I
have generally withheld comment on the Megalithic era which reasonably preceded
the Bronze Age proper and perhaps overlapped in places and time. What we have been able to do is pin down the
initial high point of the global Bronze Age to 2400 BC. Once reached, sea trade sustained it through
a thousand year political devolution. We
also know that in Europe, the advent of a
true agricultural toolkit got well underway some six thousand years ago
or at least two thousand years before the flowering of the Bronze Age as noted.
Thus
all cultures arising before agricultural regimes would have been naturally
overwhelmed and absorbed between 4500 BC through 2500BC. However these regimes did not necessarily
share the same geography at all. From
there we must take our lead from the Stone Age civilization of the Pacific
Northwest which survived to historical times supported by fishing and scant
agriculture. This culture produced
monumental art, stable villages secure against foul weather and even towns of
10,000 rather effortlessly. They also
produced an effective seamanship quite able to travel a thousand miles
quickly. Mountains both protected them
and kept them from breaking out.
This
should inform us regarding the nature of megalithic culture and its potential
to produce monumental works.
Such
a culture was established early after the Pleistocene nonconformity around
12900 BP. This surely held true in every
productive river valley worldwide. The
deltas usually provide huge natural fisheries and shell fish rich beds. None of this would end until expanding
agriculture pushed out the fishery and augmented the population hugely.
With
the inevitable seamanship came the sharing of ideas and skills through the
normal slave trade. Food and metal were
simply not important as trade items then.
Add in a thousand mile reach and ideas move along rather well and will
be shared across the globe. The only
obvious barrier is the Atlantic with its natural conveyor belt which was well
understood throughout the Bronze Age and obviously well before.
The
important point to remember is that while most lived in small mobile bands,
resource rich estuaries allowed for large organized populations. Thus sampling the soon to be agricultural
lands can be totally misleading in terms of cultural development. It is also blindingly clear that seamanship
and interaction was a global enterprise but was not then driven by any
particularly important trade product except adventurous young men.
I
left out most of the pictures here as these can be viewed through the link
after you digest the written material.
MEGALITHIC ORIGINS: Ancient connections between Göbekli Tepe and
Peru
By Hugh Newman
At 6,500 years older than
Stonehenge and 7,000 years before the pyramids were constructed, a cult
megalithic complex sat atop the hills near current day Sanliurfa, in southeast
Turkey. Göbekli Tepe was flourishing an astonishing 12,000 - 14,000 years ago, and
today, the preserved remains still exhibits high degrees of sophistication and
megalithic engineering skill. Back in the 1990's when Robert Schoch exclaimed
that the Sphinx could be many thousands of years older than previously thought,
he was ridiculed. Graham Hancock's popular theories of an 12,000 year old
Ice-age civilization were slammed. Now today, there stands a unique, and
remarkably ancient complex that is shaking the foundations of science and
history, awakening an interest in our human origins, and has been carbon-dated
by German archaeologists to the end of the last ice-age. Game on.
In September 2013, I had
the opportunity to go and see Göbekli Tepe for myself. I joined forces with
authors Andrew Collins and Graham Hancock on a Megalithomania expedition around
Turkey to investigate this enigmatic discovery. It was Graham's first time
there too, and will be documented in his forthcoming Book - 'Magicians of the
Gods'. Graham was as astonished as I was. For such an old structure, the
quality of stonework and abstract artistic skill, just seems like it should not
exist. American archaeologist Peter Benedict first discovered something was
going on there in 1963, noticing prehistoric flints all over the area. He also
discovered some broken fragments of beautifully crafted T-shaped blocks with
relief carvings on. However, due to the superior quality of the stonework, they
were classified as Byzantium artifacts (1) . Interestingly one of the stones
that is now on display in Urfa museum, looks conspicuously like one I had
previously seen in Peru. In 1994 a german archaeologist, Klaus Schmidt,
recognised the site as part of the 'pre-pottery neolithic' culture because this
style of carving was similar to a site he had worked at earlier - Nevalı Çori.
