Ctesiphon, the Arch - Baghdad Battery

The Arch of Ctesiphon

Mud brick was the most common building material in Mesopotamia, until the advent of modern concrete. Baked bricks were only used for major projects such as the arch at Ctesiphon, just outside Baghdad, part of a palace built by Sasanian kings in the sixth century AD.

The Sasanians were an Iranian dynasty, but they used traditional Mesopotamian building techniques. The arch, a huge open audience hall 30m (98ft) high and some 43m (141ft) long, should have required massive scaffolding, but the Mesopotamians leant the courses of brickwork back at an angle, so that each course was built against its predecessor, and only a mobile tower for the builders was necessary. The arch was flanked by façades decorated with blank arcading and pilasters, but the one on the right collapsed a century ago.

Found Here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/cultures/mesopotamia_gallery_12.shtml

Ctesiphon, the imperial capital of the Parthian Arsacids and of the Persian Sassanids, was one of the great cities of ancient Mesopotamia. In the 6th century, Ctesiphon was the largest city in the world.^[1]

The ruins of the city are located on the east bank of the Tigris, across the river from the Hellenistic city of Seleucia. Today, the remains of both cities lie in Iraq, approximately 35 km south of the city of Baghdad

The Latin name Ctesiphon or Ctesifon (pronounced /ˈtɛsɨfɒn/) derives from Greek KtēsiphōnΚτησιφῶν), a Hellenized form of a local name that has been reconstructed as Tosfōn or Tosbōn.^[2] In Iranian sources of the Sassanid period it is attested in Manichean Parthian, in Sassanid Middle Persian and in Christian Sogdian as Pahlavi tyspwn, continuing in New PersianTisfun (تيسفون). In medieval Arabic texts the name is usually Ṭaysafūn (طيسفون) or Qaṭaysfūnal-Mada'in (المدائن). "According to Yāqūt [...], quoting Ḥamza, the original form was Ṭūsfūn or Tūsfūn, which was arabicized as Ṭaysafūn."^[3] The Armenian name of the city was Tizbon (Տիզբոն). Ctesiphon is first mentioned in the Book of Ezra of the Old Testament as Kasfia/Casphia (a derivative of the ethnic name, Cas, and a cognate of Caspian and Qazvin).

Ctesiphon rose to prominence during the Parthian Empire in the 1st century BC, and was the seat of government for most of its rulers. The city was located near Seleucia, the Hellenistic capital. Strabo abundantly describes its foundation:

In ancient times Babylon was the metropolis of Assyria; but now Seleuceia is the metropolis, I mean the Seleuceia on the Tigris, as it is called. Near by is situated a village called Ctesiphon, a large village. This village the kings of the Parthians were wont to make their winter residence, thus sparing the Seleuceians, in order that the Seleuceians might not be oppressed by having the Scythian folk or soldiery quartered amongst them. Because of the Parthian power, therefore, Ctesiphon is a city rather than a village; its size is such that it lodges a great number of people, and it has been equipped with buildings by the Parthians themselves; and it has been provided by the Parthians with wares for sale and with the arts that are pleasing to the Parthians; for the Parthian kings are accustomed to spend the winter there because of the salubrity of the air, but they summer at Ecbatana and in Hyrcania because of the prevalence of their ancient renown.^[4]

( as (قطيسفون), in Modern Arabic

Because of its importance, Ctesiphon was a major military objective for the leaders of the Roman Empire in its eastern wars. The city was captured by Rome or by its successor state, the Byzantine Empire, five times in its history, three times in the 2nd century alone. The emperor Trajan captured Ctesiphon in 116, but his successor, Hadrian, decided to willingly return Ctesiphon, in 117, as part of a peace settlement. The Roman general Avidius Cassius captured Ctesiphon during another Parthian war in 164, but abandoned it when peace was concluded. In 197, the emperor Septimius Severus sacked Ctesiphon and carried off thousands of its inhabitants, whom he sold into slavery.

Late in the 3rd century, after the Parthians had been supplanted by the Sassanids, the city again became a source of conflict with Rome. In 283, emperor Carus sacked the city uncontested during a period of civil upheaval. In 295, emperor Galerius was defeated outside the city. However, he returned a year later with a vengeance and won a tremendous victory which ended in the fifth and final capture of the city by the Romans in 299. He returned it to the Persian king Narses in exchange for Armenia and western Mesopotamia. In c.325 and again in 410, the city, or the Greek colony directly across the river, was the site of church councils for the Church of the East.

Emperor Julian was killed following a battle outside of the city walls, in 363, during his war against Shapur II. Finally, in 627, the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius surrounded the city, the capital of the Sassanid Empire, leaving it after the Persians accepted his peace terms.

Ctesiphon fell to the Muslims during the Islamic conquest of Persia in 637 under the military command of Sa'ad ibn Abi Waqqas during the caliphate of Umar. However, the general population was not harmed but the palaces and their archives were burned. Still, as political and economic fortune had passed elsewhere, the city went into a rapid decline, especially after the founding of the Abbasid capital at Baghdad in the 8th century, and soon became a ghost town. It is believed to be the basis for the city of Isbanir in the Thousand and One Nights.

The ruins of Ctesiphon were the site of a major battle of World War I in November 1915. The Ottoman Empire defeated troops of Britain attempting to capture Baghdad, and drove them back some 40 miles (64 km) before trapping the British force and compelling it to surrender.

