Giant Stone Head of Ancient Egypt's King Amenhotep III Discovered

ScienceDaily
A colossal red granite head of ancient Egypt's King Amenhotep III (circa 1390-1352 BC) has been discovered in his funerary temple of the Kom El -Hettan area on Luxor's West Bank.

Egypt's Culture Minister, Farouk Hosni, announced the discovery, which was carried out by the Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project, a multi-national Egyptian-European team.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said that the newly discovered head is intact and measures 2.50 meters high. It is a masterpiece of highly artistic quality, and shows a portrait of the king with very fine youthful sculptured features.

Hawass added that the head is smoothly polished and perfectly preserved, with some traces of red paint on the head of the ureaus (cobra).

Dr. Hourig Sourouzian, the head of the mission, said that the granite head belongs to a large statue representing the king standing, hands crossed over his chest and holding the royal insignia.

The king wears the Upper Egyptian white crown. The ceremonial beard is broken under the chin but, according to Sourouzian, it may still lie under the rubble below.

She added that: "Over the past years we have gathered a large quantity of red granite statue pieces, which once stood in the southern part of the great court of the funerary temple of Amenhotep III at Kom el Hettan. Parts of the body of the statue are presently in restoration."

This temple is one of the most important temples of Dynasty 18, where 84 colossi statues have been unearthed.

Among them are those of King Amenhotep III and his wife, Queen Tiye, whose mummy was recently identified by Dr. Hawass and a team of scientists.

Archaeologists find new structure at Stonehenge

NewsDaily

LONDON, July 22, 2010 (Reuters) — Archaeologists have discovered a wooden version of British prehistoric monument Stonehenge at the same site, the project's leader told Reuters on Thursday.

People attend the annual summer solstice at the Stonehenge monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, southern England June 21, 2010. REUTERS/Kieran Doherty

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Using radar, the archaeologists found a circular ditch less than one kilometer away from the iconic stone circle, which is thought to date back to the Neolithic period 2,000 to 4,000 years ago.

"This finding is remarkable," said project leader Vince Gaffney, professor of archaeology at the University of Birmingham.

"It will completely change the way we think about the landscape around Stonehenge."

The ditch has internal pits about a meter wide which could have held timber posts. It measures 25 meters (82 ft) in diameter, just five meters less than Stonehenge.

"From the general shape, we would guess it dates backs to about the time when Stonehenge was emerging at its most complex," Gaffney said.

"This is probably the first major ceremonial monument that has been found in the past 50 years or so.

It was likely that the two henges were built around the same time, Gaffney added.

Radar images show the wooden henge has two entrances and inside the circle is a burial mound which was probably erected at a later time.

"We will not excavate. This is a virtual dig. We couldn't excavate at this scale anyway," Gaffney said.

He is confident the team will uncover more remains at the site as the project continues.

"I have absolutely no doubt. Stonehenge is not just by itself. We have a massive virtual landscape (to explore)," he added.

There is much speculation about what Stonehenge was used for, ranging from sacrificial rituals to astronomy.

The project is supported by the site's landowner the National Trust and the English Heritage. It involves the University of Birmingham, the University of Bradford and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology in Austria.

The find comes after the UK government withdrew 10 million pounds of funding in June for a separate project to improve the landscape at the Stonehenge site.

Oldest Written Document Ever Found in Jerusalem Discovered

SciencyDaily

A tiny clay fragment -- dating from the 14th century B.C.E. -- that was found in excavations outside Jerusalem's Old City walls contains the oldest written document ever found in Jerusalem, say researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The find, believed to be part of a tablet from a royal archives, further testifies to the importance of Jerusalem as a major city in the Late Bronze Age, long before its conquest by King David, they say.
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The clay fragment was uncovered recently during sifting of fill excavated from beneath a 10th century B.C.E. tower dating from the period of King Solomon in the Ophel area, located between the southern wall of the Old City of Jerusalem and the City of David to its south. Details of the discovery appear in the current issue of the Israel Exploration Journal.

Excavations in the Ophel have been conducted by Dr. Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology. Funding for the project has been provided by Daniel Mintz and Meredith Berkman of New York, who also have provided funds for completion of the excavations and opening of the site to the public by the Israel Antiquities Authority, in cooperation with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the Company for the Development of East Jerusalem. The sifting work was led by Dr.Gabriel Barkay and Zachi Zweig at the Emek Zurim wet-sieving facility site.

The fragment that has been found is 2x2.8 centimeters in size and one centimeter thick. Dated to the 14th century B.C.E., it appears to have been part of a tablet and contains cuneiform symbols in ancient Akkadian (the lingua franca of that era).