A year later, excavations began, although the general public did not hear about
it until the year 2000, when it was documented in a German magazine.
What strikes people when
they visit this site is the intricacy of the stonework, the size of the
megalithic pillars, and the sheer magnitude of the man-made hill it was
carefully covered with. The original construction was built on solid bedrock,
then mounds were constructed on top of these, and further structures built on
top over a period of around two thousand years, with the final enclosures
containing smaller stones and less sophistication than the earlier levels. The
larger, older pillars at the lower levels, show bas-relief carvings of various
animals, reptiles, birds and serpents. Some pillars seem to represent strange,
abstract statues of humans, wearing space-age belts, with long, bent arms and
'H' type letters (on every pillar in enclosure D). Most impressive is a strange
creature in three dimensional high-relief showing beautiful craftsmanship and
originality (for that period). So there are three types of relief carvings at
Göbekli Tepe. The 3D high-relief, the shallow reliefs of animals, 'H's, and the
humanoid arms and belts, plus a rougher style that occurs on the later levels,
although incredibly, this still dates to around 8,000 years old.
###
Cup-marks and a pillar base at Göbekli Tepe
I found the shaping of the
pillars interesting too. Why choose such a specific design? An abstract
construction that sits gently on the bedrock, in very shallow pits. Some of the
pillars are 18ft high, with the top part of the 'T' carved to look like it is a
separate block to the main pillar, although it it actually one piece. There
are finely carved rims and shaping that reminded me of Tiwanaku in Bolivia. The
largest limestone pillar is still in the nearby quarry, that is a staggering
24ft long. Another interesting aspect of the site are the unusual cup-marks
that are found, mainly on the bedrock, but also on top of some of the oldest
pillars, that may at some point, shed some light on the cup-mark phenomenon in
Britain, many thousands of years later.
As part of the
expedition, we also visited a Hittite
site called Alaca Höyük, near Ankara, the modern
capital city of Turkey. It earliest inhabitants were the Hattians, who were
earth-based goddess worshipers, with roots in the stone-age, who flourished
from around 2350 BC to 1700 BC. Although much younger than Göbekli Tepe, the
megalithic walls are indistinguishable from polygonal walls found all over
Peru. The jigsaw, irregularly shaped blocks, with some weighing in at more than
twenty tons apiece are a unique style that were once thought to only exist in
that part of South America, but on my travels I have seen them all up the
west coast of Italy, on Easter Island, and in Egypt, plus they have been
photographed in Delphi, Greece, Albania, Saudi Arabia, and Japan.
Although separated by many millennia and vast distances, this style is possibly
the most difficult style to accomplish, as each block needs to be carved
extremely accurately so they fit together and stay together over the years,
even through earthquakes. But at Alaca Höyük, and nearby Hattusu, they are not
flat-faced walls, they look 'puffy', basically protruding from the joins, that
some researchers say look like 'pillows'. It's a very childlike style, that
does not seem to follow any particular plan, but it was a popular technique
favoured by the ancient megalith builders. This begs the question, was there a
global megalithic stonemason elite in prehistory? Did they diffuse this
influence around the world and construct specific sites? And with so many
similarities to sites in Peru and Bolivia, there was only one thing to do.
###
Top left: Cuzco, Peru. Top right: Western Italy. Bottom left: Alaca Hoyuk, Turkey. Bottom right: Casing stones on pyramid on Giza plateau.
Fortunately, I was
co-organising a Megalithomania trip to Peru and Bolivia in November 2013 with
David Hatcher Childress and Brien Foerster. David had just published a book
called ‘Ancient Technology in Peru and Bolivia’ (Adventures Unlimited Press),
and Brien has been studying the sites for 6 years. It was the perfect team to
try and get some answers to this prehistoric mystery, and look out for any
clues that these ancient cultures might be connected.
Lapida funerary board from southern Costa Rica, with fine relief carvings.