Found Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctesiphon

The Baghdad Battery

These strange artefacts were originally discovered in 1936 during an archaeological dig at village of Khuyut Rabbou'a which is located approximately 20 miles south east of the city centre of modern Baghdad and close to the Arch of Ctesiphon. Described as 13 – 14cm in height they contained a copper cylinder and within this was suspended an iron rod. In December 1939, shortly after the start of World War II a German archaeologist by the name of Wilhelm Konig came across the item in the basement of the National Museum of Iraq. He immediately recognised their similarity to galvanic batteries and published a paper that suggested that these ancient electrical devices may have been used for electroplating precious gold onto silver. It is around this time that Adolf Hitler began a serious, if eccentric, programme to study the technology of the ancients. Relatively modern films such as “Raiders of the Lost Ark” are based on this obscure reality. There is no easy explanation for the Baghdad Battery and naturally this has created controversy, debate and disagreement in the scientific community. Reconstructions of this device have proved that it could generate an electrical current of between 0.4 and 1.9 volts. Naturally, some scientists dispute these claims and argue that the reconstructions are inaccurate. (Those scientist just love a good dispute – it’s the scientific equivalent of arguing with you history teacher to make sure that everyone else notices that you’re still in the class.)

Found Here: http://www.jimsrandomwebpage.com/The%20Bagdad%20Battery.html

Some of the greatest mysteries are those that surround ancient gadgets. Because of their antiquity, we may never truly know how they were built or what their purpose was. Such is the case with the Baghdad Battery, a device unearthed in Khujut Rabu, just outside of Baghdad, in 1936. It consisted of a small clay jar containing an iron rod suspended inside of a copper cylinder. The copper cylinder was soldered shut and sealed with asphalt. Wilhelm Konig, a German archaeologist working at the National Museum of Iraq, examined the device two years after its discovery and came to the conclusion that it was an ancient battery.

Indeed, when replicas were built they were able to generate small amounts of electricity. But if the device was a battery, it would pre-date other batteries by at least a thousand years. And what, exactly, would an ancient civilization have use batteries for? For many years, experts contended that the Baghdad Battery would have been used to electroplate thin layers of gold onto silver items. That theory has fallen out of favor due to lack of evidence.

In fact, many archaeologists now believe that the Baghdad Battery had no electrical purpose at all. The usability of the ancient batteries has been proven in various scientific and entertainment arenas, but so far all that can be said is that it was possible to produce electricity with these primitive cells. Whether they were ever used for that purpose – and what, exactly, they may have powered – may never be known. Like the Antikythera Mechanism and so many other ancient gadgets, its function may be forever lost to time.

Found Here: http://gajitz.com/battery-of-mysteries-why-did-worlds-first-battery-exist/

Gobekli Tepe - World's Oldest Known Temple

Göbekli Tepe (Turkish for "Potbelly hill") is a hilltop sanctuary erected on the highest point of an elongated mountain ridge some 15 km northeast of the town of Şanlıurfa (formerly Urfa / Edessa) in southeastern Turkey. The site, currently undergoing excavation by German and Turkish archaeologists, was erected by hunter-gatherers in the 10th millennium BC (c. 11,500 years ago), before the advent of sedentism. Together with Nevalı Çori, it has revolutionized understanding of the Eurasian Neolithic.

Göbekli Tepe is located in southeastern Turkey. It had already been noted in an American surveyGerman Archaeological Institute (Istanbul branch) and Şanlıurfa Museum, under the direction of the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt (1995–2000: University of Heidelberg; since 2001: German Archaeological Institute). Schmidt says that the stone fragments on the surface made him aware immediately that the site was prehistoric. Before then, the hill had been under agricultural cultivation; generations of local inhabitants had frequently moved rocks and placed them in clearance piles; much archaeological evidence may have been destroyed in the process. Scholars from the Hochschule Karlsruhe began documenting the architectural remains. They soon discovered T-shaped pillars, some of which had apparently undergone attempts at smashing.

in 1964, which recognized that the hill could not entirely be a natural feature, but assumed that a Byzantine cemetery lay beneath. Since 1994 excavations have been conducted by the

Göbekli Tepe is the oldest human-made place of worship yet discovered.^[2] Until excavations began, a complex on this scale was not thought possible for a community so ancient. The massive sequence of stratification layers suggests several millennia of activity, perhaps reaching back to the Mesolithic. The oldest occupation layer (stratum III) contains monolithic pillars linked by coarsely built walls to form circular or oval structures. So far, four such buildings, with diameters between 10 and 30m have been uncovered. Geophysical surveys indicate the existence of 16 additional structures.

Stratum II, dated to Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) (7500–6000 BC), has revealed several adjacent rectangular rooms with floors of polished lime, reminiscent of Roman terrazzo floors. The most recent layer consists of sediment deposited as the result of agricultural activity.

