by
Damien F. Mackey
Before the Flood (antediluvian), in the Beginning, Eden
(centrally located where Jerusalem now is) was the Cradle of Civilisation.
While, after the Flood (postdiluvian), new beginnings were made in,
as we shall find, the region of modern SE Turkey.
Early Genesis eyewitness accounts
Neither before, or after, the Flood, was humanity’s beginning in southern Iraq, or ancient Sumer, as it is generally thought to have been, after millions of years of painful evolution. We have also been told that writing did not begin until about 1,000 BC. But that, too, is quite false. The Book of Genesis was composed from eye-witness accounts.
Humanity’s ‘Cradle of Civilisation’
definitely not to be found in Iraq
The following comments by Kristoffer Uggerud would be a typical conventional view:
How Did Mesopotamia Become the Cradle of Civilization?
Around 4500 BCE humans settled in Mesopotamia. Within a few centuries, the Sumerians developed what we today call the cradle of civilization.
Apr 9, 2024 • By Kristoffer Uggerud, MA Area studies, BA History
SUMMARY
• Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, became the cradle of civilization due to its fertile land and the development of irrigation, which supported the growth of city-states like Ur, Eridu, and Uruk with populations over 50,000 around 5,000 years ago.
• The Sumerians innovated with the world’s first written language, cuneiform, on clay tablets, facilitating record-keeping for food supplies and trade. This advancement, alongside their development of a numerical system, laid foundational aspects of modern society.
• The decline of the Sumerian civilization around 2000 BCE was attributed to agricultural productivity loss due to soil salinization from irrigation. This led to the rise of subsequent empires in Mesopotamia, such as the Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian empires. ….
[End of quote]
Sadly, none of this is correct – the inflated BC dates; attribution of first writing; Sumer preceding the Akkadian and Assyrian civilisations; and so on.
Southern Mesopotamia was neither the Cradle of Civilisation before or after the Flood.
Before the Flood (antediluvian), in the Beginning, Eden (centrally located where Jerusalem now is) was the Cradle of Civilisation. While, after the Flood (postdiluvian), new beginnings were made in, as we shall find, the region of modern SE Turkey.
Due to the after effects of the Flood, the low-lying land of southern Mesopotamia was not able to be properly settled as early as were more northerly locations. That is why so-called ‘Sumerian’ civilisation springs up fully grown, much to the amazement of evolutionary-minded antiquarians. It was a late clutch of settlements that had benefitted from the long development of civilisations elsewhere.
More accurate to regard The Fertile Crescent as being, approximately, humanity’s Cradle of Civilisation: https://news.uchicago.edu/explainer/fertile-crescent
“The Fertile Crescent, often referred to as “the cradle of civilization,” is the crescent-shaped region in Western Asia and North Africa that spans the modern-day countries of Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and, for some scholars, Egypt”.
Written records were kept even before the Flood
The beginning of the Documentary Theory of the Book of Genesis was actually based on a correct premise. Frenchman, Jean Astruc (1684-1766), a famous professor of medicine at Montpellier and Paris, claimed to have found several distinct sources in early Genesis. And he was quite right regarding that at least.
But it soon went all pear-shaped!
Liberal scholars, most notably German Lutherans, thought themselves able to detect no end of strands and sources throughout the Book of Genesis, culminating in the famous JEDP hypothesis of the likes of professors Karl Heinrich Graf (d. 1869) and Julius Wellhausen (d. 1918).
Jean Astruc had correctly speculated that Moses used existing written or oral sources in constructing Genesis. Sadly, again, those who came after him effectively slammed the door shut on any notion of Mosaïc influence by proceeding, in stages - and by the early 1800’s - to the view that the Pentateuch was written around 900-800 BC, centuries after Moses.
An extremely well-educated and intelligent Dominican priest once declared to me that “Moses and Joshua wrote nothing, that writing was not invented until about the time of King David (c. 1000-900 BC)”, and this despite passages such as Exodus 34:27: “Then the Lord told Moses, ‘Write down these words, because I’m making a Covenant with you and with Israel according to these words’”, and Joshua 8:32: “There, in the presence of the Israelites, Joshua wrote on stones a copy of the Law of Moses”.