The words the symbols form are not significant in themselves, but what is significant is that the script is of a very high level, testifying to the fact that it was written by a highly skilled scribe that in all likelihood prepared tablets for the royal household of the time, said Prof. Wayne Horowitz , a scholar of Assyriology at the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology. Horowitz deciphered the script along with his former graduate student Dr. Takayoshi Oshima, now of the University of Leipzig, Germany.

Tablets with diplomatic messages were routinely exchanged between kings in the ancient Near East, Horowitz said, and there is a great likelihood, because of its fine script and the fact it was discovered adjacent to in the acropolis area of the ancient city, that the fragment was part of such a "royal missive." Horowitz has interpreted the symbols on the fragment to include the words "you," "you were," "later," "to do" and "them."

The most ancient known written record previously found in Jerusalem was the tablet found in the Shiloah water tunnel in the City of David area during the 8th century B.C.E. reign of King Hezekiah. That tablet, celebrating the completion of the tunnel, is in a museum in Istanbul. This latest find predates the Hezekiah tablet by about 600 years.

The fragment found at the Ophel is believed to be contemporary with the some 380 tablets discovered in the 19th century at Amarna in Egypt in the archives of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), who lived in the 14th century B.C.E. The archives include tablets sent to Akhenaten by the kings who were subservient to him in Canaan and Syria and include details about the complex relationships between them, covering many facets of governance and society. Among these tablets are six that are addressed from Abdi-Heba, the Canaanite ruler of Jerusalem. The tablet fragment in Jerusalem is most likely part of a message that would have been sent from the king of Jerusalem, possibly Abdi-Heba, back to Egypt, said Mazar.

Examination of the material of the fragment by Prof. Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University, shows that it is from the soil of the Jerusalem area and not similar to materials from other areas, further testifying to the likelihood that it was part of a tablet from a royal archive in Jerusalem containing copies of tablets sent by the king of Jerusalem to Pharaoh Akhenaten in Egypt.

Mazar says this new discovery, providing solid evidence of the importance of Jerusalem during the Late Bronze Age (the second half of the second century B.C.E.), acts as a counterpoint to some who have used the lack of substantial archeological findings from that period until now to argue that Jerusalem was not a major center during that period. It also lends weight to the importance that accrued to the city in later times, leading up to its conquest by King David in the 10th century B.C.E., she said.

OLDEST PORTRAITS OF APOSTLES FOUND

DiscoveryNews

The oldest known icons of Jesus Christ’s apostles have been found in a catacomb near St. Paul’s Basilica in Rome, Vatican officials announced at a news conference on Tuesday.

Dating from the end of the 4th century, the full-face paintings depict three of Jesus’ original 12 apostles -- St. Peter, St. Andrew and St. John -- as well as St. Paul, who became an apostle after Christ’s death.

The Vatican already announced the discovery of St.Paul’s icon last June, to mark the end of the Pauline year. But the portrait was part of a larger fresco that also included the full-face depictions of the other three apostles.

Located on the ceiling of a noblewoman’s burial place in the catacombs of St. Tecla, the four circular portraits, about 50 centimeters (19.7 inches) in diameter, were buried in layers of white calcium carbonate caused by the extreme humidity and lack of air circulation.

“Using a new laser technology, we have been able to burn off some rather thick deposits of white calcium without damaging the extraordinary colors of the frescoes,” said Barbara Mazzei, director of the two year restoration project.

With the laser working as an “optical scalpel,” the images of the apostles came to light in full detail, showing that devotion to the apostles began in early Christianity, said Mazzei.

Indeed, St. Peter’s long, white beard, his squared face and the wrinkles on St. Paul’s forehead indicate that these frescoes may have set the standard for future representations of the apostles.

“These are the first images of the apostles," said Fabrizio Bisconti, the superintendent of archaeology for the catacombs, which are maintained by the Vatican's Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology.

“The paintings of Andrew and John are undoubtedly the oldest ever. There are some older representations of St. Peter dating to the middle of the fourth century, but this is the first time that the apostle is not shown in a group but in an full face icon," Bisconti told reporters.

Measuring about 2 meters by 2 meters (6.6 feet by 6.6 feet), the frescoes also depict the bejeweled noblewoman and her daughter.

“She could have been one of those aristocratic Roman women who had converted to Christianity at the end of the fourth century,” Bisconti said.

New Hominid Shares Traits With Homo Species: Fossil Find Sheds Light on the Transition to Homo Genus from Earlier Hominids

Science Daily

Two partial skeletons unearthed from a cave in South Africa belong to a previously unclassified species of hominid that is now shedding new light on the evolution of our own species, Homo sapiens, researchers say. The newly documented species, called Australopithecus sediba, was an upright walker that shared many physical traits with the earliest known Homo species -- and its introduction into the fossil record might answer some key questions about what it means to be human.