The monoliths are decorated with carved reliefs of animals and of abstract pictograms. The pictograms may represent commonly understood sacred symbols, as known from Neolithic cave paintings elsewhere. The carefully carved figurative reliefs depict lions, bulls, boars, foxes, gazelles, asses, snakes and other reptiles, insects, arachnids, and birds, particularly vultures and water fowl. At the time the shrine was constructed the surrounding country was much lusher and capable of sustaining this variety of wildlife, before millennia of settlement and cultivation resulted in the near–Dust Bowl conditions prevailing today.^[3]

Vultures also feature in the iconography of the Neolithic sites of Çatalhöyük and Jericho; it is believed that in the early Neolithic culture of Anatolia and the Near East the deceased were deliberately exposed in order to be excarnated by vultures and other birds of prey. (The head of the deceased was sometimes removed and preserved—possibly a sign of ancestor worship.)^[4]sky burial, as practiced today by Tibetan Buddhists and Zoroastrians in India.^[5] This, then, would represent an early form of

Few humanoid forms have surfaced at Göbekli Tepe, but include a relief of a naked woman, posed frontally in a crouched position, that Schmidt likens to the Venus accueillante figures found in Neolithic north Africa; and of at least one decapitated corpse surrounded by vultures. Some of the pillars, namely the T-shaped ones, have carved arms, which may indicate that they represent stylized humans (or anthropomorphic gods). Another example is decorated with human hands in what could be interpreted as a prayer gesture, with a simple stole or surplice engraved above; this may be intended to represent a temple priest.

The houses or temples are round megalithic buildings. The walls are made of unworked dry stone and include numerous T-shaped monolithic pillars of limestone that are up to 3 m high. Another, bigger pair of pillars is placed in the centre of the structures. There is evidence that the structures were roofed; the central pair of pillars may have supported the roof. The floors are made of terrazzo (burnt lime), and there is a low bench running along the whole of the exterior wall.

The reliefs on the pillars include foxes, lions, cattle, wild boars, wild asses, herons, ducks, scorpions, ants, spiders, many snakes, and a very few anthropomorphic figures. Some of the reliefs have been deliberately erased, maybe in preparation for new designs. There are freestanding sculptures as well that may represent wild boars or foxes. As they are heavily encrusted with lime, it is sometimes difficult to tell. Comparable statues have been discovered at Nevalı Çori and Nahal Hemar.

The quarries for the statues are located on the plateau itself; some unfinished pillars have been found there in situ. The biggest unfinished pillar is still 6.9 m long; a length of 9m has been reconstructed. This is much larger than any of the finished pillars found so far. The stone was quarried with stone picks. Bowl-like depressions in the limestone rocks may already have served as mortars or fire-starting bowls in the epipalaeolithic. There are some phalloi and geometric patterns cut into the rock as well; their dating is uncertain.

While the structures are primarily temples, more recently smaller domestic buildings have been uncovered. Despite this, it is clear that the primary use of the site was cultic and not domestic. Schmidt believes this "cathedral on a hill" was a pilgrimage destination attracting worshipers up to a hundred miles distant. Butchered bones found in large numbers from local game such as deer, gazelle, pigs, and geese have been identified as refuse derived from hunting and food prepared for the congregants.^[8]

The site was deliberately backfilled sometime after 8000 BC: the buildings are covered with settlement refuse that must have been brought from elsewhere. These deposits include flint tools like scrapers and arrowheads and animal bones. The lithic inventory is characterised by Byblos points and numerous Nemrik-points. There are Helwan-points and Aswad-points as well.

While the site formally belongs to the earliest Neolithic (PPN A), up to now no traces of domesticated plants or animals have been found. The inhabitants were hunters and gatherers^[9] Schmidt speculates that the site played a key function in the transition to agriculture; he assumes that the necessary social organization needed for the creation of these structures went hand-in-hand with the organized exploitation of wild crops. For sustenance, wild cereals may have been used more intensively than before; perhaps they were even deliberately cultivated. Recent DNA analysis of modern domesticated wheat compared with wild wheat has shown that its DNA is closest in structure to wild wheat found on Mount Karaca Dağ 20 miles away from the site, leading one to believe that this is where modern wheat was first domesticated.^[10] who nevertheless lived in villages for at least part of the year.

Schmidt considers Göbekli Tepe a central location for a cult of the dead. He suggests that the carved animals are there to protect the dead. Though no tombs or graves have been found so far, Schmidt believes they remain to be discovered beneath the sacred circles' floors.^[11] Schmidt also interprets it in connection with the initial stages of an incipient Neolithic. It is one of several neolithic sites in the vicinity of Mount Karaca Dağ, an area where geneticists suspect the origins of at least some of our cultivated grains (see Einkorn). Such scholars suggest that the Neolithic revolution, i.e., the beginnings of grain cultivation, took place here. Schmidt and others believe that mobile groups in the area were forced to cooperate with each other to protect early concentrations of wild cereals from wild animals (herds of gazelles and wild donkeys). This would have led to an early social organization of various groups in the area of Göbekli Tepe. Thus, according to Schmidt, the Neolithic did not begin on a small scale in the form of individual instances of garden cultivation, but started immediately as a large-scale social organisation ("a full-scale revolution"^[12]).

All statements about the site must be considered preliminary, as only about 5% of the site's total area has been excavated as yet; floor levels have been reached in only the second complex (complex B), which also contained a terrazzo-like floor. Schmidt believes that the dig could well continue for another fifty years, "and barely scratch the surface."^[11] So far excavations have revealed very little evidence for residential use. Through the radiocarbon method, the end of stratum III can be fixed at c. 9000 BC (see above); its beginnings are estimated to 11,000 BC or earlier. Stratum II dates to about 8000 BC.

