The birth of religion
Now there's a big title for you. Nothing small about that. Not to be daunted however I thought I would have a go courtesy of a story I read in a National Geographic about some amazing archaeological discoveries in southern Turkey.
In the last 20 years these discoveries have overturned the accepted theory about the birth of worship. Instead of seeing religion as the cultural culmination of the increasingly sophisticated settlements that arose following the deveopment of farming, the discoveries at Gobekli Tepe suggest that perhaps religion came first and that farming came afterwards - perhaps as a response to feed the pilgrims at sites like Gobekli Tepe or simply just as a way to survive in the harsher conditions that followed the end of the last mini ice age in 9,600BC.
The evidence points to Gobekli Tepe being the world's first temple and therefore perhaps marking the beginning of religion as we know it. Certainly Gobekli Tepe builds on the Natufian settlements discovered nearby to cast doubt of the "Neolithic Revoltion" theory
Previously the "Neolithic Revolution" theory held that hunter gatherers in the Sumerian flood plains of the Tigris and Euphrates at the western end of the "Fertile Crescent" embraced agriculture in a flash of inspiration 8,000 years ago. That discovery led to a population explosion that gave rise to cities and later to writing, art and eventually religion. It was agriculture that came first and then religion. That was the theory anyway.
Even though it is likely that hunter gatherers tended patches of wild grain prior to 6,000BC, the plants they watched over were still wild. It was only the explosion in harvest yields from domesticated grains that allowed cities to grow exponentially. Wild wheat and barley, unlike their domesticated versions, shatter when ripe, spilling the grain onto the ground. True agriculture only began when hunter gatherers planted a mutation of wild wheat that didn't shatter when ripe allowing predictable harvesting - giving rise to fields of ripe wheat waiting, so to speak, for farmers to harvest them.
However in the late 1950's archaeologists working in the Levant or eastern end of the Fertile Crescent discovered settlements that called the Neolithic Theory into question. These Natufian settlements (named after the first site to be discovered), and suggest a different sequence for the growth of large settlements. The Natufian settlements were 5,000 years older than the Sumerian settlements and dated back to 13,000BC. Importantly these villages were much bigger than had previously been thought could be supported by foraging. Their size called into question the idea that larger settlements only came about after man had learned how to domesticate wheat and barley. Although still relatively small - perhaps a few hundred people - they suggested a level of social order higher than had been assumed previously for hunter gatherers. Perhaps man had become more adept at collecting the seeds from wild grains than was previously thought. Perhaps the farming of wild wheat wasn't so inefficient after all.
(The Fertile Crescent being the arc of land bounded by the mountains of Turkey to the North and the Syrian desert to the South that incorporates the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys to the east and modern day Lebanon and Israel to the West)
The Natufian villages however ran into hard times around 10,800BC when a mini ice age dropped regional temperatures by nearly 7oC. This ice age lasted 1,200 years and turned the landscape into the dry arid region of today. Much more recent archaeological discoveries have also suggested a much earlier date for the domestication of wild grains which was contemporaneous with the end of this ice age.
Perhaps the contraction of the food supply that would have resulted from the onset of these drier conditions was the driver for the domestication of wild grains. Perhaps the domestication of wild wheat was developed as a way to feed the starving Natufian villages - large settlements came first then agriculture. This is however a controversial hypothesis based solely as it is on the evidence of a small number of seeds found in a few sites
Discoveries at a small site at Gobekli Tepe in Southern Turkey however have thrown further doubt on the Neolithic Revolution theory. Working slowly and patiently since 1994 Klaus Schmidt has uncovered an extraordinary series of gigantic carved stone pillars that date from 9,600BC. This makes Gobekli Tepe contemporaneous with the end of the mini ice age that would have devastated the Natufian villages and places it at the start of the pre pottery Neolithic era.
The Gobekli pillars are the oldest manmade monumental structures.
Just think about that statement. The oldest. They predate Stonehenge by 6,300 years. There is in fact more time between Gobekli Tepe and the earliest evidence of writing (the Sumarian clay tablets dating from 3,300BC) than there is between start of writing and now.
They are quite simply inconceivably old
These enormous "T shaped" monoliths that are nearly 5.5m tall and weigh approximately 16 tonnes. They have straight sides, sharp corners and are covered by elaborate carved motifs.
In just about every aspect these pillars are breathtaking, challenging and awe inspiring.