Writing not invented until. c. 1000 BC, eh?
What, then, I queried the Dominican - using the same inflated sort of conventional dating in which the erudite priest would have been schooled - to make of the brilliant Autobiography of Weni in Egypt, written prior to 2150 BC?
What about Moses being “educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians …”? (Acts 7:22)
{This Weni, who was a Vizier and Chief Judge in ancient Egypt, exactly as was Moses: ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us?’ (Exodus 2:14), I have identified as Moses}
The fourfold sigla, JEDP, of the Graf-Wellhausen theory has proven to be disastrous for biblical studies, “confusion confounded” as one scholar has well described it.
This J-jaberwocky, E-eccentric, D-desolate, P-primitive, theory, quite lacking in archaeological awareness - pure Kantian a priorism - needs to be replaced with what might be called the PJ theory, of Air Commodore P. J. Wiseman, a wise and common-sense theory of the true structure of Genesis, based on sound archaeology and an acute awareness of ancient scribal methods. (See New discoveries in Babylonia about Genesis (1936), republished by Wiseman's son, Donald Wiseman, as Ancient records and the structure of Genesis: A case for literary unity, in 1985).
Editor Moses did indeed make use of multiple sources to compile the Book of Genesis, so P. J. Wiseman would demonstrate, but these sources actually pre-dated him.
Moses used the family histories (Hebrew toledôt) of his famous ancestral patriarchs, Adam; Noah; Shem, Ham and Japheth; Terah; etc; etc.,
some of which histories included triple repetition, as Jean Astruc had discerned - but was not able to explain correctly. The triple repetition in the second Flood account, for example, arises from the triple authorship of the document: “Shem, Ham and Japheth” (Genesis 10:1). It is as simple as that!
The great Genesis Flood is an account by eye-witnesses, firstly Noah’s toledôt history, and then that of his three sons.
Note that, afterwards, a separation appears to have occurred.
Shem, formerly a co-author with his brothers, is now a sole recorder (Genesis 11:10).
Psalm 104 on extent of the Flood
The misinterpretation of the ancient texts by modern (say, Western) minds in regard to the Noachic Flood is well explained in the following piece by Rich Deem: http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/localflood.html
The Genesis Flood
Why the Bible Says It Must be Local
Many Christians maintain that the Bible says that the flood account of Genesis requires an interpretation that states that the waters of the flood covered the entire earth.
If you read our English Bibles, you will probably come to this conclusion if you don't read the text too closely and if you fail to consider the rest of your Bible. Like most other Genesis stories, the flood account is found in more places than just Genesis. If you read the sidebar, you will discover that Psalm 104 directly eliminates any possibility of the flood being global (see Psalm 104-9 - Does it refer to the Original Creation or the Flood?).
In order to accept a global flood, you must reject Psalm 104 and the inerrancy of the Bible. If you like to solve mysteries on your own, you might want to read the flood account first and find the biblical basis for a local flood.
The Bible's other creation passages eliminate the possibility of a global flood
The concept of a global Genesis flood can be easily eliminated from a plain reading of Psalm 104 … which is known as the "creation psalm." Psalm 104 describes the creation of the earth in the same order as that seen in Genesis 1 (with a few more details added). It begins with an expanding universe model (reminiscent of the Big Bang) [sic] (verse 2 … parallel to Genesis 1:1). It next describes the formation of a stable water cycle (verses 3-5 … parallel to Genesis 1:6-8). The earth is then described as a planet completely covered with water (verse 6, parallel to Genesis 1:9). God then causes the dry land to appear (verses 7-8 … parallel to Genesis 1:9-10). The verse that eliminates a global flood follows: "You set a boundary they [the waters] cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth." (Psalm 104:9)…. Obviously, if the waters never again covered the earth, then the flood must have been local. Psalm 104 is just one of several creation passages that indicate that God prevented the seas from covering the entire earth. …. An integration of all flood and creation passages clearly indicates that the Genesis flood was local in geographic extent.