Thus, the structures not only predate pottery, metallurgy, and the invention of writing or the wheel; they were built before the so-called Neolithic Revolution, i.e., the beginning of agricultureanimal husbandry around 9000 BC. But the construction of Göbekli Tepe implies organisation of an order of complexity not hitherto associated with pre-Neolithic societies. The archaeologists estimate that up to 500 persons were required to extract the 10–20 ton pillars (in fact, some weigh up to 50 tons) from local quarries and move them 100 to 500m to the site.^[13]Which came first, monumental building projects or farming? Archaeo News 14 December 2008 [1] It is generally believed that an elite class of religious leaders supervised the work and later controlled whatever ceremonies took place here. If so, this would be the oldest known evidence for a priestly caste—much earlier than such social distinctions developed elsewhere in the Near East.^[11] and

Around the beginning of the 8th millennium BC "Potbelly Hill" lost its importance. The advent of agriculture and animal husbandry brought new realities to human life in the area, and the "stone-age zoo" (as Schmidt calls it) depicted on the pillars apparently lost whatever significance it had had for the region's older, foraging, communities. But the complex was not simply abandoned and forgotten, to be gradually destroyed by the elements. Instead, it was deliberately buried under 300 to 500 cubic metres of soil.^[14] Why this was done is unknown, but it preserved the monuments for posterity.

Göbekli Tepe is regarded as an archaeological discovery of the greatest importance since it profoundly changes our understanding of a crucial stage in the development of human societies. It seems that the erection of monumental complexes was within the capacities of hunter-gatherers and not only of sedentary farming communities as had been previously assumed. In other words, as excavator Klaus Schmidt puts it: "First came the temple, then the city."^[15] This revolutionary hypothesis will have to be supported or modified by future research.

Not only its large dimensions, but the side-by-side existence of multiple pillar shrines makes the location unique. There are no comparable monumental complexes from its time. Nevalı Çori, a well-known Neolithic settlement also excavated by the German Archaeological Institute, and submerged by the Atatürk Dam since 1992, is 500 years later, its T-shaped pillars are considerably smaller, and its shrine was located inside a village; the roughly contemporary architecture at Jericho is devoid of artistic merit or large-scale sculpture; and Çatalhöyük, perhaps the most famous of all Anatolian Neolithic villages, is 2,000 years younger.

Schmidt has engaged in some speculation regarding the belief systems of the groups that created Göbekli Tepe, based on comparisons with other shrines and settlements. He assumes shamanicancestors, whereas he sees a fully articulated belief in gods only developing later in Mesopotamia, associated with extensive temples and palaces. This corresponds well with an ancient Sumerian belief that agriculture, animal husbandry and weaving had been brought to mankind from the sacred mountain Du-Ku, which was inhabited by Annuna—deities, very ancient gods without individual names. Klaus Schmidt identifies this story as an oriental primeval myth that preserves a partial memory of the Neolithic.^[16] It is also apparent that the animal and other images give no indication of organized violence, i.e., there are no depictions of hunting raids or wounded animals, and the pillar carvings ignore game on which the society mainly subsisted, like deer, in favor of formidable creatures such as lions, snakes, spiders and scorpions.^[17][18][19] practices and suggests that the T-shaped pillars may represent mythical creatures, perhaps

At present, Göbekli Tepe raises more questions for archaeology and prehistory than it answers. We do not know how a force large enough to construct, augment, and maintain such a substantial complex was mobilized and paid or fed in the conditions of pre-Neolithic society. We cannot "read" the pictograms, and do not know for certain what meaning the animal reliefs had for visitors to the site; the variety of fauna depicted, from lions and boars to birds and insects, makes any single explanation problematic. As there seems to be little or no evidence of habitation, and the animals depicted on the stones are mainly predators, the stones may have been intended to stave off evils through some form of magic representation; it is also possible that they served as totems.^[20] It is not known why more and more walls were added to the interiors while the sanctuary was in use, with the result that some of the engraved pillars were obscured from view. Burial may or may not have occurred at the site. The reason the complex was eventually buried remains unexplained. Until more evidence is gathered, it is difficult to deduce anything certain about the originating culture.

Found Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple.

"Guten Morgen," he says at 5:20 a.m. when his van picks me up at my hotel in Urfa. Thirty minutes later, the van reaches the foot of a grassy hill and parks next to strands of barbed wire. We follow a knot of workmen up the hill to rectangular pits shaded by a corrugated steel roof—the main excavation site. In the pits, standing stones, or pillars, are arranged in circles. Beyond, on the hillside, are four other rings of partially excavated pillars. Each ring has a roughly similar layout: in the center are two large stone T-shaped pillars encircled by slightly smaller stones facing inward. The tallest pillars tower 16 feet and, Schmidt says, weigh between seven and ten tons. As we walk among them, I see that some are blank, while others are elaborately carved: foxes, lions, scorpions and vultures abound, twisting and crawling on the pillars' broad sides.

Schmidt points to the great stone rings, one of them 65 feet across. "This is the first human-built holy place," he says.

From this perch 1,000 feet above the valley, we can see to the horizon in nearly every direction. Schmidt, 53, asks me to imagine what the landscape would have looked like 11,000 years ago, before centuries of intensive farming and settlement turned it into the nearly featureless brown expanse it is today.

