SEV Connect - Kış 2019

4 CONNECT KIŞ into a crop, emerging from the earth and blooming as a process of rebirth! This might have been the reason for them to start burying their dead and hoping for a rebirth in due time. Various types of gods with supernatural powers were interrupting their daily life with climate changes and natural disasters. And there was one thing they were sure of: that they must please the gods, behaving as the gods wished them to behave. In order to save the lives of their loved ones – to see their deceased family members re-born – and in order to start farming, men believed that they must come to terms with all gods. They thought that they needed the approval of supernatural powers to shift to a settled life and start farming. When would it rain, when would it storm or hail, or turn everything upside down with earthquakes? Would the sun god, moon god, or other gods, which seemed sometimes to punish men and make them afraid, allow them to farm, to cultivate and harvest? Seeking the Permission of Gods for Farming Men tried to placate the gods to avoid their anger and to keep them satisfied. As the gods punished themwith natural disasters , taking many lives when they became angry, men sought a way to mollify the gods, killing some of their own to ward off the gods’ rage, thinking that the gods were satisfied when these people or animals were sacrificed. Did they need to obtain the gods’ permission for farming when moving toward permanent settlements? Would they be able to satisfy the gods and harvest the crops if they sacrificed animals and humans – the youngest and most beautiful ones – in rituals and ceremonies? Perhaps the temples of Göbeklitepe were temples for sacrificial rituals that were created as a result of these ideas! Who knows, maybe this was really so… Maybe the animal and human bones, catching our eyes among the finds, and beer or wine jugs – possibly used in rituals – do tell us about this, who knows? Whatever the truth, Göbeklitepe temples, whose secrets have not yet been completely discovered, are rewriting the history of humanity. Bribing the Gods! Human sacrifice was practiced by many ancient cultures. People would be ritually killed in a manner that was supposed to please or appease a god or spirit. Droughts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc. were seen as a sign of anger or displeasure by deities, and sacrifices were supposed to lessen the divine ire. The people of those prehistoric times, who wanted to start a settled life with farming, believed they had to ask for the gods’ permission by sacrificing some of their loved ones. Sacrifice meant that man made a gift to the gods and expected a gift in return. They cut off human heads, defleshed and cleaned the skulls, and hung them at an angle to face the gods. They wanted the gods to see the huge, human-like pillars first, then the sacrificed humans, especially the young and beautiful ones – and thus be appeased, granting permission for settlement and farming under decent natural conditions, no storm or hail but abundant rain and sunshine… Elucidating what the gods wanted was the secret. Human sacrifice is not just a ritual act designed to pacify the gods, divine the future, or bring luck and prosperity to those offering the sacrifice. Human sacrifice requires the exchange of a life - willingly or not - in return for supernatural assistance or for a greater cause. And at these temples other, inanimate offerings were also made. A remarkable find was a limestone statue, referred to as the ‘gift bearer’, a kneeling figure carrying a human head in its hands, the eyes and nose of which are discernible. Many Bones But No Burials at Göbeklitepe A considerable number of fragmented human bones have been recovered but the evidence of human burials is absent fromGöbeklitepe. One explanation is that this particular variation of decapitation and skull modification was connected to activities specific to the Göbeklitepe site. It is the oldest site where carved skulls have been found and fragments of three modified human skulls have recently been discovered at Göbeklitepe. Skull carvings are the result of multiple cutting actions, not related to defleshing or scalping, as defleshing must be accompanied by other types of cutting marks on the skulls, and scalping can be ruled out on the basis of the absence of typical markers. All skulls found at the site carry intentional deep incisions along their sagittal axes. In one of these cases, a drilled perforation is also attested. These findings are outstanding because they provide the very first osteological evidence of sacrificial ritual. Because no signs of healing could be detected, modifications were probably performed shortly after death, which is a robust clue for us to believe that sacrifice was the case. Skulls were carved no earlier than the perimortem stage; this observation is confirmed by microscopic analyses: cut marks are characterized by sharp edges, meaning that the bone was cut when still elastic, that is, at an early state of decay. Another outstanding feature of one of the skulls found is the drilled perforation in (Left) The gift bearer holds in his hands a human head; (Right) Pillar 43 with low relief of an ithyphallic headless individual. (Credit: Dieter Johannes, Klaus Schmidt and Nico Becker/ Göbeklitepe Archive/ German Archaeological Institute, DAI) Ancient site of Göbeklitepe in Turkey, the oldest temple in the world. (Teomancimit / CC BY-SA 3.0 )