The Bible says water covered the whole earth ... Really?
When you read an English translation of the biblical account of the flood, you will undoubtedly notice many words and verses that seem to suggest that the waters covered all of planet earth. …. However, one should note that today we look at everything from a global perspective, whereas the Bible nearly always refers to local geography. You may not be able to determine this fact from our English translations, so we will look at the original Hebrew, which is the word of God. The Hebrew words which are translated as "whole earth" or "all the earth" are kol (Strong's number H3605), which means "all," and erets (Strong's number H776), which means "earth," "land," "country," or "ground." …. We don't need to look very far in Genesis (Genesis 2) before we find the Hebrew words kol erets. ….
[End of quote]
‘Creationists’, having arrived at their completely artificial - and sometimes quite laughable, if they weren’t so serious - interpretations of the Bible, will then insist upon one’s adhering to their peculiar ‘biblical’ Weltanschauung as behoving Christians dedicated to the preservation of scriptural inerrancy.
{Admittance: Since I used to share these views, I ought to be more sympathetic}
Well, I would suggest that no one would have been more surprised than Noah (and his family) to learn that he had once ridden out a global Flood in a sea-going vessel the size of the Queen Mary!
As to the once common view that ‘there had never been rain until the Flood’, it has no solid biblical support as far as I can tell.
And even some ‘Creationists’ now seem to have dropped this idea. For example: https://answersingenesis.org/creationism/arguments-to-avoid/was-there-no-rain-before-the-flood/
Was There No Rain Before the Flood?
Some Christians claim that there was no rain before the Flood;
however, as Dr. Tommy Mitchell shows us,
a close examination of Scripture does not bear this out.
While we cannot prove that there was rain before the Flood, to insist that there was not (and even to deride those who think otherwise) stretches Scripture beyond what it actually says. ….
Noah’s world
Those who approach Genesis with a Fundamentalist mentality will take ancient biblical phrases such as “the whole earth”, “all flesh”, and, unhappily, re-present them in global terms.
St. Peter writes of “… the world that then was being overflowed with water, perished” (2 Peter 3:6).
Now, rather than for one instinctively here to seize upon the phrase, “the world”, and automatically take it to mean a global world, one would do better to learn from Genesis what “world”, “earth”, the Book of Genesis had so far presented to us.
We find that only a few chapters before the Flood, in Genesis 2.
It is a “world” that basically constitutes what would later come to be known as “the Fertile Crescent” – also regarded by some, as we read, as “the Cradle of Civilisation”.
It stretches approximately from southern Mesopotamia (Iraq) to Egypt.
Practically every nation today, great or small, has its Flood legends that bear greater or lesser similarities to the Genesis or Noachic Flood account. See for example: https://www.curioustaxonomy.net/home/floods.htm
Mountain of the Ark
This brings us to SE Turkey, as mentioned earlier, where, I believe, humanity had its second start (postdiluvian). A pair of researchers have conclusively, for mine, identified the mountain of the Ark’s landing as Karaca Dağ. Previously I wrote on this:
The combined research of Ken Griffith and Darrell White has caused me (Damien Mackey) to move away from my former acceptance of Judi Dagh for the Mountain of Noah’s Ark Landing in preference for their choice of Karaca Dagh in SE Turkey. The pair have strongly argued for the validity of this latter site in their excellent new article:
A Candidate Site for Noah’s Ark, Altar, and Tomb.
(2) (PDF) A Candidate Site for Noah's Ark, Altar, and Tomb. | Kenneth Griffith and Darrell K White - Academia.edu
My main reason for entertaining this switch is that the latter site appears to have been the place, unlikely as it may look, for the world’s first agriculture, including grapes, and for the domestication of what we know as farmland animals.
For example, Ken Griffith and Darrell White write:
This mountain, Karaca Dag, is where the genetic ancestor of all domesticated Einkorn wheat was found by the Max Planck Institute. ….
