There are plenty of wonders in Turkey to satisfy our appetite for history, from the Blue Mosque or Hagia Sophia in Istanbul to the ancient city of Ephesus or the Tomb of Amyntas, one of its oldest monuments. But there’s a much more exciting and mysterious place: Göbekli Tepe. Located 9 miles from Sanliurfa, near the Syrian border, it’s the most significant megalithic complex to date and the oldest temple in the world.
Experts still don’t know what it is, its function, and how such a tremendous construction may be located where it is. Was it a temple? Was it a settlement? They don’t know, but a new study suggests a most exciting hypothesis: At least one of its pillars was a solar calendar.
The ruins. Translated as “pot-bellied hill,” Göbekli Tepe is a megalithic complex currently being excavated and built between 9600 and 8200 BC. The first theory, proposed in 2000 by German Klaus Schmidt (its original excavator), states that it was a Neolithic religious center, which would make Göbekli Tepe the oldest temple of humanity. Other experts believe that, in addition, it could’ve been a hunter-gatherer settlement.
Aerial view of the main excavation site | Image: German Archaeological Institute
However, experts still have much to unearth. They estimate the complex has almost 35,000 square miles of extension and 15 other buried sites. They believe that one of them is even older (15,000 years), which would take us to the end of the last glaciation and, therefore, 5,000 years before the first evidence of agriculture.
In other words, it’s a monument with the potential to completely change our understanding of the Neolithic. Until its discovery, the approach was that the Neolithic revolution originated in agriculture and animal domestication, i.e., that agriculture was responsible for the first settlements and the origin of civilization. Göbekli Tepe can turn this idea around: What if the settlements gave rise to agriculture? There are many mysteries unsolved, to which we must add something curious: The complex was deliberately buried 8,000 years ago and forgotten.
In short, Göbekli Tepe raises many questions and provides few answers, which makes it even more interesting.
V-shaped symbols engraved on a pillar. Image | Dr. Martin Sweatman
What if it was a calendar? As lead researcher Martin B. Sweatman of the University of Edinburgh, UK, explained in a recent article published in the journal Time and Mind, “V-symbols on Pillar 43 in Enclosure D can be interpreted in terms of a lunisolar calendar system with 11 epagomenal days, which would make it the oldest known example of its type.” That is, the site’s ancient inhabitants would have recorded their observations of the sun, moon, and constellations to create a solar calendar.
The discovery. According to the study, “each V could represent a single day.” This interpretation allowed the researchers to count a solar calendar of 365 days on one of the pillars, composed of 12 lunar months plus 11 extra days. Interestingly, the inhabitants marked one day rather uniquely: the summer solstice. “They represented by a V worn around the neck of a bird-like beast thought to represent the summer solstice constellation at the time.” Researchers have found similar markings on other nearby statues, which could indicate the representation of time-related deities. In the words of the researchers:
“Since both the moon’s and the sun’s cycles are depicted, the carvings could represent the world’s earliest so-called lunisolar calendar, based on the phases of the moon and the position of the sun – pre-dating other known calendars of this type by many millennia.”
Interpretation of V-shaped symbols for counting the calendar. Image | Dr. Martin Sweatman
Why did the inhabitants start doing it? That’s one of the big questions, and the study seems to answer it. “Ancient people may have created these carvings at Göbekli Tepe to record the date a swarm of comet fragments hit Earth nearly 13,000 years ago or 10,850 BC,” the study states. This impact would have caused a small ice age and the death of many large animals, which would have been the germ of changes in lifestyle and the search for sustenance through agriculture.
Another interesting aspect highlighted by the study is that the findings confirm that the ancients could record dates using precession, the main variation that the Earth experiences in the direction of its axis of rotation. In other words, the phenomenon causes the coordinates of the stars to change over time. To give us an idea of how curious this is, the first documented reference to precession was in 150 BC by Hipparchus.
“It appears the inhabitants of Göbekli Tepe were keen observers of the sky, which is to be expected given their world had been devastated by a comet strike. This event might have triggered civilization by initiating a new religion and by motivating developments in agriculture to cope with the cold climate. Possibly, their attempts to record what they saw are the first steps towards the development of writing millennia later,” the study concludes.
This article was written by Jose García and originally published in Spanish on Xataka.
Image | Teomanimit with CC BY-SA 3.0 license
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