Prehistoric people would have gazed upon herds of gazelle and other wild animals; gently flowing rivers, which attracted migrating geese and ducks; fruit and nut trees; and rippling fields of wild barley and wild wheat varieties such as emmer and einkorn. "This area was like a paradise," says Schmidt, a member of the German Archaeological Institute. Indeed, Gobekli Tepe sits at the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent—an arc of mild climate and arable land from the Persian Gulf to present-day Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Egypt—and would have attracted hunter-gatherers from Africa and the Levant. And partly because Schmidt has found no evidence that people permanently resided on the summit of Gobekli Tepe itself, he believes this was a place of worship on an unprecedented scale—humanity's first "cathedral on a hill."

With the sun higher in the sky, Schmidt ties a white scarf around his balding head, turban-style, and deftly picks his way down the hill among the relics. In rapid-fire German he explains that he has mapped the entire summit using ground-penetrating radar and geomagnetic surveys, charting where at least 16 other megalith rings remain buried across 22 acres. The one-acre excavation covers less than 5 percent of the site. He says archaeologists could dig here for another 50 years and barely scratch the surface.

Gobekli Tepe was first examined—and dismissed—by University of Chicago and Istanbul University anthropologists in the 1960s. As part of a sweeping survey of the region, they visited the hill, saw some broken slabs of limestone and assumed the mound was nothing more than an abandoned medieval cemetery. In 1994, Schmidt was working on his own survey of prehistoric sites in the region. After reading a brief mention of the stone-littered hilltop in the University of Chicago researchers' report, he decided to go there himself. From the moment he first saw it, he knew the place was extraordinary.

Unlike the stark plateaus nearby, Gobekli Tepe (the name means "belly hill" in Turkish) has a gently rounded top that rises 50 feet above the surrounding landscape. To Schmidt's eye, the shape stood out. "Only man could have created something like this," he says. "It was clear right away this was a gigantic Stone Age site." The broken pieces of limestone that earlier surveyors had mistaken for gravestones suddenly took on a different meaning.

Found Here: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html

As a child, Klaus Schmidt used to grub around in caves in his native Germany in the hope of finding prehistoric paintings. Thirty years later, representing the German Archaeological Institute, he found something infinitely more important -- a temple complex almost twice as old as anything comparable on the planet.

"This place is a supernova", says Schmidt, standing under a lone tree on a windswept hilltop 35 miles north of Turkey's border with Syria. "Within a minute of first seeing it I knew I had two choices: go away and tell nobody, or spend the rest of my life working here."

Behind him are the first folds of the Anatolian plateau. Ahead, the Mesopotamian plain, like a dust-colored sea, stretches south hundreds of miles to Baghdad and beyond. The stone circles of Gobekli Tepe are just in front, hidden under the brow of the hill.

Compared to Stonehenge, Britain's most famous prehistoric site, they are humble affairs. None of the circles excavated (four out of an estimated 20) are more than 30 meters across. What makes the discovery remarkable are the carvings of boars, foxes, lions, birds, snakes and scorpions, and their age. Dated at around 9,500 BC, these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia, and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge.

Never mind circular patterns or the stone-etchings, the people who erected this site did not even have pottery or cultivate wheat. They lived in villages. But they were hunters, not farmers.

"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."

With only a fraction of the site opened up after a decade of excavations, Gobekli Tepe's significance to the people who built it remains unclear. Some think the site was the center of a fertility rite, with the two tall stones at the center of each circle representing a man and woman.

It's a theory the tourist board in the nearby city of Urfa has taken up with alacrity. Visit the Garden of Eden, its brochures trumpet, see Adam and Eve.

Schmidt is skeptical about the fertility theory. He agrees Gobekli Tepe may well be "the last flowering of a semi-nomadic world that farming was just about to destroy," and points out that if it is in near perfect condition today, it is because those who built it buried it soon after under tons of soil, as though its wild animal-rich world had lost all meaning.

But the site is devoid of the fertility symbols that have been found at other Neolithic sites, and the T-shaped columns, while clearly semi-human, are sexless. "I think here we are face to face with the earliest representation of gods", says Schmidt, patting one of the biggest stones. "They have no eyes, no mouths, no faces. But they have arms and they have hands. They are makers."

"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?"

With no evidence of houses or graves near the stones, Schmidt believes the hill top was a site of pilgrimage for communities within a radius of roughly a hundred miles. He notes how the tallest stones all face southeast, as if scanning plains that are scattered with archeological sites in many ways no less remarkable than Gobekli Tepe.

Last year, for instance, French archaeologists working at Djade al-Mughara in northern Syria uncovered the oldest mural ever found. "Two square meters of geometric shapes, in red, black and white - a bit like a Paul Klee painting," explains Eric Coqueugniot, the University of Lyon archaeologist who is leading the excavation.

Coqueugniot describes Schmidt's hypothesis that Gobekli Tepe was meeting point for feasts, rituals and sharing ideas as "tempting," given the site's spectacular position. But he emphasizes that surveys of the region are still in their infancy. "Tomorrow, somebody might find somewhere even more dramatic."

Director of a dig at Korpiktepe, on the Tigris River about 120 miles east of Urfa, Vecihi Ozkaya doubts the thousands of stone pots he has found since 2001 in hundreds of 11,500 year-old graves quite qualify as that. But his excitement fills his austere office at Dicle University in Diyarbakir.

"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."

Found Here: http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav041708a.shtml

A New Ancient Crystal Skull Discovered!

The Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull is no longer unique! Out of Africa – by way of California – emerges another ancient skull, “Compassion”, with a detachable jaw. Already, this skull is re-carving the crystal skull landscape!