The other seven founder crops of the Neolithic Revolution all have this mountain near the centre of their wild range. …. This was so exciting that even the LA Times remarked how unusual it is that all of the early agriculture crops appear to have been domesticated in the same location:
“The researchers reported that the wheat was first cultivated near the Karacadag Mountains in southeastern Turkey, where chickpeas and bitter vetch also originated. Bread wheat—the most valuable single crop in the modern world—grapes and olives were domesticated nearby, as were sheep, pigs, goats and cattle.” ….
….
Manfred Heun was the botanist who followed the DNA of domesticated wheat back to its source on Karaca Dag:
“We believe that the idea is so good—the idea of cultivating wild plants—that we think it might be one tribe of people, and that is fascinating,” said Manfred Heun at the University of Norway’s department of biotechnological sciences, who led the research team. “I cannot prove it, but it is a possibility that one tribe or one family had the idea [emphasis added].” ….
A 2004 DNA study of wild and cultivated grapevine genetics by McGovern and Vouillamoz found the region where grapevines were first domesticated. Vouillamoz reports:
“Analysis of morphological similarities between the wild and cultivated grapes from all Eurasia generally support a geographical origin of grape domestication in the Near East. In 2004, I collaborated with Patrick McGovern to focus on the ‘Grape’s Fertile Triangle’ and our results showed that the closest genetic relationship between local wild grapevines and traditional cultivated grape varieties from southern Anatolia, Armenia and Georgia was observed in southern Anatolia. This suggests that the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the Taurus Mountains is the most likely place where the grapevine was first domesticated! ... . This area also includes the Karacadağ region in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent.” ….
The Göbekli Tepe Phenomenon
This is fitting, because a site considered to be the world’s oldest, the now famed Göbekli Tepe (“Potbelly Hill”), is ‘just down the road’ (so to speak) from Karaca Dağ.
And two most ancient sites, Ur (Sanliurfa) and Harran, relevant to Abram (Abraham), are also situated close by. It makes sense that, if Karaca Dağ was Noah’s mountain, then Göbekli Tepe (unrealistically dated to c. 12,000 BC) must have been a very early settlement - perhaps the first - after humanity’s departing from the mountain.
{A tradition has Noah remaining on the Ark mountain for a century}
Now the significance of Göbekli Tepe in possible connection with the Ark of Noah may be enormous.
Klaus Schmidt, who first discovered the site, referred to it as “a Stone Age zoo”.
It features an abundance of depictions of different animals seemingly in enclosures.
Do we have here a representation of the types of animals that really were on board Noah’s Ark?
Not exactly what we might have expected!
No hint whatsoever of any dinosaurs – I definitely would not have expected them.
No wonder scientifically-minded people laugh at this sort of desertion of common sense, that once again takes a “literalistic” approach to a global sounding phrase, “every living thing of all flesh” (Genesis 6:10).
Noah simply would have taken pairs of such animals, dwelling close at hand, as he and his family would have needed for food and sacrifice, and to kick-start his new life on terra firma, until conditions began to revert back to normal.
Boars, lions, bulls, foxes, gazelles, birds (cranes, vultures), snakes (cf. Genesis 7:8): “Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground …”. All of these and more are depicted at the Göbekli Tepe site.
Apropos of this, we read at: https://nt.am/en/news/221107/
Gobekli Tepe, Noah’s Ark & Lost Atlantis
….
Meanwhile, where else but in Noah’s Ark can we find a menagerie as eclectic as the one portrayed on the megaliths of Gobekli Tepe – a menagerie that includes spiders, scorpions and snakes (‘every creeping thing of the earth’), birds and cattle (‘fowls after their kind, and cattle after their kind’), and foxes, felines, goats, sheep, gazelles, boars, bears, etc, etc (in short – as Genesis 6: 20 has it, ‘every kind of animal and every kind of creature’)? Likewise we read in the Bible that Noah sacrificed some of the animals and birds that he had just saved from the flood as an offering to God. At Gobekli Tepe archaeologists have found the butchered bones of many of the animal species depicted on the megalithic pillars.
