Archaeologists find the Garden of Eden

[Ruldra]

This article is actually kind of old (almost 2 years old), but I don't think may of us are up-to-date with the events in the archaeological scene.

So, back in 1994, in Turkey, a man finds some strange stones partially exposed in the sand. Big, oblong stones. He thinks they are somehow important and alert other people of his findings. Turns out they are megaliths, inscribed with many different drawings. In fact, there are hundreds of those stones buried in the area. They are arranged in circles, much like Stonehenge.

This alone makes the site a important discovery. The thing is, those stones are dated to be around 12,000 years old. Back then, humans were still hunting and learning how to make fire. How could cavemen, who could barely survive, manage to build those things?

Not only that. In the Book of Genesis, there are many references to Eden that matches the site's location. Everything leads to the conclusion that Genesis was, in fact, describing this place.

With the evidence found, archaeologists were able to, at least, theorize how humans lived in the area and how they ultimately met their ruin - effectively destroying paradise.

I'll let you guys read the rest. A very interesting read.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... -Eden.html

[CMoon]

Think you got a little natural history to bone up on. Human beings (homo sapeins proper) date well back, probably at least 100 to 200 KYO, though we know that cave paintings and making beads (signs of culture and limited technology) were well under way at least 40K years ago, probably earlier. Still, this is LONG AFTER the discovery of fire. There is evidence that other homonids had fire usage long before homo sapiens were on the scene, so suspecting that humans had jack-shit 10-30 KYO is...well it's the same kind of thinking most people have when they say that aliens must have made the pyramids.

Check out what a single guy can do using stone-age technology and some applied maths: http://www.theforgottentechnology.com/newpage1

Not to piss all over your original post, but so many people make the mistake that human history is recent, and until then people had nothing. That doesn't leave room for the Hyborian age!!!

Edit: All that said, the site does look like a cool discovery. I hope in fact it does pave the way toward understanding civilizations of 'pre-history'--that is, societies that must have existed before the first forms of writing were inveted circa 4000 BC. I've long suspected that agrarian societies with markets and temples and what not might go back before 10K BC, but this is hard to say, isn't it? Given that dogs were domesticated (by current estimates) some 10K-15K years ago, it seems that human beings must have had something going on, even if they haven't left us any writings about it.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Aye, there's really no telling what sorts of civilisations could have perished leaving next to no evidence of their existence. I wonder what our descendants will make of our computer games... What Sir James George Frazer made of other people's reports of various exotic nations is exhilarating enough.

[CMoon]

With no surviving digital evidence, they'll just note the massive drop in productivity and the eventual stagnation and demise of our society. We'll be just like the Aztecs.

[Ed Oscuro]

Fascinating read - the bit about the ecological catastrophe would seem to give the writers of Genesis some justification for making Cain, the farmer, the bad guy.

Gobekli is thus the oldest such site in the world, by a mind-numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant, right back in our hunter-gatherer past.

This obviously is a bit of hyperbole - if the stones were made by the people who lived near there, that suggests that they were settling down for periods of time. Perhaps they wanted just to make a record of what was in the area as they found it changing. It is interesting to think of a group of people making the same sort of public works - megaliths - that we have always associated with farming societies, while at the same time continuing to be hunter-gatherers. Unfortunately it all comes back down to population pressures and the carrying capacity of a given environment, issues which there has been consciousness of generally only in the last century or two (and generally only an academic recognition a bit further found in works like those by Malthus).

[Obiwanshinobi]

Unfortunately it all comes back down to population pressures and the carrying capacity of a given environment, issues which there has been consciousness of generally only in the last century or two (and generally only an academic recognition a bit further found in works like those by Malthus).

Debatable, as - for instance - people of the notoriously overpopulated Holy Roman Empire certainly did associate famine with limited fertility of the land and the fact of overpopulation (they lived in much smaller world than we do so to speak, before the American Dream came along). Whether they saw it as a harsh consequence of the agricultural path their forefathers chose - I do not know, but on the continent's other side, people of the Eurasian Steppe, with their radically different thinking about the land, must have been just as aware of the fact that the pasture at disposal can sustain only this much livestock and people given year.

[drauch]

It's aliens.

[Magic Knight]

Not only that. In the Book of Genesis, there are many references to Eden that matches the site's location. Everything leads to the conclusion that Genesis was, in fact, describing this place.

The idea that this places could be the "Garden of Eden" is beyond ridiculous. The author of the piece - in the Daily Mail of all newspapers - has a nice book he'd like you to buy.

I agree with Klaus Schmidt, leader of the archaeological team: "Gobekli Tepe is extraordinary enough, without speculation"

[mezzanine]

The idea that this places could be the "Garden of Eden" is beyond ridiculous. The author of the piece - in the Daily Mail of all newspapers - has a nice book he'd like you to buy.

yep

"Tom Cox" or "Tom Knox" is a pseudonym of the British journalist Sean Thomas, who used the article to get publicity for his thriller "Genesis Secret", which is due to appear in March in English and simultaneously in German. Since Sean Thomas is using a falsified version of an interview with Klaus Schmidt made in fall 2006, he presents a distortion of the scientific work of the German Archaeological Institute.

The German Archaeological Institute (DAI) distances itself from these statements and reserves the right to take legal action against further dissemination of the story in connection with the work of the DAI at Göbekli Tepe. Klaus Schmidt neither in an interview nor on any other occasion made the above mentioned statements.

http://www.dainst.org/index_8961d1b2bb1 ... 11_en.html