison if they are found guilty of fraud and damaging heritage items, while Cerdán faces two and a half years in prison if he is found guilty of making fraudulent documents vouching for the authenticity of the artifacts.

The artifacts were inscribed with phrases in Latin from the wrong period, Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphics and a modern form of the Basque language.

Gil became a celebrity in Spain’s Basque Country in 2006 when he claimed that hundreds of broken ceramic pieces known as “ostraca” — covered with drawings; phrases in Latin, Greek and Basque; and Egyptian hieroglyphics — had been unearthed at the Iruña-Veleia site.

But some other archaeologists became suspicious, and they alerted officials in the Álava provincial government, which owns the Iruña-Veleia site.

The other archaeologists alleged that writing on the artifacts, supposedly from the second to the fifth centuries, contained words and spellings from hundreds of years later, modern commas and the mixed-use of uppercase and lowercase letters, a practice which dates from after the eighth century.

The graffiti on some of the artifacts also contained hieroglyphics spelling out the name of the ancient Egyptian queen Nefertiti, who was probably unknown until her rediscovery in the early 20th century, and a Latin motto created around 1913 for an international court at The Hague in the Netherlands.

Experts also considered that the Christian iconography of the crucifixion portrayed on the most famous artifact dated from hundreds of years later than claimed. 

A scientific commission convened by the provincial government in 2008 ruled that 476 of the artifacts were manipulated or outright fakes and that Gil and his colleagues had perpetrated an elaborate fraud, according to its report. In response, the provincial government stopped Gil and his company from working at Iruña-Veleia and pressed charges, which have now come to court.

Gil maintains that he is innocent and that there is no scientific evidence that the artifacts are fake. At a news conference in 2015, Gil said the accusations, as well as his ostracism from the archaeological world, we’re like “going through torture.”

As well as ancient languages from the wrong time periods, some artifacts are inscribed with modern punctuation marks and a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters not used until more than 1,000 years later.

The prosecutor’s office of the provincial government is seeking more than 285,000 euros ($313,000) for damage to authentic artifacts from Iruña-Veleia allegedly inscribed with fake graffiti.

They’ve also asked the court to jail Gil and his associates, fine them and disqualify them from working on archaeological sites.  Many archaeologists are convinced that the artifacts are fake, but they don’t know if Gil and his associates are responsible for the inauthenticity of the artifacts. 

“I have no doubts about their falsity,” said archaeologist Ignacio Rodríguez Temiño, told BBC in an email. “There is no dispute on the Iruña-Veleia case in the academic world.”

Rodríguez Temiño works in Seville for the provincial government of Andalucía. He is the author of a paper published in the archaeological journal Zephyrus in 2017 that detailed evidence that the artifacts from Iruña-Veleia are fakes and possible reasons for the deception. He noted that Basque public companies and government bodies awarded Gil and his associates sponsorships worth millions of dollars for their work at Iruña-Veleia.

The fake artifacts were an attempt to promote certain ideas about Basque nationalism, including the early use of the Basque language and the early Christianization of what is now the Basque Country, he said. 

Both are “stories that a certain segment of Basque society longs to hear,” he said.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Footprints Made by Neanderthals who Walked in Lava Hours After Eruption

Footprints Made by Neanderthals who Walked in Lava Hours After Eruption

The ‘ Ciampate del Diavolo ‘ or devils trail, along the Roccamonfina volcano in southern Italy, was made by Neanderthals is the belief of archeologists.

About 81 footprints from at least five individuals can be seen etched in the solid lava and considering the age of the rock, experts believe the group lived ‘before our species existed’.

According to the New Scientist, the prints match the Sima de Los Huesos ‘ hominoid foot, based on size and shape: the ‘ bones ‘ pit ‘ in Atapuerca in northern Spain.

The team also determined that the prints were made hours or days after the violent volcano erupted some 50,000 years ago.

The dense collection of hot gas and volcanic materials, or pyroclastic flow, heated to more than 570 degrees Fahrenheit at the time of the eruption and based on the distance between each step, experts concluded the lava was still soft, but cool enough for a slow walk. 