With the 2008 release of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, crystal skulls attained a far higher level of exposure than ever before. Before, crystal skulls had only become somewhat famous in the 1980s, particularly in New Age circles. Today, there are hundreds of crystal skulls, almost all of them of modern fabrication (most made in China) and used in various New Age-type seminars. Only a handful of skulls are suspected of having ancient origins, including the most famous of all crystal skulls: the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull.
“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” makes scant references to the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull. It stands out for it is by far the most complex, and the only skull with a detachable jaw, meaning that whomever made this, was a master artist in carving crystal – able to create a feat that modern carvers have been unable to accomplish. Gerald Leandro De Souza, a master skull carver from Brazil with 25 years of experience behind him, notes that “the process of cutting the jaw from a skull causes the jaw to break and is almost impossible for skull carvers to accomplish.”
Still, sceptics, principally led by Jane Walsh, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, try to argue that all these skulls are of modern fabrications. So far, none of the claims made by Walsh and co. have been substantiated, let alone supported by factual evidence. Specifically, Walsh tries to point the finger to Germany and the town of Idar-Oberstein, arguing most of these skulls were carved there by the resident artists. However, no records of skull carving have ever been found there; there are no records of any carver doing carving in the middle of the 19th century, when some of these skulls are said to have been made. In short, Walsh’s theories remain totally unsubstantiated – not very scientific!
On the other side of the debate are the likes of Nick Nocerino, one of the first crystal skull researchers, who travelled extensively throughout Central America, in search of them. He noted how on several occasions, Indian tribes offered skulls on sale to him, as with the money, the local shamans could buy precious Western medicine and like, to help their tribe at a time when the Mayan people were subjected to genocide. Nocerino always refused such offers, as he strongly believed the skulls were such an integral part of Mayan society, that these tribes needed their precious talisman. (Though he did everything to help the tribes in other ways.)

The Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull too comes with a Central American origin. The family itself stated that Anna Mitchell-Hedges found the skull in the ruins of Lubaantuun on her 17th birthday in 1924. It is a story Anna adhered to until her death, though it was subjected to intense criticism from the sceptics. Indeed, a more likely story about how her father found the skull is told in his novel, “The White Tiger”, published in 1931. In it, he relates a largely autobiographical account of an Englishman who is initiated by a Mayan tribe, to become the principal caretaker of a most important treasure. When the Mayan priest shows him the treasure, the Englishman is led down into a series of tunnels, before the treasure is unveiled to him: “Before him, piled in endless confusion, lay the treasure of the Aztecs. Gold chalices, bowls, jars and other vessels of every size and shape; immense plaques and strange ornaments all glittered dully. Of precious stones there were none, but many rare chalchihuitl (jadeite pendants) [sic]. Masks of obsidian and shells beautifully inlaid were all heaped together with heads carved from solid blocks of crystal. Legend had not exaggerated the treasure of the Aztecs. Almost boundless wealth lay at the disposal of the White Tiger.”
“Heads carved from solid blocks of crystals”: a reference to crystal skulls made by Frederick “Mike” Mitchell-Hedges in 1931, more than a decade before he – according to the likes of Walsh – acquired a skull at auction at Sotheby’s in London in 1943.

Because it is the most complex, the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull is both the most famous and the most debated. It is unique. But today, the Mitchell-Hedges skull is no longer unique: on August 6, 2009, former Alaskan fisherman Joe Bennett was able to finally buy, from a Californian import shop, a crystal skull… with a detachable jaw, which he soon named “Compassion”. A new era in crystal skull research had therefore dawned, for a number of reasons.
Bennett is a retired fisherman from Alaska. He had earned the nickname “the crystal sailor”, as for years, he had been collecting an impressive array of crystals. In his hunt for crystals, in 2006, he stumbled upon a crystal skull, in an import store in Carmel, California. The skull had belonged to a close friend of the owners, who had brought it over from Africa. Upon his death his family liquidated the estate and asked the import store to sell the crystal skull for them.
Bennett relates how he “noticed a crystal skull in the back of this shop on a high shelf. I admired the extreme craftsmanship, saw the price and forgot about it. Like most people I didn’t have any reference for crystal skulls other than Halloween witches or Black Magic.” However, the skull did not let go of Joe, who had a series of vivid dreams about the skull, so much so that he dispatched his sister – who lived nearby – to make a series of photographs, which she sent to Joe. It was now only a matter of time before the skull would end up in Bennett’s care.