On the flight to Lima, I
looked carefully through my film footage and photographs from Costa Rica, where
I had visited the previous December (2012). I went there mainly to investigate
the enigmatic stone spheres, but while I was in the San Jose Museum, I was
struck by some other intricate stone items on display. There are some
beautifully engineered animal reliefs on some 8ft - 9ft rectangular stone
slabs. that were only a few inches thick. Around the edges of some of them,
there were remarkable carvings, that jump out at you in 3D. My attention was
also drawn to a strange ghostly statue at one end of the museum. It had
gormless eyes, broad shoulders and hands reaching towards the navel. The
significance of these items did not jump forth until I had visited Sanliurfa
museum (near Göbekli Tepe) nine months later. There, a famous discovery stands
on display. 'Urfa Man' is just over 6ft tall with similar features to his
doppelganger in Costa Rica. The 'Balikligöl Statue' (as it is officially
called) was found near the ancient city of Urfa (now Sanliurfa), and is the
oldest human statue on earth, having been dated to around 12,000 years old.
Urfa man has no mouth and has a unique double v-neck style, looking a bit 'Star
Trek', plus has a stump at his base as though he was planted in the ground. A
similar base exists on the Costa Rica statue, and although there is a mouth,
the arms and hands point towards his navel - a feature that also exists in
Sulawesi in Indonesia, and on the Moai on Easter Island. This is a tradition
that also exists in many prehistoric cultures worldwide, focussing on the 'navel'.
Left: ‘Urfa Man, as Sanliurfa Museum, Turkey. Right: Statue in San Jose Museum, Costa Rica
After hanging out in the
capital of Peru for a few days we headed to Cuzco, also called 'The Navel of
the World'. Interestingly, Göbekli Tepe's name has a similar meaning and is one
of many 'world navels' or 'sacred centres'. Cuzco is a megalithic city. It's
foundations are made up of polygonal and precision carved stone, that is quite
a sight when you first visit there. Even on the streets of busy Cuzco, you can
spot relief carvings, mostly of serpents. However further southwest on the
shores of Lake Titicaca, the strange 'Chulpu's', that are officially circular
funerary towers, are built of huge megalithic blocks and hold several ancient
secrets. On high bluffs, always with a steep climb up to them, these towers are
a mystery, made with startling engineering precision, obviously meant to last
for several generations. The most famous example is Sillustani, a site I have
visited many times. Not only does it have circular towers, it has a unique
square 'chulpa' that is made of huge finely cut polygonal blocks. The mystery
here is that it is an almost perfect match of one of the platforms on Easter
Island, some 2,600 miles away across the Pacific ocean. Sillustani has several
relief carvings, that closely resemble those at Göbekli Tepe, including
serpents, lizards, foxes, puma's and other unusual creatures. One tower that is
partly intact shows a beautiful, but very weathered lizard that can only be seen
at certain times of day when the sun reaches round to its location on the
tower. There are several other examples dumped outside the site museum, next to
an old Volkswagen Beetle and a camper van! Someone, some time ago, obviously
spotted their archaeological significance and placed them outside to one day be
exhibited in the museum, but they never made it inside, and are now suffering
with severe weathering. However, they are still there and give a glimpse into
the mindset of the megalith builders of this area.
Top left: Sillustani, Peru. Top middle: Cutimbo, Peru. Bottom left: Sillustani.
Top right: Pillar at Gobekli Tepe. Bottom right: The first artifact found at Gobekli Tepe, originally thought to be Byzantium.
Perhaps as the sun revolved
around the circular towers, the reliefs get exposed only at certain times of
day. Could this have been a useful clock, or had some other shamanic meaning? I
wonder if Göbekli Tepe was used in a similar way, as whoever repaired the site
and covered it with thousands of tons of dirt, may have wanted to keep the
pillars, and therefore the reliefs, in their correct position, suggesting they
may hold astronomical secrets that have yet to be deciphered. It is now known
that the site was significant astronomically, due to calculations made by
Andrew Collins, with his colleague Rodney Hale, that will be published in
Andrew’s forthcoming book ‘Gobekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods’.
A Chulpa tower at Sillustani with Lizard relief, Peru.
