#55 Gobekli Tepe, Part Deux

Stonehenge was built 5000 years ago in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2500 BC. Carbon dating of  organic matter adhering to the megaliths of Gobekli Tepe reveal it to be 12,000 years old.

The strangest part of Gobekli Tepe is its inhabitants entombed their temple under thousands of tons of earth creating the artificial hills on which the unnamed shepherd walked in 1994.

No one knows why Gobekli was buried. Strange indeed.

 

 

Gobekli Tepe is the oldest such site in the world, by a mind numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-wheel, pre everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant. - Tom Cox

#54 Urfa Man - Gobekli Tepe

The world's oldest statue is a two-meter high statue of a male that was discovered in Balıklıgöl in 1993. The limestone statue the eyes of which are carved out of obsidian depicts a man seizing his genital organ with both hands.  The Urfa Man statue, so named because of the region in which he was found, is extraordinary for a number of reasons. First, it is the only one of its kind out of the hundreds of carvings found at Gobekli Tepe. The statue is 6 feet tall and carved of stone. It is definitely humanoid and depicts a man with no hair, with eyes made from what appears to be black obsidian crystals. 

Quoting from the June 2012 Turkish edition of Actual Archeology," Due to the existence not only of arms and human hands, but also of belts and loincloths, it can be said that the T-shaped pillars have an anthropomorphic identity, but who are they ? As their faces are never depicted, they seem very likely to be related to supernatural beings, beings gathered at Gobekli Tepe for certain, but so far unknown, purposes."

Another statue found at the site almost seems to represent the birth of humanity. The top portion of the statue is a type of humanoid being, but more alien in appearance. Near the bottom of the statue is what looks to be  a human baby being born.