Approximately 81 footprints from at least five individuals can be seen etched in the solid lava and considering the age of the rock, experts believe the group lived ‘before our species existed’

The Roccamonfina is a stratovolcano with a radius of about six miles and is located along the northern Campania coast, at a distance of about 37 miles to the northwest of Mount Somma and Mount Vesuvius. 

The volcano has been extinct for more than 50,000 years, but ash from its last explosion is well-preserved in the area. 

Archaeologists first discovered 67 footprints in 2001 that headed both down and uphill. 

The footprints are located at the top of the Roccamonfina volcano and after further examination, another uncovered 14 prints have been spotted -bringing the total to  81. 

Footprints Made by Neanderthals who Walked in Lava Hours After Eruption
The team also determined that the prints were made hours or days after the violent volcano erupted some 50,000 years ago.
The footprints are located at the top of the Roccamonfina volcano and after further examination

The tracks are believed to have been made by a group walking at a speed of 13 feet per second, Forbes reported. 

There have been many artifacts uncovered in the surrounding area that leads experts to think this mysterious group frequently visited the area – and could have harvested the rocks to make stone tools. 

‘The new data also provide some hints for exploring new hypotheses about the presence of the Palaeolithic hominins in the Roccamonfina territory, although the specific identity of the trackmakers still remains unaddressed,’ the researchers wrote in the journal published in Journal of Quaternary Science. 

‘ How many and which species were present at that time in Europe are, indeed, challenging questions, still the subject of open debate.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Board-game piece from the period of first Viking raid found on Lindisfarne

Board-game piece from the period of first Viking raid found on Lindisfarne, England.

The first wave of Viking raids in England has announced a small glass crown as a rare archaeological artifact.

On the holy island of Lindisfarne, a tidal island located off the north-western coast of England in Northumberland, a small working glass artifact was uncovered.

The Times reports that historians claim the crown was gameplay from the hnefatafl (king’s table) games strategy board gamed in England, Ireland and Scandinavia, prior to the arrival of chess in the 12th century, made from spinning blue and white glass with green glass bobbles.

The relic, which is no bigger than a grape, is described as being “of exquisite workmanship” showing influence from across the North Sea and if it is indeed a hnefatafl gaming piece it is a rare archaeological treasure linking the English island with the Vikings at the beginning of a turbulent period in English and Scandinavian history.

A ‘Viking’ teaching how to play the ancient board game, ‘hnefatafl’.

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne is perhaps best known for the 8th century illuminated gospels manufactured in the island’s first monastery, but in 793 AD the island was sacked in what was the first major Viking raid in Britain or Ireland.

The newly discovered gaming piece, according to a report in the Guardian, is thought to have maybe been accidentally dropped by a Viking or owned by a “high-status local” imitating Norse customs. Regardless, the treasure offers archaeologists a hard link between Lindisfarne ’s Anglo-Saxon monastery and the Norse raiders that sacked it.

Dr. David Petts, the project’s lead archaeologist and senior lecturer in the archaeology of northern England at Durham University, said that while the exact location of the island’s early wooden monastery is not known, recent excavations on the island by archaeologists and volunteers from  DigVentures have located a cemetery and a building.

DigVentures excavations on Lindisfarne are crowdfunded and greatly staffed by volunteers and this rare find was made last summer by the mother of one of the excavation teams who visited the site for a day celebrating her birthday.

Found in a trench dating to between the 8th and 9th centuries the gaming piece dates to around the time of the first Viking raid and according to DigVentures’ managing director, Lisa Westcott Wilkins, several of the most significant finds from Lindisfarne have been made by members of the public.

The “big argument”, says Wilkins, is whether you can do real archaeology with members of the public, but “you can” as long as it is properly supervised, she says.

When Wilkins was first presented with the tiny glass piece she says her “heart was pounding, the little hairs on my arms were standing up”, but as a scientist, she had trained herself out of having an emotional response to even such a fine piece, “it’s a piece of evidence, bottom line,” she said. But because the piece is “just so beautiful and so evocative of that time period,” the scientist said she just couldn’t help herself.

