we've had our suspicions....

this came out today. Among the Biblical Archaeology world it has been a theory for some time that the site has been incorrectly 'diagnosed' to put it one way. This theory only adds to the list of others out there. One Theory is that the actual site was a clay factory (see here for an article and links) and that the Essenes came upon it later after it had been abandoned but that by this time the scrolls had already been in the caves. Things like that. google it and see what you think...I won't say where I stand! :) well not in this post at least!

cheers!

miss s.

in an attempt to right our wrongs

so there are some theories out there that Gobekli Tepe is the infamous Garden of Eden. when i first read about this site i thought it was a giant hoax. it was just really unreal and 'too good to be true' in the world of Archaeology.

but it is real and people want it to be Eden. somehow this idea really creeps me out. from what i have read about this place - there are more articles out there then just the one i linked so google it ( here is Wikipedia's Vanilla version)- its a pretty tragic story. it reeks of the tragedy at Easter Island with the addition of human sacrifice - yikes!

all in all i'm not comfortable with the idea that this is Eden. it doesn't fulfil the requirements of "Eden" to this Archaeologist. And the archaeological evidence of what went on and what was going on at Gobekli Tepe doesn't sound like 'paradise' at all to me.
so if this is the Garden of Eden how did we get from Gobekli to Eden?

In many ways this place does fit Eden. from the art there is evidence that the abundance of animals and vegetation was quite remarkable - like the Garden of Eden in Genesis/B'reshit has us believe. its location is ok. this is the 1st part that does not convince me. but the main part of why i don't like Gobekli Tepe is because it just really freaking creepy.
what happened here? somehow these nomadic peoples in what is now Turkey got together and built this incredible structure. Why? we don't really know but i would put all my money on religious purposes - i mean, duh - anyhow...
the archaeological record shows that these nomadic people got together and built this amazing, gigantic structure for religious purposes. now when we talk about religious purposes we often think in our terms of how we gather and worship today. and its a pretty good model to use. believe it or not no matter how much we have advanced in technology we're still very much the same people we were 11,000 years ago. anyhow, the issue with Gobekli is what happened to the environment because these people needed to gather and build this place and then put the place into use.
the tragedy at Easter Island is an excellent example of the "Carrying Capacity" theory. the population of Easter Island destroyed their environment because they surpassed their Carrying Capacity's limit - that is the environment was no longer capable of supporting the population.
the result was a complete devastation of the environment which left the people trapped on an Island they could not escape (because they used up all their trees and could no longer build boats to get to the main land) and starved to death. as a result the people of Easter Island took out their anger on their gods and toppled their famous stone statues.
how is Gobekli like this? because a large population of nomadic people were forced to be sedentary for as long as it took to build this massive complex. this taxed the environment and changed the way these people lived. as well any time a large group of people were at the complex at any given time worshiping this would happen all over again. so a group that was reliant on being Nomadic and feasting off the land without having to work it was all of a sudden forced to be in one spot and forced into a sedimentary life. this dramatically changed the landscape. this change is why the archaeologists believe the people at Gobekli started to preform human sacrifice. the change in environment may have made them believe that their god or gods were angry with them (which is pretty much the argument always for human sacrifice) and so they began to sacrifice one another to appease/please their Deity/Deities. well this doesn't seem to have worked because they then covered the entire complex(!!!!!) with soil, abandoning it to be buried forever!

whew! my fingers hurt.

any how. this real life occurrence smells very similar to the story of Eden in the Bible as well as the Greek Mythology of how man kind was forced to work the earth because Prometheus stole fire from Zeus AND combine that with the myth of Prometheus's brother Epimethius (Adam) falling in love with Pandora (Eve) giving her that 'box' that she opened (the apple) even though both her and Epimethius new NOT to open the box (G-d's warning to Adam and Eve) and thus releasing evil into the world (being kicked out of Eden).
small side note Prometheus means "Foresight" (he was the smarter brother) and Epimethius means "Hindsight" - go figure...

all that said Gobekli Tepe is a good argument for Eden i suppose though its location really doesn't suit where i personally believe Eden would have been - i'm thinking Iraq in the Plain of Eden/Adan. its amazing how names that survive from biblical times end up being where those biblical places actually where! shock! yes i'm being cheeky. and although it is a good argument for Eden i feel unsettled about the reasoning because it assumes too much. we are speaking for these mesolithic and neolithic people and giving them very complex responsibilities about OUR beliefs. its just unsettling to me.
this is where i get the title for this entry - In an attempt to right our wrongs - we are essentially trying to make restitution with our bad behavior of getting kicked out of Eden by finding G-d's Eden. and if we do find it what do we think we can do? do we think we can make up for lost time and say our sorrys? go back to this easy life of nakedness and no work? no we can't. Archaeologists and Biblical Scholars have for many years (as you will read in the article) believed that Adam and Eve wasn't a story to be taken literally. it was a story of the beginning of a 'people'. think of it this way, if you're trying to explain the History of the State of Texas for instance you're not going to go into the background story of how the Roman Empire played a part in the creation of the Catholic Church which then played a part in the shaping of Europe which then played a part in the Conquest of the Americas which then led to the State of Texas...are you? well neither is the bible...
so when the bible begins to tell the story of the Jewish people it doesn't really talk about all the other multi-god (polytheistic) people living in the fertile Crescent at the time its just going to focus on a point in time that is relevant to the explanation of where Abraham and Sarah came from. Adam and Eve is this point. their story is that of one couple in particular living a nomadic existence in the Fertile Crescent at a point in time and how they went from being mobile to sedimentary and why. people needed to know why they worked the earth and just like the Greek Myth our Biblical story (which more then likely comes from the same source as the Greek Myth originally) explains why.
to give Gobekli so much control over the 'story' when that's all it really is, is what i have biggest issue with. to say that the biblical story is about a group of people that lived in the Plain of Adan in Iraq and were the first to be sedimentary makes sense, but to say that Gobleki was the actual Garden of Eden in its literal word for word sense - a Garden - is out there....i just think its us grasping at straws and trying to find this thing that was the key to our 'goodness' and we lost it by being bad. i think we are trying to make up for our wrongs - Adam and Eve's wrongs by finding it again for G-d and humanity. well guess what, G-d knows where it is. and if it really was a for real place and true paradise, he'll let us back in when he thinks we should be allowed back in...

but back to what i said at the very beginning about how its 'too good to be true' and an amazing archaeological find. well it is. the technology and the organization that it took to master the building of the site is a great eye opener and really solidifies what us archaeologists always knew and that is that mesolithic and neolithic people are quite capable of accomplishing great things (so your Alien's built it argument does not float!) with their hands and their 'arrow heads'.

cheers,
Miss S.