Further highly recommended reading:
https://archaeotravel.eu/noahs-beasts-released-on-the-hills-of-gobekli-tepe/
“Noah’s Beasts Released on the Hills of Göbekli Tepe”, by Joanna Pyrgies.
Where did Noah build and launch the Ark?
This appears to be a largely neglected question and there does not seem to be much at all in the way of legend or tradition to help one answer it.
The types of animals depicted at Göbekli Tepe might provide geographical clues for some enterprising future researchers.
Armadillos, for instance, are apparently not native to the Göbekli Tepe region.
There is a tradition that Noah had had to flee to “Egypt” (whatever that land was like, and called, back then) to escape the violence of the age.
(“Nu (/nu/ “watery one”), also called Nun (/nu:n/ “inert one”) - a name somewhat like Noah - is the deification of the primordial watery abyss in ancient Egyptian religion). Did Noah then return and, like Moses, who built the Ark of the Covenant at the Holy Mountain (Har Karkom near the Paran desert), build the great Ark there?
Who knows? It is a question that still needs to be answered.
I just like the symmetry of it. For Moses is clearly presented as “a new Noah” in the Book of Exodus (on this, see Before Abraham Was: The Unity of Genesis 1-11, 1984, by Isaac M. Kikawada and Arthur Quinn).
But there is far more to Göbekli Tepe than just animals.
Of special interest to Australians might be certain symbols that the site has in common with our aboriginals.
Ancient Australians – culture going south
Previously I wrote:
Great Gobbling Turkeys!
There’s an archaeological site in Turkey, at Göbekli Tepe, that has palaeontologists scratching their collective heads.
Dated to as early as 12,000 – 10,000 BC, the site exhibits cultural and technological advances that ought not to have occurred during a phase in human evolution (supposedly) when man was still just a primitive hunter-gatherer.
“History is Wrong” declares one site regarding “The Mystery of Gobekli Tepe” (2018): https://coolinterestingstuff.com/the-mystery-of-gobekli-tepe
…. many have proposed that Gobekli Tepe can even be a temple inside the Biblical Eden of Genesis. Is it possible that what we know about the ‘uncivilized and primitive’ prehistoric men is not at all true? Is it possible that advanced civilizations existed before 6000 BCE and their tracks are simply lost in time? Or is it possible that extra-terrestrials interfered and helped men to build monuments throughout the history of humanity? The questions are certainly compelling.
Man was supposed to have been a primitive hunter-gatherer at the time of the sites’ construction.
Gobekli Tepe’s presence currently predates what science has taught would be essential in building something on the scale such as those structures. For instance, the site appears before the agreed upon dates for the inventions of art and engravings; it even predates man working with metals and pottery but features evidence of all of these. ….
[End of quote]
This site finds it all so incomprehensible as to have to resort to the extreme suggestion of ancient aliens.
But forget those large palaeontological numbers (12,000, 10,000) variously suggested for the BC age of Göbekli Tepe. These people play with, and throw away, 100’s and 1,000’s, like reckless gamblers. Australia’s Mungo Man, for instance, was dated to 60,000 BC and then, in the space of a week, dropped to 40,000 BC.
Nobody seemed to raise a Neanderthalian eyebrow.
Creationist Dr. John Osgood has made an impressive start towards sorting out the Stone Ages in his excellent series: “A Better Model for the Stone Age” (pts. 1 and 2): https://creation.com/a-better-model-for-the-stone-age
https://creation.com/a-better-model-for-the-stone-age-part-2
The Acheulean era, which according to Pierto Gaietto, impacted upon the Göbekli Tepe masonry: “Regarding the topic of evolution in general I am of the opinion that the strong tendency towards the dressing of large stones at Göbekli Tepe had its origin in the Acheulean tradition of the Mousterian culture”, has been placed by Dr. Osgood during the dispersal after the Noachic Flood.