Game pieces, from the board game ‘hnefatafl’, similar to the glass artifact discovered in Lindisfarne.

Dr. Petts said we often tend to think of early medieval Christianity, especially on islands, “as terribly austere: that they were all living a brutal, hard life” but this was not the case for everyone.

According to the archaeologist, even if it is proven the game this piece belonged to was being played by pilgrims or wealthy monks in the period before the Vikings raided, he says, it demonstrates that the influence of Norse culture had already extended across the Nordic regions.

Moreover, the professor says, in the 8th century Lindisfarne was “a bustling place peopled with monks, pilgrims, tradespeople, and even visiting kings,” and the sheer quality of this piece suggests someone on the island lived an elite lifestyle.

Ruins of Lindisfarne priory.

According to Anglo-Saxon writers, the opening weeks of the year 793 AD were worrying times in northern England with folk reporting whirlwinds, sporadic lightning, and even “fiery dragons flying in the air”.

And while in most years the preceding famine would have fulfilled the meaning of these prophetic signs, on  June 8th darkness spread on England in the form of a fleet of heathens who appeared on the east horizon “and miserably destroyed God’s church on  Lindisfarne, with plunder and slaughter”.

I have been careful not to call the Viking raid on the island of Lindisfarne, the first, but the “first major” attack on England, for only four years before, in 789 AD, according to English Heritage, “three ships of Northman had landed on the coast of Wessex, and killed the king’s reeve who had been sent to bring the strangers to the West Saxon court”.

But the assault on Lindisfarne differed greatly from this skirmish because it was a direct strike at the Christian sacred heart of the Northumbrian kingdom, desecrating what is known as “the very place where the Christian religion began” in England. It was where the venerated Cuthbert (d. 687) had served as a bishop and where his remains were worshiped as that of a saint.

Stained glass depicting St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne.

The message delivered by the 793 AD raid was clear: we don’t just want your fields, fish, and women, but we are here to topple your king. And in this context no more fitting a discovery could ever have been made on Lindisfarne than an easily breakable crown.

EUROPE, TURKEY, WORLD

8,500 Years Older Than the Pyramids; This is the Oldest Temple Ever Built on Earth

8,500 Years Older Than the Pyramids; This is the Oldest Temple Ever Built on Earth 

Göbekli Tepe is a center of faith and pilgrimage during the Neolithic Age and is situated 15 km from the Turkish town of Sanlıurfa and added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2018.

The monumental structures, which stand as testaments to the artistic abilities of our ancestors, also offer insights into the life and beliefs of people living in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (10th-9th millennia BC).

It was not the grandeur of the archeological wonder that dominated my mind, when I stood beneath a 4,000-square-foot steel roof erected to protect the oldest temple in the world in Upper Mesopotamia.

It was how humans of the pre-pottery age when simple hand tools were yet to be discovered, erected the cathedral on the highest point of a mountain range. 

Known as “zero points” in the history of human civilization, southeast Turkey’s Göbekli Tepe pre-dates the pyramids by 8,000 years, and the Stonehenge by six millennia. Its discovery revolutionized the way archaeologists think about the origins of human civilization.

“The men, who built the temple 11,200 years ago, belonged to the Neolithic period,” Sehzat Kaya, a professional tourist guide, tells me, “They were hunter-gatherers, surviving on plants and wild animals. It was a world without pottery, writing, the wheel, and even the most primitive tools. In such a scenario, it’s incredible how the builders were able to transport stones weighing tonnes from a quarry kilometers away, and how they managed to cut, carve and shape these stones into round-oval and rectangular megalithic structures.”

Located fifteen kilometers away from the Turkish city of Sanlıurfa, Göbekli Tepe, which was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2018, is believed to be a center of faith and pilgrimage during the Neolithic Age. Since the site is older than human transition to settled life, it upends conventional views, proving the existence of religious beliefs prior to the establishment of the first cities. It altered human history with archaeologists believing that the site was a temple used to perform funerary rituals.

