Gobekli Tepe is enabling a revolution in many sciences that deal with human society, and none more profoundly than archaeology. The construction of the megaliths at about the time of the Younger Dryas predates the expectations of researchers by thousands of years, because it predates the development of agriculture, which was previously considered necessary to organization and monumental construction of this nature.
Amazingly, the site appears to have been an historical hagiography, with the events of the Younger Dryas told on the stones, particularly Stone 43.
Martin Sweatman shows how the figures carved on that stone date the comet impact that so devastated the world ~13kya.
In this series of videos (which I have only just discovered and have not yet completed watching) Sweatman discusses evidence that the carvings represent Zodiacal constellations, with a probability of 1 in 140 million.
Given the horrific destruction humanity endured, providing to their posterity understanding of the danger and enabling them to be prepared for it's repeat was advisable, and an admirable undertaking by our ancestors.
It's possible that cataclysm destroyed such civilization as had earlier arisen, which I and many others believe there is good evidence for. Should such an event happen today, I have little doubt we would be similarly reduced to abject penury, and primitive technology would be all that was left to us to undertake bare survival.
The media today blare dire warnings of utter catastrophe that will befall us with a 1 or 2 degree change in global temperature, and a rise in sea level of a meter or two.
After the Younger Dryas impact, sea level rose over 100 meters and temperature plummeted ~15 degrees for a thousand years. Whatever human societies may have prospered prior to that time are almost exclusively deep beneath the waves, as our semi-aquatic species lives at the coast. 90% of us live within ten feet of sea level today. It's pretty likely that very productive interface between land and sea has always been the focus of human industry and habitation.
I cannot help but imagine a ragtag society of survivors of such unimaginable cataclysm determining to warn their posterity about the danger, and perhaps explaining how to survive such events. Perhaps their astronomical knowledge was far greater than we presently understand, even as we have only just grasped they understood the 26,000 year precession of the equinoxes. Yet uninterpreted stelae might relate orbital information regarding the Taurid threat, likely the source of the YDB impactor, and even predictions of future impacts.
If they had the crystal balls, flying carpets, and magic wands legends relate, technologies we are only now developing and understanding are real and actual, then they may well have possessed comparable knowledge of astronomy as do we today, prior to the utter destruction of civilization and technology executed by the YDB impactor. Frankly, the specific descriptions of those 'magical' devices mirrors far too closely the present state of Iphones, Buicks, and remote controls to be credibly chance.
It is with extraordinary excitement therefore that I anticipate the continued excavation of Gobekli Tepe, most of which remains still safely buried by the deliberate action of those survivors. That burial is revelatory of their purpose.
Those stelae were not made for their religious use, which was prevented by their burial. Those stelae were preserved for the benefit of ourselves. The people that preserved them reveal they well understood the erosion, earthquakes, and vandalism that would have degraded the carvings had they remained exposed. They demonstrated not only highly technical knowledge of what was necessary to preserve their lesson, but the extreme motivation to build these lessons in megaliths and bury them to keep them intact until future archaeologists would find them upon redeveloping the blessings of civilization.
When considered by these lights, I cannot more highly regard those survivors, that undertook so diligently that warning at such high cost in blood, sweat, and tears monumental construction always exacts.
The wisdom and understanding, the love and desperately hard work they undertook on our behalf is inspirational. It also hints that understanding was no less complex and technologically competent than our own. While that remains speculative, further excavations and decoding at Gobekli Tepe may support that hypothesis, and nominal subaquatic excavations of appropriate habitation sites at the Ice Age coastline will be necessary to reveal how people did live then, and the truth of my ponderings.
In a couple centuries, we today have built up our civilization from technologies that have been understood for millenia. The people of ancient days were phenotypically competent to undertake that development, and if their brain sizes were relevant to intelligence, which I believe is demonstrable, then they were much smarter than we are today.
While it may seem unlikely in the extreme, that technological sophistication was behind the construction and preservation of Gobekli Tepe is strongly indicated by the incredible amount of work that went into preserving it, and the cautionary intent of the carvings on the massive stones preserved. Every other purpose for this site is rendered false by that burial.
It was a warning to us. We should make every effort to honor our forebears who sacrificed so much to successfully provide it to us. We should heed it, if we can but read it.