The fossils are between 1.95 and 1.78 million years old, and in this week's issue of Science, the peer-reviewed journal published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society, two reports describe both the physical characteristics of this new Australopithecus species as well as the ancient environment in which it lived and died. The emerging picture is one of a hominid with a bone structure similar to the earliest Homo species, but who employed it more as an Australopithecus, like the famed "Lucy," would have.

These new fossils, however, represent a hominid that appeared approximately one million years later than Lucy, and their features imply that the transition from earlier hominids to the Homo genus occurred in very slow stages, with various Homo-like species emerging first.

"It is not possible to establish the precise phylogenetic position of Australopithecus sediba in relation to various species assigned to early Homo," wrote Lee Berger, a lead author of one of the Science reports. "We can conclude that… this new species shares more derived features with early Homo than any other known australopith species, and thus represents a candidate ancestor for the genus, or a sister group to a close ancestor that persisted for some time after the first appearance of Homo."

Many scientists believe that the human genus Homo evolved from Australopithecus a little more than two million years ago -- but the origin has been widely debated, with other experts proposing an evolution from the Kenyanthropus genus. This new Australopithecus sediba species might eventually clear up that debate, and help to reveal our direct human ancestors.

"Before this discovery, you could pretty much fit the entire record of fossils that are candidates for the origin of the genus Homo from this time period onto a small table. But, with the discovery of Australopithecus sediba and the wealth of fossils we've recovered -- and are recovering -- that has changed dramatically," Berger said.

The name itself, "sediba," means "fountain" or "wellspring" in the seSotho language, spoken in South Africa, and indeed, researchers do believe that the new fossils will provide a wealth of information about our human origins.

For now, these new hominid fossils make it clear that the evolutionary transition from small-bodied, and perhaps more tree-dwelling, ancestors to larger-bodied, full-striding bipeds occurred in gradual steps.

Berger, from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, along with Paul Dirks from James Cook University in Australia began a study on the distribution of cave deposits in the Cradle of Humankind -- a World Heritage Site, set aside for its physical and cultural significance -- in January 2008. Months later, Berger discovered the two partial skeletons in cave deposits at Malapa, South Africa, and analyzed the remains, including most of a skull, pelvis, and ankle of the new species with colleagues from the U.S., Switzerland, and Australia.

The two Australopithecus sediba -- an adult female and a juvenile male -- were found close together in a portion of the cave system that had been protected from scavengers, so the fossils are very well-preserved. The researchers describe the hominid's physical traits, highlighting the unique pelvic features and small teeth that it shared with early Homo species. Based on its physique, they suggest that the new species descended from Australopithecus africanus, and that the hominid's appearance signified the dawn of more energy-efficient walking and running.

"These fossils give us an extraordinarily detailed look into a new chapter of human evolution, and provide a window into a critical period when hominids made the committed change from dependency on life in the trees to life on the ground," said Berger. "Australopithecus sediba appears to present a mosaic of features demonstrating an animal comfortable in both worlds."

In a separate report published in Science, Paul Dirks and colleagues from around the world analyze the Malapa cave system, date the fossil deposits, and describe the geological and ecological environment that Australopithecus sediba would have dwelled in long ago.

"We think the environment sediba lived in was, in many ways, similar to the environment today," Dirks said. "For example, one with predominantly grassy plains, transected by more vegetated, wooded valleys. However, the rivers flowed in different directions and the landscape was not static, but changed all the time."

The caves at Malapa are not randomly distributed, but occur along fracture zones that criss-cross the landscape. They consist of mostly quartz, chert, dolomite, and peloids -- though there are also iron-oxide coated grains, ooids, shale, and feldspar in the rocks.

"The fossils occur together in a near-articulated state in the sedimentary remains of a deeply eroded cave system," Dirks continued. "They were laid down by a single debris flow, indicating the timing of their deaths were closely related and occurred shortly before the debris flow carried them to their place of burial."

The researchers identified the fossils of at least 25 other species of animals, including saber-toothed cats, a wildcat, a brown hyena, a wild dog, antelopes, and a horse in the cave as well. They suggest that the Malapa caves were tens of meters deep when the Australopithecus sediba fossils were deposited -- and also propose that the cave dwelling could have acted as a death trap for animals seeking water.

"One possible explanation for their entry into the cave could have been that they needed water," said Dirks. "To explain the fossil assemblage and their well-preserved state, we would speculate that perhaps at the time of their death, the area in which sediba lived experienced a severe drought… Animals may have smelled the water, ventured in too deep, fallen down hidden shafts in the pitch dark, or got lost and died."

Neandertals 'Hardly Differed at All' from Modern Humans

Science Daily

How much do we, who are alive today, differ from our most recent evolutionary ancestors, the cave-dwelling Neandertals, hominids who lived in Europe and parts of Asia and went extinct about 30,000 years ago? And how much do Neandertals, in turn, have in common with the ape-ancestors from which we are both descended, the chimpanzees?