Acheulean
The characteristic feature of this culture was, of course, the large hand axe prominent in it. Comment has already been made about the possible relationship between the virgin forests, an early spreading people, and the necessity to use hand-axes in much of their culture.
The widespread common relationship of these tools in Europe, Asia and Northern Africa certainly is not inconsistent with the biblical model of the recent origin of the spread of people from the Middle East into diverse places having initially similar cultures.
There does seem to be a definite stratigraphic relationship between the so-called Paleolithic strata - Acheulian, Mousterian and Aurignacian in ascending order. This, however, does not indicate that they were cultures that succeeded one another all over the country, but the principle of mushrooming may legitimately be investigated here as in the Mesopotamian Chalcolithic. In other words, the superposition of one stratum on the other may only be a measurement of the cultures in one dimension. It fails to come to terms with the possible horizontal contemporaneity of at least the last two of these cultures, the Mousterian and the Aurignacian. ….
[End of quote]
Most striking of all are the art-works and symbols common to far-away Australian Aboriginals, so much so that author Bruce Fenton has been prompted to query whether Göbekli Tepe may actually have been an Australian Aboriginal site:
Following the typical evolutionary view, though, which requires much time for the human development from ape-man, Bruce Fenton must locate the origins of the Göbekli Tepe culture down south in Australia, before its having arrived at the degree of sophistication enabling for the spread of that culture in the far north (e.g. Turkey).
A biblical view, instead, would have cultures like Göbekli Tepe emanating at a stage after the Flood from an already fairly sophisticated antediluvian world (Genesis 4:20-22) – Tubal-Cain, for instance, forged implements of copper and iron.
Those who later became the Australian Aboriginals - who were not just one people, but many tribes/nations with different languages - would have absorbed this, and other northern cultures (e.g. Aboriginal art connects also with the ‘Ubaid culture in Mesopotamia), and carried the vestiges of these in their long journeys southwards, inevitably losing much of that knowledge over time and distance.
Contrary to Bruce Fenton, then, Australian aboriginality is a cultural devolution, rather than an evolution.
Ian Wilson, exploring the Lost World of the Kimberley (2006), the northernmost of the nine regions of Western Australia, has pointed out striking similarities between art figures of the Mesopotamian ‘Ubaid culture and the Kimberley’s aboriginal art figures.
The Australian Aboriginal languages apparently have some affinity with ancient Sumerian: http://www.hungarianhistory.com/lib/cser.pdf
Hungarian language belongs to the family of agglutinative languages. Officially it is a member of the Finno-Ugric language family. Structurally similar – although in a very distant relationship with it – are the Turkish, the Dravidian groups of languages, the Japanese and the Korean in the Far-East and the Basque in Europe. A large portion of ancient languages were agglutinative in their nature, such like the Sumerian, Pelagic, Etruscan, as well as aboriginal languages on the American and Australian continents. ….
[End of quotes]
World Economic Forum’s interference at Göbekli Tepe
“He who controls the past controls the future”.
George Orwell
Political and national agenda do not sit easily with such archaeological sites as Ebla and Göbekli Tepe, whose findings may support the Bible, a Hebrew (Jewish) book, anathema to the Syrian government, on the one hand, that wants to represent Ebla as a purely Syrian kingdom, and anathema to the World Economic Forum (WEF), on the other hand, that wants to control the narrative about human origins and about virtually everything else.
So the WEF has put a lid on Göbekli Tepe.
Shockingly, we learn at:
https://www.summarize.tech/www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPNgGnUrCKM
You Won’t Believe This Disturbing Gobekli Tepe Update
….
00:00:00 - 00:20:00
In the YouTube video titled "You Won’t Believe This Disturbing Gobekli Tepe Update," the speaker expresses shock over the slow progress of excavations at the ancient site of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, which is the world's oldest and largest megalithic site, dating back approximately 11,600 years. The site covers an area of approximately 22 acres and consists of over 200 T-shaped pillars, some reaching heights of nearly 20 ft and weighing up to 22,000 lbs each. Despite its size and age, little is known about who built it or when. The speaker also shares concerns over recent developments, such as a partnership between the site and the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2018, which has led to the preservation of the site and the construction of tourism infrastructure, but has hindered full excavation efforts.