Compassion is human-sized and clear quartz, 5.5” tall, 5.5” wide and 8 inches long, weighing 11 pounds – very similar in dimensions to the Mitchell-Hedges skull. The mouth has 28 teeth. Little is known of the origins of the skull. It is known that the skull was in storage in the United States for five years prior to the shop putting it up for sale. Before, it had spent 22 years in a warehouse in Africa. The name of the people who owned it in Africa is not a matter of public record, but initial analyses of the skull have shown that the crystal is not from Brazil. Gerald Leandro De Souza argues that the “quartz probably is from Africa”. The likeliest source is Namibia, Africa, which is a well-known location where quartz crystal can be found.
Whereas the Mitchell-Hedges skull is “crystal clear”, Compassion is more like another crystal skull, known as MAX: Compassion is made out of three distinct layers (MAX has five such layers). The largest, frontal part is made of the clearest quartz crystal. Behind, roughly the top of the forehead, is a somewhat softer section of less-clear crystal. Behind is a final, third layer, separated from the others by a small fissure of iron oxide, which one can only truly see from the back of the skull.
The possibility that the material inside the fissure is iron oxide was first suggested by crystal carver James Ziegler, who added that the material at the bottom of the fissure was feldspar. This conclusion was confirmed when Bennett had the skull examined by Dr. Ray Corbett, Associate Curator of Archaeology at the Natural History Museum in Santa Barbara and Geologist Dr. John Minch on March 30, 2010. It was Minch who confirmed that the fissure was filled with iron oxide.
These experts furthermore accepted that the grounding of the crystal had occurred by hand, and not by machine. One area of the skull show pie-shaped areas, which a carver would keep, but a grinding wheel would smooth out. There are other aspects of the skull, especially to do with a lack of symmetry between the right and left side, which show that the work was carried out by human hands. Corbett and Minch also identified that the natural growth of the crystal is for the skull to be placed with the teeth pointing up. This means that the iron oxide layer was at the bottom of the then axis of the crystal, with the layer of the face being the clearest and the top one. The carver would have to carve against the grain of the skull and skip over these fractures, a task which crystal carvers say is extremely hard to do – surpassing their expertise.
When one runs a fingernail along the top of the skull, one can feel the fractures between the layers. Dr. Minch said that whoever made this skull, would have to do so very slowly, for if the quartz were to get hot, it would shatter – thus underlining that the usage of tools in the making of this skull was unlikely.
During testing, Dr. Minch also noted there was an “air bubble” inside the skull. When the skull is rocked, the bubble moves over half the thickness (about 1mm) up and down in a solution which he believes is water, which somehow made its way into the skull and trapped the air bubble inside. Bennett has speculated whether this air bubble should be interpreted as a representation of the pineal gland, a part of the brain that is often referred to as the “third eye”, and which is therefore heavily imbued with esoteric meaning. René Descartes even labelled it the seat of the soul, echoing a belief that goes back thousands of years.
Minch also found golden rutile in both skull and jaw. Rutile is a major ore of titanium, and is found as microscopic inclusions in quartz and other precious gemstones. It is responsible for many of the light effects that one sees within these objects.
Scientists have a hard time admitting that the detachable jaw of the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull is made from crystal (it is), and is from the same crystal as the rest of the skull (it is). But no such doubt can arise in the case of Compassion: its right cheek has a foil in the crystal that runs from the right cheek into jaw, and hence clearly shows that both the main part of the skull and the jaw are from the same crystal.
It will be interesting to see what sceptics are now going to do. In the case of the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull, they tried to debate the jaw away, as the creation of such a jaw has never been accomplished by modern crystal workers. But Compassion will not look compassionately upon these sceptics, who will have to come up with stronger arguments, if they want to persist in continuing the same old controversies in trying to explain away what is one of the most interesting recent discoveries.

However impressive Compassion is, its face is not symmetrical. With its detachable jaw placed underneath the skull’s teeth, Compassion looks and is symmetrical, but remove the jaw, and it becomes clear that the skull is off-centre: the teeth are slanted to the right. The only place where polishing marks are evident to the human eye is under the maxilla. This area was not finely polished, maybe to illustrate it was hand carved. The rest of the skull does not show any of these marks. Indeed, Compassion brings us to an interesting conclusion: the skull is clearly made by human hands, but whomever made it, had an expertise in working with quartz crystal, which exceeds that of anyone alive today. In short, there is an entire lost science of working with quartz crystal. But where did it come from, and where did it go?
Finally, when we stare into its eyes, it is clear that both are not identical: the left eye is far clearer than the right. It was in fact while Bennett and his wife stared into the skull’s eyes, that they felt “it” looked sad. His wife said she “showed compassion in her gaze” and a name was born. Both also felt that Compassion held a feminine energy.
Bennett has photographed the skull extensively. Some of the close-ups have revealed a number of interesting subliminal images that Compassion conjures up. When the skull was placed on a light-box, one such image that emerged was of an enigmatic head, while nearby, there was the outline of a horse’s head.

The key question is whether Compassion can ever be proven to be ancient. As mentioned, the likes of Jane Walsh from the Smithsonian have gone out of their way – abandoning the scientific process altogether – to argue come what may that all skulls are of modern origin. Their scientific bias was apparent during the testing of the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull in 2008, when one member of the team straightforwardly proclaimed that the detachable jaw clearly was and could only be glass. When it was found out not to be glass soon afterwards, he exclaimed somewhat reservedly “this did not mean it was crystal” – even though previous testing by Hewlett-Packard had clearly shown that the jaw was indeed crystal!
The problem is that crystal is impossible to date, so any dating needs to happen through other, secondary means. Evidence of tools, especially the wheel, has been put forward as the key indicator as to whether a skull is ancient (read: pre-Columbian) or modern. However much this argument is flawed, it cannot apply to a skull that comes from Africa – Africa was never an isolated continent, witnessing the origins of Mankind several tens of thousands of years ago. The argument only works if we see crystal skulls as a purely American phenomenon, whereby the wheel is assumed to have been introduced with the arrival of Western Europeans.
Of course, the skull’s presence in Africa for a number of decades does not mean it was always there. Equally, the origins of civilisation in Central America itself remains enigmatic. The Olmec civilisation dates back to at least 1200 BC, and some have argued for an African origin to this civilisation. In 1972, Dr. A. Wiercinski argued that some of the Olmecs were of African origin, supporting his claim with skeletal evidence from several Olmec sites. According to Clyde Winters, the Olmecs were from the Mandinka region of West Africa (north of Namibia). Their language is known as Mende, the script which was actually found on monuments at Monte Alban in Mexico. Interestingly, it is at Monte Alban that evidence has been found that the Mayans were definitely familiar with crystal artefacts.
Still, the quartz crystal itself having Namibia as its likeliest origin means that the skull itself must have had an African connection, wherever it was carved or used. And whereas there are Mayan legends of how skulls with removable jaws could “sing and talk” during certain religious ceremonies that were performed in the many Mayan sanctuaries, the question is which African cultures held crystal skulls dear.
Little is known about Compassion and seeing its existence is only known about for a year, most discoveries about it are still to come. If we were to assume that it is indeed of African origins, then we are confronted with crystal skulls on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, bearing great similarities. Are they evidence of pre-Columbian contact between the two continents, in which case the Olmecs are the likeliest candidate, or should we look at much older origins, including the fabled lost civilisation of Atlantis?

