The worlds first Temple

The way Schmidt sees it, Gobekli Tepe's sloping, rocky ground is a stonecutter's dream. Even without metal chisels or hammers, prehistoric masons wielding flint tools could have chipped away at softer limestone outcrops, shaping them into pillars on the spot before carrying them a few hundred yards to the summit and lifting them upright. Then, Schmidt says, once the stone rings were finished, the ancient builders covered them over with dirt. Eventually, they placed another ring nearby or on top of the old one. Over centuries, these layers created the hilltop.
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Schmidt is betting that beneath the floors he'll find the structures' true purpose: a final resting place for a society of hunters.

Perhaps, Schmidt says, the site was a burial ground or the center of a death cult, the dead laid out on the hillside among the stylized gods and spirits of the afterlife. If so, Gobekli Tepe's location was no accident. "From here the dead are looking out at the ideal view," Schmidt says as the sun casts long shadows over the half-buried pillars. "They're looking out over a hunter's dream."
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so, this was a cemetery.
 
cecilia said:
so, this was a cemetery.
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The hypothesis here is that Gobekli Tepe is a burial site, however the excavations have not yet found any actual graves yet.

My guess it a was Temple to bring the dead to start their journey to the spirit world, or visit your dead ancestors in festivals, similar to 'Day of the Dead" celebrations in Mexico, that go back to the Aztec.

The carved totems on the monoliths seem to be guardians to the spirit world, and all menacing creatures, lions, boars, spiders, snakes and scorpions. There are lots of vulture carvings. Some cultures believed vultures transported the flesh of the dead up to the spirit world. The bodies may have been placed on top of the monoliths for the vultures.

So it seams that civilization was started by the coordinated effort required to build the monoliths, and agriculture was spurred by the need for cereal grains to make beer for the festivals.

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Ancient stone carvings confirm a comet struck Earth in 10,950BC, sparking the rise of civilizations

"It appears Göbekli Tepe was, among other things, an observatory for monitoring the night sky.

“One of its pillars seems to have served as a memorial to this devastating event – probably the worst day in history since the end of the ice age.”

animal carvings made on a pillar – known as the vulture stone – at Gobekli Tepe were astronomical symbols which represented constellations and the comet.
 
DECODING GÖBEKLI TEPE WITH ARCHAEOASTRONOMY:
WHAT DOES THE FOX SAY?

Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, Vol. 17, No 1, (2017), pp. 233-250

pdf download link

ABSTRACT
We have interpreted much of the symbolism of Göbekli Tepe in terms of astronomical events. By matching low-relief carvings on some of the pillars at Göbekli Tepe to star asterisms we find compelling evidence that the famous ‘Vulture Stone’ is a date stamp for 10950 BC ± 250 yrs, which corresponds closely to the proposed Younger Dryas event, estimated at 10890 BC. We also find evidence that a key function of Göbekli Tepe was to observe meteor showers and record cometary encounters. Indeed, the people of Göbekli Tepe appear to have had a special interest in the Taurid meteor stream, the same meteor stream that is proposed as responsible for the Younger-Dryas event.

Reference:
The Taurids are an annual meteor shower associated with the comet Encke. They are named after their radiant point in the constellation Taurus, where they are seen to come from in the sky. Because of their occurrence in late October and early November, they are also called Halloween fireballs.


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SKY SIMULATIONS FOR THE PALAEOLITHIC EPOCH (pp.329-334)
E. Antonello
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.220954

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ABSTRACT
The simulations of the sky for the very far past are briefly discussed, and a possible application to the study
of the Bear constellations, in particular for the epoch of the last glacial maximum, is presented; reference is
made to the different length of seasons, climate and environment. Many ethnographic studies described the
special relationship between men and bears, in connection also with a cosmic hunt, and it may be possible
that such a relation dates back to the Palaeolithic epoch.
http://maajournal.com/Issues/2016/Vol16-4/Full45.pdf
 
K A R A H A N T E P E
GÖBEKLI TEPE'S SISTER SITE


Karahan Tepe might be described as a sister site to the more widely known Pre-Pottery Neolithic sanctuary of Göbekli Tepe. Both are situated in mountainous terrain in southeast Anatolia, just a short distance from the ancient cities of Sanliurfa and Harran. Both feature settings of T-shaped stone pillars, which are anthropomorphic in nature and bear carvings either in high relief or 3D. Both were built and then abandoned during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period. Yet whereas Göbekli Tepe has received widespread attention, being excavated since 1995 under the auspice of the German Archaeological Institute in partnership with the Sanliurfa Archaeological Museum, Karahan Tepe remains relatively obscure.
 
3400 year old song from a cuneiform tablet

The tablets from the Syrian city of ancient Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra) about 3400 years old, had markings called cuneiform signs in the hurrian language (with borrowed akkadian terms) that provided a form of musical notation. One of the texts formed a complete cult hymn and is the oldest preserved song with notation in the world.


the song, it turns out is in the equivalent of the diatonic "major" ("do, re, mi") scale. "We are able to match the number of syllables in the text of the song with the number of notes indicated by the musical notations". This approach produces harmonies rather than a melody of single notes. The chances the number of syllables would match the notation numbers without intention are astronomical.

This evidence both the 7-note diatonic scale as well as harmony existed 3,400 years ago flies in the face of most musicologists' views that ancient harmony was virtually non-existent (or even impossible) and the scale only about as old as the Ancient Greeks, 2000 years ago. "This has revolutionized the whole concept of the origin of western music

Why Do Scales, Keys and Harmony Exist?
At the earliest times in musical development, a sense for "melody" would not have occurred overnight. Prior to it, music often was the playing of single notes, assigned to various rituals, such as one gong for moon, another for sun, another for death, birth, etc., and played without much or any regard to their succession as musical melody of any sort. Scales might even be virtually non-existent as was harmony.

What is harmony for? After all, a single tone is more "pure" than any combinations of tones or chords, which are cluttered with overtones that are usually dissonant with each other. Why did humanity bother to add, to the relatively clean single tone, "harmony" notes (and therefore, greater dissonance)?

The answer is that harmony's function has evolved mostly to make the notes of melodies "connect" or to make their connection to each other melodically more apparent to the ear by making their common inner overtones audibly explicit in chords. It follows that harmony had no reason to exist among any people who are lacking scales. Scales are, historically, "congealed" or "generic" melody in the abstract.

Once scales developed (especially a favoured two, major and minor), then we are looking at a people for whom connections between notes is very important. The agenda is whether melody is important enough for them to overlook the dissonant elements in chords (compared to their purer, more consonant single tones), so as to allow them to use chords in the enhancement of their melodies. Only after the full scale and melody develop first can harmony even begin to appear on this historical agenda. The oldest song dates this agenda far earlier in time and gives to the diatonic scale a near-universal status not formerly ascribed to it.

"Tonality", which is defined as a "loyalty to a keynote", is also exhibited in the oldest song by repeating phrases found at the end of sentences, usually on the same note as the keynote of the tune.
 
Plimpton 322, the most famous of Old Babylonian tablets (1900-1600 BC), is the world’s oldest trigonometric table

Plimpton 322 describes the shapes of right-angle triangles using a novel kind of trigonometry based on ratios, not angles and circles. It is a fascinating mathematical work that demonstrates undoubted genius,” “The tablet not only contains the world’s oldest trigonometric table; it is also the only completely accurate trigonometric table, because of the very different Babylonian approach to arithmetic and geometry.”

The Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who lived about 120 years BC, has long been regarded as the father of trigonometry, with his ‘table of chords’ on a circle considered the oldest trigonometric table.
“Plimpton 322 predates Hipparchus by more than 1000 years.
 
Bronze Age Problems

Complaint tablet to Ea-nasir

Ea-nasir was a dealer in copper ingots from Magan and was active in business around the turn of the nineteenth century BC. He comes across as a somewhat unscrupulous character, or perhaps he just fell on hard times at one point in his career, for there are a number of angry letters from his backers in Ur while he is away in Dilmun complaining that he has not delivered the promised goods. We have all of the cuneiform. complaints because Ea-nasir carefully preserved them in a room in his house. And it wasn't just copper, either, people were mad at him for failure to deliver everything from kitchenware to clothing. The tablets were unearthed in Ur in 1953.
 
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