Cutimbo is another chulpa
site further around the lake, about 25 km from Puno, the nearest major town.
The stonework here reaches another level of complexity, with the beautiful
'puffy' polygonal stonework, along with some exquisite reliefs, including
serpents, pumas, and even faces of creatures emerging from the rock, as though
pumas (perhaps) were running towards you from the inside of the tower. Graham
Hancock compared these faces to the stone 'totem' statue found at Göbekli Tepe,
now in Urfa museum, during his lecture at the 'Origins Conference' in November
2013. This inspired me to look through my Costa Rica photos, because I
remembered I took a photo of a statue with a similar face emerging from it’s
navel at San Jose Museum.
Top left: Totem statue from Gobekli Tepe. Top right: Statue at San Jose Museum, Costa Rica. Bottom: Culpa tower at Cutimbo, Peru.
Near the entrance to
Cutimbo amongst piles of broken stone, a unique relief of a cheeky critter sits
upon a lump of rock, that was once part of one of the towers. It looks like
some kind of feline, but it's unusual elongated fingers are an anomaly. This
one resembles the creatures on the flat megalithic slabs in Costa Rica, and the
solitary high-relief at Göbekli Tepe.
Top left: Close up of relief on Lapped funerary board, Costa Rica. Top right: Gobekli Tepe. Bottom left: Sulawesi, Indonesia. Bottom right: Cutimbo, Peru.
When we got back to the
hotel, David Hatcher Childress showed me a copy of his popular 'World Explorers
Magazine' with some photos of his recent trip to Sulawesi in Indonesia. I flicked
through looking for further clues and the megalith statues look remarkably like
ones I have seen In Guatemala and in Colombia. The quest was on. However, the
last picture blew my mind, as the feline or critter of Cutimbo, had a close
relation in Indonesia, this time it was on a gargantuan stone pot, with a
beautifully carved lid, where the relief carvings can be seen. But it had an
unusual face. The face that also features on the great megalithic statues of
this part of the Bada Valley, as though it was designed to show the shamanic
connection between the humans and animals. The earliest dating of the area
points to a time around 6,000 years ago. The statues all have their hands on
their waist pointing towards their navels and their faces and style are a close
match those of San Augustin in Colombia, with some similarities to Easter
Island. There are 'elongated head' statues discovered in all three of these
places, suggesting cranial deformation could also connect these cultures. At
San Augustin there is a statue that simply looks like a mini Moai, with the
topknot or hat, the white eyes and a unique stance, but this one has fangs.
These sites are separated by some 5000 miles across the Pacific.
Strange statue at San Augustin, Colombia, resembling a Maoi of Easter Island.
At one of the platforms on
Easter Island, there is a low-relief of a monkey, plus what looks like two
humans (or possibly monkeys) with their hands held in the air, neatly capturing
the style of Cutimbo and Göbekli Tepe. Several years ago a site in Turkey
called Nevalı Çori, Turkey, dated to around 9,000 BC, has a relief carving that
looks like it was created by the same artist. although this one has a tortoise
or another creature lodged between the figures.
Left: relief on a platform on Easter Island. Right: Similar carving from Nevali Cori, Turkey.
At around 10,000 years ago
in this area of Göbekli Tepe and ‘the fertile crescent’, domestication of
animals and agriculture was developed. Analysis of the seeds discovered from
the area shows that the farming of wheat was practiced at Nevalı Çori as early
as 7,200 BC (2). However, farming methods were in full swing at around 9,400
BC, with the domestication of figs near Jericho (3). In the highlands of Peru,
the same skills were being practiced, at the same time. Anthropological
archaeologist Tom Dillehay from the Vanderbilt University revealed that the
squash seeds he found in ancient storage bins on the lower western slopes of
the Andes are almost 10,000 years old. (4). He also discovered evidence of cotton and peanut farming and
what seem to be garden hoes, with irrigation canals nearby (ibid). Meanwhile,
at Stonehenge in England, giant wooden posts were being placed in the ground
10,000 years ago. Evidently, something was going on around the world at the end
of the last ice-age, that gives clout to Graham Hancock’s theories of an
advanced civilization, as proposed in Fingerprints of the Gods. However,
attempting to prove what was going on at this period is beyond the scope of
this article. The relief carvings found in Peru, Turkey, Indonesia, Costa Rica
and Easter Island, all raise some interesting points, and certainly indicate
that some re-dating may need to be carried out at these sites to get some
clarity on the origins of this ancient elite.