Those who have communicated with the skulls – in trance, meditation or otherwise – keep referring to an Atlantean connection. During a crystal skull conference in September 2009 – one of the first public airings of Compassion – Mayan elder Hunbatz Men was one of the speakers and he became intrigued by Compassion. Studying the skull closely, he exclaimed “Atlantis!” He added that there was a matrix in the back of the skull which showed an ancient map which he did not understand. Several months later, Bennett realised that the iron oxide layer in the skull largely resembles a map of the African continent. Coincidence, or not?
Another psychic who has worked with Compassion is Carole Wilson/Davis. Wilson originally worked with the Mitchell-Hedges skull, resulting in “The Skull Speaks”, published in 1985 and one of the first books to appear on crystal skulls altogether. For Wilson, the iron oxide came in the shape of a phoenix, spreading its wings, with a head and a beak in the centre. She added that the information from Compassion changed, whereas that of the Mitchell-Hedges was stable – “the same information every day.”

Within Mayan creation mythology, there is a special role for skulls. Ancient temple complexes like Chichen Itza are three-dimensional renderings of the Mayan creation myth. Near the famous pyramid and ball court is an unimpressive “Platform of the Skull”. In the creation myth, when playing ball, the Twin Maize Gods disturbed the lords of Xibalba, the Mayan underworld. The Xibalbans summoned the Maize Gods to the underworld to answer for their disrespectful behaviour. There, they subjected them to a series of trials. When they failed these tests, they were killed and buried in the ball court of Xibalba. The eldest twin was decapitated, his head hung in the tree next to the ball court, as a warning to anyone who might repeat their offence. This was visualised on the Platform of the Skull. There is no archaeological evidence as to what type of skull hung there, but seeing it was a divine skull, which spoke and spat, a crystal skull with a detachable jaw would definitely have impressed all visitors – in a way any other type of skull would not have been able to accomplish!
Crystal balls are also used for scrying. Is it possible that Compassion was used for scrying? The various images that people have seen inside of her, would thus be parts of the scrying process. And extended staring in the skull might have placed the person in a trance. Users of Compassion are sometimes transported to another reality, for example by staring into its eyes – especially the left one.

In the 1980s, when the Central American crystal skulls came to prominence, various atrocious crimes were committed against the Mayan population there. In countries like Guatemala, an oppressive regime slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Mayan people. It took years before the news of this “Silent Holocaust” became known; throughout the genocide, Western governments supported the Guatemalan government. Only able to rely on themselves, the Mayan people began to organise themselves – becoming terrorists or freedom fighters, depending on your perspective – and they began to use key dates from the Mayan calendar for their campaigns, hoping to shake the Mayan people awake and embrace their true origins and common heritage – one that transcended the modern borders Western world powers had created. Sociologists have labelled it the “Mayan Renaissance”. Today, three decades later, the world is very much aware of the Mayan calendar – especially its key date, December 21, 2012 – and millions of people visit the various Mayan monuments of Central America.
The 2010 World Cup in South Africa was seen as a joyous event for Africa, showing that Africa is not just a country of civil war and hunger. There is great joy in a continent that gave us the Ancient Egyptian civilisation, while Kenya is seen as the “cradle of Mankind”, for the remains of the earliest hominids have been found in that country. Twenty years ago, American bestselling author Kathleen McGowan attended a crystal skull workshop lead by Susan McCune. McGowan was told that in the future, she would work with skulls from Africa and that several skulls would emerge from that continent. When she saw Compassion in July 2010, McGowan remembered McCune’s prophecy. And if McCune is right, Compassion is but the first in a series of African skulls that will make their existence known the world. And with their emergence, will there be a renewed appreciation for the African continent?

At this moment in time, Compassion’s existence has already changed the entire crystal skull debate, showing that the Mitchell-Hedges skull is not unique in its complexity, and that Central America is unlikely to be the only origin of crystal skulls. The question as to the origins of the crystal skulls has therefore been redefined: did various ancient cultures have them? Did an African civilisation bring them to the American continent? Or do we need to delve further back in time, to a lost civilisation, like Atlantis, from which these skulls originated? A new dawn in crystal skull research has just broken…

Found Here: http://www.philipcoppens.com/compassion.html