Klaus Schmidt, a German archaeologist and pre-historian, who led the excavations at the site from 1996, noted in a 2011 paper that no residential buildings were discovered at the site, even as at least two phases of religious architecture were uncovered. Schmidt discarded the possibility that the site was a mundane settlement of the period, and insisted that it belonged to “a religious sphere, a sacred area.”

“Göbekli Tepe seems to have been a regional center where communities met to engage in complex rites,” Schmidt, who led the excavations until he passed away in 2014, wrote, “The people must have had a highly complicated mythology, including a capacity for abstraction.”

In speaking of abstraction, Schmidt was referring to the highly-stylized T-shaped pillars at Göbekli Tepe, which means “belly hill” in Turkish. The distinctive limestone pillars are carved with stylized arms, hands, and items of clothing like belts and loincloths.

The largest pillars weigh more than 16 tons, and some are as tall as 5.5 meters. Schmidt believed that there was an overwhelming probability that the T-shape is the first-known monumental depiction of gods. Some researchers have also revealed that the site might be home to a “skull cult”.

The unique semi-subterranean pillars carry three-dimensional depictions – elaborate carvings of abstract symbols as well as animals: Scorpions, foxes, gazelles, snakes, wild boars, and wild ducks.

The unique semi-subterranean pillars carry three-dimensional depictions – elaborate carvings of abstract symbols as well as animals: Scorpions, foxes, gazelles, snakes, wild boars, and wild ducks. The monumental structures, which stand as testaments to the artistic abilities of our ancestors, also offer insights into the life and beliefs of people living in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (10th-9th millennia BC).

“Göbekli Tepe is an outstanding example of a monumental ensemble of megalithic structures, illustrating a significant period of human history,” UNESCO noted in 2018, “It is one of the first manifestations of human-made monumental architecture.

The monolithic T-shaped pillars were carved from the adjacent limestone plateau, and attest to new levels of architectural and engineering technology. They are believed to bear witness to the presence of specialized craftsmen, and possibly the emergence of more hierarchical forms of human society.”

Perched at 1000 feet above the ground, Göbekli Tepe offers a view of the horizon in nearly every direction. The site was first examined in the 1960s by anthropologists from the University of Chicago and Istanbul University. Dismissed as an abandoned medieval cemetery in 1963, the first excavation started in 1996 when Schmidt read a brief mention of the broken limestone slabs on the hilltop in the previous researchers’ report. His findings changed long-standing assumptions.

“It (Göbekli Tepe) is the complex story of the earliest large, settled communities, their extensive networking, and their communal understanding of their world, perhaps even the first organized religions and their symbolic representations of the cosmos,” Schmidt wrote.

Schmidt’s discoveries received wide international coverage. The German weekly, Der Spiegel, went a step ahead, suggesting that Adam and Eve settled at Göbekli Tepe after being banished from the Garden of Eden.

The journal based its suggestion on the coincidence that the land surrounding Göbekli Tepe is proven to be the place where wheat was cultivated for the first time, and the Bible says that Adam was the first to cultivate the wheat after he was banished. Another noteworthy aspect of the discovery is that Göbekli Tepe has also questioned the conventional belief that agriculture led to civilization.

Until the discovery, it was widely believed that complex societies came into being after hunter-gatherers settled down, and started growing crops. But the early dates of the temple’s construction proved the opposite was true – the vast labour force required to build the temple pushed humans to develop agriculture to offer food to the workers.

“The communities that built the monumental megalithic structures of Göbekli Tepe lived during one of the most momentous transitions in human history, one which took the civilization from hunter-gatherer lifeways to the first farming communities,” the UNESCO notes, “The monumental buildings at Göbekli Tepe demonstrate the creative human genius of these early (Pre-Pottery Neolithic) societies.”

Aydin Aslan, Culture and Tourism Director, Sanliurfa tells me that the site hosts over 20,000 visitors every week. The megalithic structures have largely retained their original form, offering unforeseen insights into the life of early humans. “The current site is only one-tenth of the marvels that lie hidden under the hill,” says Aslan.