Klaus Schmidt, saksalaissyntyinen arkeologi, haluaa määritellä sivilisaation synnyn uudestaan. Hänen tutkimansa Göbekli Tepe, ikivanha palvontapaikka ja nyt arkeologinen tutkimusalue Turkissa, näyttää olevan ainakin 11.000 vuotta vanha. Jopa niin että hänen mielestään vakiintunut käsitys metsästäjä-keräilijöiden asettuminen aloilleen karjan ja maanviljelyksen vuoksi on asetettava kyseenalaiseksi.
The site isn’t just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture—the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.
Niin voimakas on tutkimustradition vaikutus että vaikka paikka havaittiin jo 60-luvulla, sitä ei pidetty enemmän tutkimisen arvoisena:
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.
Lähteet: Newsweek, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Smithsonian