###
Who these people were is
difficult to ascertain, but some controversial clues have been emerging from
the ground for several centuries. For example, at a site about six miles from
Tiwanaku in Bolivia, a 3-foot wide ceramic bowl was discovered that shows
proto-Sumerian writing, next to indigenous Aymara script. It has been labelled
“The Rosetta Stone of South America". Not only does it suggest Sumerian
visitors once arrived on the shores of Lake Titicaca, it has now been
translated, and the dating of the use of this type of script has been dated to
3,500 BC. What does this mean? It certainly looks like there was an ancient
visit by Sumerians around 5,500 years ago, and when we look at the location of
where this language was being used, suddenly we see a direct connection between
Tiwanaku and the builders of Göbekli Tepe and surrounding sites. (Just as a
side note, the famous ‘H’ blocks at Puma Punku look a bit like the ‘H’s’ on the
pillars at Göbekli Tepe. However this is a tenuous link, but worth a mention!)
The Fluent Magna bowl showing proto-Sumerian script
Arthur Posnansky the
eminent archaeologist of Bolivia, dated Tiwanaku to around 17,000 years old
based upon archaeoastronomy. However, since his initial deductions, this date
has been revised several times, with the Fuenta Magna bowl possibly nailing
down 'a' date at least. When you visit Tiwanaku and Puma Punku, they look like
a cataclysm has given its best shot to destroy them a very long time ago, and
with the evidence of advanced agriculture beginning in both South America and
the fertile crescent at about the same time, we must reconsider the idea that
perhaps the Fuenta Magna bowl, is in fact, just part of a long cross-cultural
bond that had existed for thousands of years. An interesting pillar was also
found at Tiwanaku that shows a relief of a frog, surrounded by two
double-spirals, and what looks like lightning. Double and triple spirals are a
symbol that has been found all over the world, most notably Malta, that has
megalithic structures dating back to 5,000 BC.
Tiwanaku spiral carvings
In Coga Safid in the Zagros
region of Iraq, and dating back to around 7000 BC an unusual elongated skull
was discovered. It was one of 27 cranially deformed skulls found in the area.
(5). It is one of the earliest cranial deformation examples, or an altogether
unknown race, that some authors suggest were the Anunnaki from the Sumerian
area. It's dating is pretty spectacular for this type of skull. At around nine
thousand years old, it is contemporary with Göbekli Tepe. It closely resembles
many that have been discovered in Peru and Bolivia, including ones from
Tiwanaku and Puma Punku. In fact, these long-skulls (often with trepanning)
have been unearthed at almost all megalithic sites in that area. Numerous small
statues found in Iraq depict thin-faced humans with very long skulls, that date
to around 6500 BC. At Kilisik, a site near Göbekli Tepe , a T-shaped artifact
with what looks like an elongated skull was discovered, reminiscent of the
anthropomorphic Göbekli Tepe pillars, with a date of 8,000 BC. Throughout Peru and
Bolivia these skulls have been found in multiple cultures at different times.
The Paracas culture along the west coast seem to be the most prominent, but
skulls have been found at Machu Picchu, Sillustani, Cuzco, in the northern
highlands area around Huaraz, and in Ecuador, Honduras, Chile and Mexico. In
Colombia multiple statues of 'long-heads' have been discovered throughout the
country, and at the San Augustin site, some of the ferocious statues depict
rather tall heads. A surprising number of skulls have been found worldwide in
the proximity of megalithic sites including Egypt, Mexico, Micronesia, North
America, Ukraine, France, Austria, Malta and several more. (6). The long skulls
may have been a sign or royalty, or some kind of elite, and some more esoteric
researchers believe it would affect the pineal gland and enhance telekinetic
abilities, pushing a strange theory in to the mix of how they 'moved' these
huge stones. In Easter Island, there is a unique solo statue in the museum
depicting a very odd-looking female 'long-head' and the legends there state
that the Moai 'moved themselves', or were 'hovered' in to place by ‘Manna’.