By comparison the most monumental part of the only city that is broadly contemporaneous with Gobekli Tepe is utilitarian and mundane. The Tower of Jericho was only 3.6m tall and was built about the same time as the last of the Gobekli pillars in 8,000BC. Built of stone blocks, its use is unclear - it was possibly a grain store and or a part of the defensive wall around the city. Whatever its use - the structure is squat heavy and crude. The contrast with Gobekli Tepe is extraordinary
The Gobekli pillars are a third taller and built from a single slabs of limestone.
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Unlike Stonehenge, the sands which buried the Gobekli Tepe pillars have preserved their original form. Their flat sides and sharp corners have been preserved in breathtaking clarity. They were carved using flint axes by stone age hunter gatherers who had not yet discovered metal or pottery.
Perhaps Stonehenge was also covered with carvings like Gobekli Tepe but we will never know. The thousands of years of weathering have eroded any trace.
How did they communicate and describe the vision over the generations it would have taken to build Gobekli Tepe. No plans no drawings; just oral history.
The carvings on the face of monoliths remain clear and distinct. How did such a sophisticated sculptural awareness and visual language appear out of nowhere? The abstract T shape fascinates me. Perhaps they supported a roof structure but some of the pillars are located within a circle in locations that don't appear to be sensible points from which to support a roof. It appears to be just an abstract shape.
Monumental abstract shapes wouldn't arrive for another 5,900 years with the rise of the Egyptian civilisation and their pyramid building. No other examples of contemporaneous abstract sculptural shapes have been found. So where did this awareness spring from. It seems so disproportionately advanced when considered against a society without writing, metal tools or even pottery.
The most sophisticated aspect for me however is the sculptural beast carved on the side of one pillar. The three dimensional sculptural qualities of this creature are extraordinary. Remember these people didn't even have pottery.
What flash of inspiration gave rise to such a powerful expressive figurine. What flash of artistic vision led to carving such a figurine in such a difficult place. I mean they could have picked up any old rock and carved the beast something people had been doing since 20,000BC,
But to carve a figure as part of a monumental sculptural so that it appears on the surface of a flat plane takes a sculptural vision of a wholly different order. To see that possibility when they were looking at a large amorphous lump of limestone is extraordinary. Perhaps it was happenstance that an extra piece of limestone remained on this slab and the carvers decided to show a bit of imagination. But what a bit of imagination!
Gone are the two dimensionality that characterised Paleolithic sculpture like the clay and stone relief bison figures from Le Tuc d'Audobert in Southern France that date from c.15,000 BC
Schmidt has described discovering that hunter gatherers had constructed Gobekli Tepe was like "finding that someone had built a 747 in a basement with an x-acto knife".
In a further challenge to previous theories, archaeologists have found no sign of habitation at the site. It appears that Gobekli Tepe was not the site of a settlement; it was just some sort of major ritualistic site miles from where people lived or camped. So far no evidence of housing cooking or animal bones have been found at the site.
What led people with no form of writing to spend so much time laboriously carving and erecting such sophisticated pillars away from where they lived? When you consider the utilitarian nature of the Jericho Tower built in the midst of a town, one is struck even more forcefully by the isolated sophistication of Gobekli Tepe.
The "Neolithic Revolution" theory suggested that religion arose after the creation of the new cities that had grown out of the surplus food generated by the discovery of agriculture. The theory goes that, as people began settling in ever larger numbers, religion arose to promote social cohesion.
Gobekli Tepe however suggested a different possibility. The fact that the site does not appear to be connected to a settlement suggests that ritual or sacred sites came first, before the rise of larger settlements. Perhaps a monumental architecture was created to codify the rituals that arose in response to a sense of wonderment at the major changes in the natural world wrought by the end of the mini ice age. Perhaps agriculture and permanent settlements were the outcome of these rituals and arose from the need to grow food for large groups gathering near sacred sites.
MaybeGobekli Tepe represents mankind's first temple and that these structures mark the first evidence of the birth of religion. That is certainly a bold claim. Perhaps we will never know. Certainly the ideas above are just speculations.
So far only 5% of the site has been excavated. Perhaps when more of the site has been excavated the history of Gobekli Tepe will be clearer. Perhaps these pillars are the true monoliths from Arthur C Clarke's short story "The Sentinel" on which Kubrick based his epic film "2001 A Space Odyssey". For the time being they stand as silent sentinels teasing us with their immutability.
If you want to read more here is an article from the Smithsonian Institute
