Extraordinary
Oct. 6th, 2023 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo Karahan Tepe is an archaeological site in southern Turkey. It's around 12,000 years old. It belongs- as does its sister site at Gobekli Tepe- to a culture about which we have no information- apart from what is coming out of the ground. Gobekli Tepe is the better known of the two- if only because excavation started there earlier- but both are extraordinary. Many other similar sites have been identified nearby but are yet to be properly investigated.
It used to be held that human civilization emerged 5,000 years ago. The Turkish sites push civilisation's origins back another 6,000 years- to the end of the last Ice Age.
Gobekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe are sizeable complexes, stone built, featuring megalithic T-shaped pillars, carvings and statues. Those who understand such things claim to have found astronomical alignments. If the people who did this work were hunter-gatherers (as orthodoxy requires) they were also remarkably sophisticated, skilled at working with stone and- in order to carry through such ambitious building projects- must have had a great deal of time on their hands....
I'm doing my best to avoid interpretation, because at the moment everything is guesswork- and the next thing that gets dug up could radically alter the picture.
This past year, for instance, a remarkable statue showed up at Karahan Tepe. It's seven and a half feet tall and represents a naked man with a beard and a mullet. He is not only anatomically correct but seems to be drawing our attention to his genitals. Culture hero? Creator? Fertility god? Nature spirit? Ruler?
Who knows...
And what's that funny little square box-like thing over his diaphagm? It can't simply be an artistic grace note. It must mean something....
He is- as of this present moment- the oldest statue in existence....
It used to be held that human civilization emerged 5,000 years ago. The Turkish sites push civilisation's origins back another 6,000 years- to the end of the last Ice Age.
Gobekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe are sizeable complexes, stone built, featuring megalithic T-shaped pillars, carvings and statues. Those who understand such things claim to have found astronomical alignments. If the people who did this work were hunter-gatherers (as orthodoxy requires) they were also remarkably sophisticated, skilled at working with stone and- in order to carry through such ambitious building projects- must have had a great deal of time on their hands....
I'm doing my best to avoid interpretation, because at the moment everything is guesswork- and the next thing that gets dug up could radically alter the picture.
This past year, for instance, a remarkable statue showed up at Karahan Tepe. It's seven and a half feet tall and represents a naked man with a beard and a mullet. He is not only anatomically correct but seems to be drawing our attention to his genitals. Culture hero? Creator? Fertility god? Nature spirit? Ruler?
Who knows...
And what's that funny little square box-like thing over his diaphagm? It can't simply be an artistic grace note. It must mean something....
He is- as of this present moment- the oldest statue in existence....