Top left: 9000 year old elongated skull from Zagros Mountains, Iraq. Bottom left: T-shaped head amulet from Kilisik, Turkey showing an elongated head. Bottom left middle: Statuette found in Sumer. Top middle: Elongated skull from Puma Punku, Bolivia. Bottom middle: Two Paracas Culture skulls, Peru (Ica Museum, and Paracas History Museum). Right: Female Moai from Easter Island, with long head.
One final megalithic
connection that has mostly remained unnoticed is the tradition of leaving the
‘largest monolith in the quarry’. In Easter Island the largest Moai never
emerged fully from the bedrock and can still be visited today. In Göbekli Tepe
the 24ft T-shaped pillar still sits in the bedrock half-a-mile away from the
site. In Egypt the biggest Obelisk in the world never made it out of Aswan
granite quarry. In Baalbek, Lebanon, a 1100 ton block sits wonkily in a nearby
quarry; and last but by no means least, at Ollantaytambo, not only does a
nearby mountaintop quarry still have many worked blocks, but the 'lazy stones'
that never made it up to the main hilltop site, still straddle the road between
the quarry and the ruins.
Long-head statue from San Augustin, Colombia
It can easily be argued
that these distant cultures are divided by not only space, but time, and that
they would have come up with these ideas independently. I’m not so sure because
carving high-relief, constructing polygonal walls, quarrying and transporting
super-sized megaliths, altering skulls shapes over a lifetime (and many other
points outlined above), are not things that that can be put away as simple
‘coincidences’ that any culture would just come up with, as they are all
particularly difficult to achieve. Since the discovery of Göbekli Tepe, the
re-dating of sites worldwide needs some more investigation, as this kind of
sophistication, at this incredibly early date, could be the shake-up academia
needs and may give us a new view in to our ancestral megalithic origins.
References
- A. Collins - ‘From Göbekli Tepe to
Stonehenge’ DVD - www.megalithomania.co.uk
- www.ndsu.nodak.edu
- www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1520057/Was-fig-first-fruit-of-mans-agricultural-endeavours.html
- http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146413380
- http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/prehistory-of-iran-artificial-cranial-modifications
- Childress. D.H & Foerster. B:
‘The Enigma of Cranial Deformation’ Adventures Unlimited Press
Biography
Hugh Newman is an author,
conference organiser, world explorer, tour host, and Megalithomaniac. As an
author he has researched the Indigo child phenomenon and published a book on
the subject. His most recent book, Earth Grids has been published by Wooden
Books. He has released numerous DVDs of his multi-media presentations. He has
articles published in The Leyhunter, Mindscape Magazine, World Explorer
Magazine, The Circular, The Spiral, The Heretic, New Dawn (Australia) and
numerous other publications. As well as organising the Megalithomania
conferences, he has spoken at events in the UK, Malta, France, Peru, Egypt,
Bosnia and North America. He has appeared on BBC TV, Sky Channel 200, Bosnian
TV and the History Channel in the last three seasons of Ancient Aliens. He is
currently writing a book about the Wandlebury complex near Cambridge. Read his
personal blog here and his travel blog about 'Mounds, Megaliths & Giants of North America'.
http://www.megalithomania.co.uk/hughnewman.html. Megalithomania website: www.megalithomania.co.uk. Youtube Channel: www.youtube.com/MegalithomaniaUK
http://www.megalithomania.co.uk/hughnewman.html. Megalithomania website: www.megalithomania.co.uk. Youtube Channel: www.youtube.com/MegalithomaniaUK
No comments:
Post a Comment