The speaker also notes intriguing similarities between certain aspects of Gobekli Tepe and other ancient sites around the world, fueling speculation about a lost ancient global connection. The speaker encourages further investigation and excavation at the site and invites viewers to join the conversation. ….
• 00:00:00 In this section of the YouTube video titled "You Won’t Believe This Disturbing Gobekli Tepe Update," the speaker expresses his shock over new information regarding the world's oldest and largest megalithic site, Gobekli Tepe, located in Turkey. …. However, the mystery deepens as historians previously believed that something this old and sophisticated couldn't exist, and it's unclear how such a civilization could have achieved this and what motivated them to do so. Additionally, only a small percentage of the site has been excavated, with only six of the 20 known circular sections or enclosures having been fully excavated, and many more areas remain unexplored. The speaker emphasizes that only 5% of the site has been excavated, a figure first reported in 2008, and gives credit to Graham Hancock for bringing international attention to the site through his books and podcast appearances.
• 00:05:00 In this section of the YouTube video titled "You Won’t Believe This Disturbing Gobekli Tepe Update," the speaker expresses his surprise that the excavation progress at the ancient site of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey has not improved since 2017, despite excavations beginning nearly three decades ago. He was initially investigating if the 5% excavation figure had changed, but learned that it had not. The speaker then shares that recent visitors to the site, including author Hugh Newman, have suggested that future generations may focus on excavations at neighboring sites instead. The speaker's investigation led him to discover that the Dogus Group, a large Turkish conglomerate, has a partnership deal to oversee excavations and tourism management at Gobekli Tepe since 2016, with a generous donation of $15 million for ongoing excavations. The speaker finds it disturbing that the focus seems to be on preserving the site and establishing tourism infrastructure rather than increasing excavation efforts. ….
• 00:10:00 In this section of the YouTube video titled "You Won’t Believe This Disturbing Gobekli Tepe Update," the speaker reveals that a 20-year partnership between the ancient site of Gobekli Tepe in Turkey and the World Economic Forum (WEF) was announced at the WEF meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in 2018.
The CEO of the Dogus Group, Fet Sahen, who is a Turkish billionaire and a longtime WEF member, was involved in the deal.
The speaker expresses surprise that such a partnership existed, as it involves the oldest and most mysterious structure in human history. The infrastructure developed for tourism and preservation, including protective roofs and walkways, has obstructed parts of the site and impeded its full excavation. The speaker also questions when the orchards located in the midst of ruins were planted and whether any ancient ruins lie underneath them. Additionally, 900 miles of walkways and roads were constructed after the partnership began, some of which destroyed ruins at the site.
The speaker implies that the WEF's involvement in the management and excavations of Gobekli Tepe raises questions about their motives and goals.
• 00:15:00 In this section of the YouTube video titled "You Won’t Believe This Disturbing Gobekli Tepe Update," the widow of archaeologist CLA Schmidt, who was the first to excavate at Gobekli Tepe until her husband's passing in 2014, expressed deep concern upon visiting the site in 2018. She was dismayed to find that heavy equipment, asphalt roads, and concrete sidewalks had destroyed parts of the ancient site. Mrs. Schmidt's photos of the destruction sparked worldwide outrage, leading to a statement from the ministry of culture and tourism denying the use of concrete or asphalt. However, evidence of extensive concrete walkways and the removal of wooden walkways for permanent concrete replacements contradicts their claims. The limited excavations currently taking place make it unlikely that the remaining 14 circular enclosures will be fully excavated, leaving potentially valuable information hidden in the ground. The decision-making power and resources of the World Economic Forum, which infiltrated excavation management in 2016, are believed to be hindering a full excavation of the site. ….
Listen to it on the YouTube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPNgGnUrCKM
