Saturday, December 1, 2018

ASTRONOMY IN ROCK ART - DECODING GOBEKLI TEPE?



Gobekli Tepe, Pillar 43,
www.look4ward.co.uk,
Public Domain.


Now, to dig a little deeper into the phenomenon of Gobekli Tepe. Readers of RockArtBlog will recognize that I have an interest in the subject of natural phenomena in rock art, among these the science of astronomy. I have long believed that any remarkable natural phenomena will tend to be recorded by the people who observed them. Among these phenomena would be the close approach of a comet. Now two researchers from the University of Edinburgh have proposed that some of the marvelous carvings at Gobekli Tepe record just such an occurrence.

The remarkable recent discoveries at Gobekli Tepe, in Turkey, have given us very early architecture decorated with sophisticated stone carvings, but they have also given us (as all such discoveries seem to) new controversies concerning archaeoastronomy and the supposed comet strike that caused the Younger Dryas.

"The Younger Dryas (c. 12.900 to c. 11,700 BP) was a return to glacial conditions which temporarily reversed the gradual climatic warming after the Last Glacial Maximum started receding around 20,000 BP. It is named after an indicator genus, the alpine-tundra wildflower Dryas octopetala, as its leaves are occasionally abundant in the Late Glacial, often minerogenic-rich, like lake sediments of Scandinavian lakes." (Wikipedia)


Gobekli Tepe, Pillar 43,
Public Domain.

Gobekli Tepe, Turkish for "Potbelly Hill", is an archaeological site in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey, approximately 12 km (7 mi) northeast of the city of Sanliurfa. The tell has a height of 15 m (49 ft) and is about 300 m (980 ft) in diameter. It is approximately 760 m (2,490 ft) above sea level.
The tell includes two phases of use believed to be of a social or ritual nature dating back to the 10th - 8th millennium BCE. During the first phase, belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars were erected - the world's oldest known megaliths. More than 200 pillars in about 20 circles are currently known through geophysical surveys. Each pillar has a height of up to 6 m (20 ft) and weighs up to 10 tons. They are fitted into sockets that were hewn out of the bedrock." (Wikipedia) It is these pillars which we are concerned with here. They are remarkably carved with low relief images and symbols, some have 3-dimensional animals, and human appendages making them stylized standing human figures.

Martin Sweatman and Dimitrios Tsikritsis, of the School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, Scotland, have analyzed carvings on some of these pillars and deciphered them to tell an amazing tale. Sweatman and Tsikritsis claim they are a record of the huge comet strike that caused the Younger Dryas by reversing the climate warming, putting earth back into ice age conditions for 1,000 years. This comet strike has been amazingly difficult to locate, no remaining physical has been found so far. This has led to theories that state that the comet may have hit the earth on the ice sheet covering Canada during the late glacial age, leaving no crater in the ground.


Gobeckli Tepe, carved pillar,
the lower image is a fox.
LaStampa.it, Public Domain.

"As they are central to this work we will describe in detail a few of the key pillars of interest and their corresponding carvings. The key to unlocking our interpretation of GT is pillar 43, Enclosure D, also known as the ‘Vulture Stone’ (see Figure 1). Enclosure D is formed of a rough circular wall with eleven large upright megaliths embedded into its inner surface (once there were perhaps twelve), protruding upwards and inwards. Near the centre of the enclosure stand a pair of massive hammer-shaped megaliths, each weighing around 15 tonnes with some anthropomorphic features. We will come back to them. Pillar 43 is embedded into the north-west of the enclosure. Striking images of this pillar can be found in the academic literature and across the internet. Indeed, pillar 43 is one of the defining images of Göbekli Tepe, and has been called ‘the world’s first pictogram’." (Sweatmen and Tsikritsis, 2017)

Sweatman and Tsikritsis proceed through a very complex analysis of the imagery on pillar 43 to the conclusion that it records a dated astronomical occurrence in 10950 BC ± 250 yrs, roughly coinciding with the end of the Younger Dryas - why not the date of the event that they say began the Younger Dryas I am not able to understand. As I understand them, they say that pillar 43 sets the date and implies a catastrophe occurred, and pillar 18 indicates that it was a comet. How did the inhabitants of Gobekli Tepe, who produced this record, know of something that happened 2,000 years earlier?

"We have interpreted much of the symbolism of Göbekli Tepe in terms of astronomical events. By matching low-relief carvings on some of the pillars at Göbekli Tepe to star asterisms we find compelling evidence that the famous ‘Vulture Stone’ is a date stamp for 10950 BC ± 250 yrs, which corresponds closely to the proposed Younger Dryas event, estimated at 10890 BC. We also find evidence that a key function of Göbekli Tepe was to observe meteor showers and record cometary encounters. Indeed, the people of Göbekli Tepe appear to have had a special interest in the Taurid meteor stream, the same meteor stream that is proposed as responsible for the Younger-Dryas event. Is Göbekli Tepe the ‘smoking gun’ for the Younger-Dryas cometary encounter, and hence for coherent catastrophism?" (Sweatman and Tsikritsis)

The date designated has been arrived at by assuming the circle seen in what is roughly the center of pillar 43 (the Vulture Stone) as the sun, and the other images on the face are identified as constellations. Apparently running the (assumed) identified constellations back in a computer to the positions they occupy on pillar 43 gives the date 10950 BCE ± 250. The other pillar involved in this interpretation is pillar 18 of Enclosure D. Its imagery identifies the causal event of the Younger Dryas, a comet strike on earth. The comet is proven by the image of a fox with the foxes' tail representing the comet. (Sweatman and Tsikritsis)

I have read their paper and I must say I am not convinced. They state, in many instances, that some carved symbol carries a certain meaning, but present no evidence to back that up. We have the same criticisms here that I have found pertinent in other claimed prehistoric star charts, and a star chart is exactly what they are claiming pillar 43 is. However, a picture of a scorpion provides absolutely no proof whatsoever that the ancient inhabitants identified the same Scorpio constellation as we do, or any Scorpio constellation at all, for that matter. They might have seen those stars as representing anything at all. They might have looked up at the constellation of the rabbit's genitals for all we know. A picture of a scorpion proves nothing. I will look more deeply into these constellations and star charts in my next column.

It is, perhaps, inevitable that catastrophe theorists would find ways to involve something as remarkable as Gobekli Tepe in their crazy ideas. The press has loved this story by Sweatman and Tsikritsis, but I have not found much in the way of assent from the scientific community. It is a shame that some people cannot just admire it for what it is, amazingly early examples of temple architecture and remarkable artwork combined in one place, produced thousands of years earlier than most other known examples, a miracle of human creativity. Not everything encodes secret messages! I do, however, urge you to read their paper for yourself and make up your own mind. 

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original listed below.

REFERENCES:

Sweatman, Martin B., and Dimitrios Tsikritsis
2017 Decoding Gobekli Tepe With Archaeoastronomy: What Does The Fox Say?, p. 233-50, Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry (open access), Vol. 17, No. 1.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göbekli_Tepe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas

LaStampt.it

www.look4ward.co.uk

www.suggestkeywords

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