Excellent.

Every few years the dates for "the beginning" of civilization have to be moved back further.

"Look at this", he says, pointing at a photo of an exquisitely carved sculpture showing an animal, half-human, half-lion. "It’s a sphinx, thousands of years before Egypt. Southeastern Turkey, northern Syria - this region saw the wedding night of our civilization."

Incredible find. I find this quote really interesting. What could the sphinx actually be. Either the ancient eqyptians had some connection with this ancient civilisaion or the sphinx actually existed ...

[edit on 18-4-2008 by fiftyfifty]

absolutely fascinating stuff
its always been a subject of day-dreaming for me - don't know why - imagining myself in some cave thousands of years ago - trying to have a life, with the same crazy characters and personalities we see amongst us now, just with almost nothing manufactured - everything directly from nature.
I can just see the swagger with which some guy parades his newly skinned fur loin cloth, or the bully with the largest, knobbiest club ever seen.
one thing that struck me about this article/discovery is that even back then, so many thousands of years ago, there was some sort of spiritual element in our nature - the need to try and understand the meaning of it all, and to try and get a grasp on what mysterious forces were acting on our lives.
I for one, still haven't figured it out, don't think anyone has really, but haven't lost hope that I/we might, eventually.
Would like to go back to the time of that temple - just for a day and see what they were thinking and dreaming about! Wouldn't be surprised tho to find a local "Rockefeller" telling all the peons what they were supposed to do - and charging all the revelers a couple of hides for a piece of the view.

The one statue looks more like it may have been some type of android or robot. Sometimes I wonder if these sights may have been fabricated to give the illusion they were built long ago by humans. Some of the carvings also look similar to Mayan shapes. The story of Adam and Eve and the garden of eden may have coexisted in several areas of the world. The possible ability to create a humanoid being from just about any living thing may have been done also. If humans were also transplanted to this world from another planet, than there's really no way of knowing for sure these were made by humans. How do we know whether or not part of our DNA was at one time a triple helix from living in a multiple star solar system?

Its becoming more obvious with each passing year that we do not know near as much as we think we do about our past..

This planet has most likely played host to countless generations and periods of evolution. I would not doubt it if civilization has surpassed the technological point that we are at now and maybe even further at one point in time.

That is some really beautiful stone they used for the statue. I wonder WHY exactly they chose a creamy white stone, instead of a stone with a more human pigment to it.

Well, it could show us that humans were a lot more thoughtful back then than anyone had imagined, and they were able to visualise reality abstractly and portray it in their art... which is neat.

OR, it could tell us that the 'person' who made this sculpture used that specific colored stone for the reason that it best represented the 'person" being artistically rendered...

perhaps the 'person' had creamy white skin and small black eyes...

do do do do, do do do do, dun dun dun dun!!!! You are now entering... the old Statue Zone.

This is a great find! Now maybe the folks that buy the 6,000 year old earth belief will take a second look.

Every year new amazing finds like this show that "real science" is the way to go and teach !

Terrific!

Ah, the human gift of understanding at it's finest! To look at the world around us and figure out where we've been and how we got here, evolution is wonderful is it not. Let's give a big round of applause to the science of reasoned skepticism and the adaptation of knowledge assimilation.

And so the battle against inefficient use of energy and ignorance goes on...

I'm not quite sure I understand the article. This is a relatively well-known site, apparently, if the Google search is right. But it had only been dated back around 10,000 years. Was there some new discovery that has pushed the date back farther? I would like to see some peer review of that.

Otherwise, from other articles about the site, these folks are pushing some kind of Bible proof agenda. Which is fine, if they're doing good science. But it does make me wonder if their math is being double-checked.

Hey Ruff, the 6,000 yr crowd would just say "God put it there to confuse us". Have a sister who's one of them and that's what she says about the dinosaurs. They didn't really live and walk around.
Cool find to the OP!

Originally posted by herbalepoch
Let's give a big round of applause to the science of reasoned skepticism

Its usually not the "reasoned skeptics" that discover new things but the enthusiastic scientific pioneers

I'm really not trying to be crude but does it appear to anyone else that the hands on the statue are positioned to cover the genitles?

The statue almost looks like someone who needs to pee but is holding it in.

I find it interesting that there could be comparisons made between the temple and the garden of eden, the statue of the man and woman and Adam and Eve, and the transgression from hunter/gatherer to cultivating land and eating from the Tree of Knowledge.

My question is this:
Why would they bury such a temple? Seems like a lot of work to create such a place and just as much work to bury it.

Cor !!!!! I have always had a sneaky suspicion that there were advanced civilsations before us. I guess the evidence being found proves my hunch looks increasingly likely !!!

Geat find Creighton!

The first thing that had crossed my mind was "I wonder how the religous people are taking this, as a sign or a revelation of the thing's from the past would be renewed again, or skepticisms over the fact it would be a foot up to the fact of the Eden effect?"
Turn's out there has been debate of both being the probable answer. In the original article of this thread, I had to stop and reread the one specific paragraph a couple of times to allow it to sink in, it went as follows:

"In my opinion, the people who carved them were asking themselves the biggest questions of all," Schmidt continued. "What is this universe? Why are we here?"

I personally feel we are just more than a religous, all of a sudden appeared species, and this thread validates my thinking of the "Why are we here, where did we come from" thoughts.
Thanks for the thread, and you are truly correct about it changing our views of what we know and what we think we know...
You have my vote for this one Creighton, "Good and intellectual find!!!"

"Everybody used to think only complex, hierarchical civilizations could build such monumental sites, and that they only came about with the invention of agriculture", says Ian Hodder, a Stanford University Professor of Anthropology, who, since 1993, has directed digs at Catalhoyuk, Turkey’s most famous Neolithic site. "Gobekli changes everything. It’s elaborate, it’s complex and it is pre-agricultural. That fact alone makes the site one of the most important archaeological finds in a very long time."

A very stunning find indeed! Thanks for bringing this to the table Scott!
This agin shows us that all we think we know, is not all that much!
There is always so much to learn.. Prehaps the idea that all we know, is much that we have forgotten, and we as people in this day and age have much to re-learn what our long past fathers once knew as comman place knowledge!

Agin thanks for the info! I have a great passion for such things, and if I ever win to lotto, or get the money to travle, I know it would be on my top list of things to do with my life!
Id love to travle to these places, take pictures, talk to the locals, and get a real feel for what is lost!