Although we are both hominids, the fossil record told us long ago that we differ physically from Neandertals, in various ways. But at the level of genes and the proteins that they encode, new research published online May 6 in the journal Science reveals that we differ hardly at all. It also indicates that we both -- Neandertals and modern humans -- differ from the chimps in virtually identical ways.

"The astonishing implication of the work we've just published," says Prof. Gregory Hannon, Ph.D., of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), "is that we are incredibly similar to Neandertals at the level of the proteome, which is the full set of proteins that our genes encode."

Collaboration with a paleogenetics pioneer

Hannon, who is also an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and is well known for his work on small RNAs and RNA interference, was invited this past year to help examine Neandertal DNA by Dr. Svante Pääbo, a pioneer in paleogenetics, a field that employs genome science to study early humans and other Paleolithic-era creatures. In a separate paper, Pääbo's team today publishes in the same issue of Science the first complete genome sequence for Neandertal, an achievement that builds on work he has led since 2006 at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Genomics in Leipzig.

"Dr. Pääbo's publication of the full Neandertal genome is a watershed event, a major historical achievement," Hannon says. "The work we conducted in collaboration with his team is only a small part of the larger effort, but it helps us put the Neandertal genome into better perspective, relative to the modern human genome and those of our nearest common ancestor among the apes, the chimpanzees, from whom we diverged about 6.5 million years ago."

The CSHL team contributed a technology developed by Hannon, postdoc Emily Hodges, Ph.D., and others at CSHL in 2007. "We call it "Array capture re-sequencing," says Hannon, "and it enables us to extract from genomes important information, on a very selective basis, rapidly, very accurately, and at low cost. We always anticipated that it might help in the analysis of evolutionary relationships, so when Svante offered us the opportunity to apply it to a Neandertal sample, we were very excited and grateful for the opportunity."

The technique enabled Hannon's CSHL team, working with Pääbo's team in Leipzig, to greatly amplify intact bits of DNA from a Neandertal sample that was 99.8% contaminated -- mainly by bacterial DNA-- and regarded by Pääbo as not likely to yield useful data. The sample studied was considerably more impure than that used as the basis for Pääbo's full Neandertal genome sequence. "Our technology is particularly useful in enabling us to work with the most contaminated samples," says Hannon. "We identify and then greatly amplify just those portions of the target DNA called exons. Exons are stretches of DNA that encode proteins. They comprise only a small fraction of the total genome of modern humans, about 1%."

The Neandertal genome, like that of modern humans, contains about 3 billion base-pairs of nucleotides -- often referred to metaphorically as "letters" in the genome's "book of life." The Hannon-Pääbo collaboration focused on obtaining the most accurate possible sequence of only 14,000 protein-coding segments within the full genome. "These," Hannon explains, "are exons that give rise to the 14,000 proteins that we know are different in modern humans and chimpanzees." The question was what those 14,000 proteins would look like in our Neandertal relatives.

"The overwhelming majority of chimp proteins -- about 75% -- are different from ours in at least one amino-acid 'letter," according to Hannon. These amino-acid changes are in most instances slight, but the resulting functional differences -- the way they affect what proteins do in cells -- can be great, and presumably help to explain many of our differences from chimpanzees.

Eighty-eight amino-acid differences -- and what they might signify

Hannon's team applied its focused sequencing method on those areas in the Neandertal sample obtained from Dr. Pääbo, and, after several rounds of refinement, they arrived at the number 88: they found only 88 changes in Neandertal protein sequences compared with the modern human. Hannon calls this number "astonishing."

At an early stage of the study, the team identified many more protein differences -- about 1000 -- between modern man and the specific Neandertal individual sampled, a male who died about 49,000 years ago in a cave called El Sidrón, in Spain. But that initial figure was based on comparing the Neandertal sequence to that of the modern human reference genome. When the teams incorporated into their calculations variations in the modern human code that they catalogued in 50 individuals from a range of modern ethnic groups, the number of human-Neandertal protein differences dropped from over 1000 to only 88.

Although Hannon says it will be important to study the functional role of the 88 proteins, he expects that many may prove "neutral," functionally. These would be changes in the genetic code that do not issue in any difference in the function of the associated proteins. If even more human genome samples -- say, from 500 contemporary individuals rather than 50 -- were included in the comparison, the number of differences might drop again, Hannon believes. And if additional Neandertal samples were factored into the comparison, he says, "it's possible that the number of differences could approach zero."

In short, Hannon says, "the news, so far, is not about how we differ from Neandertals, but how we are so nearly identical, in terms of proteins." In addition to following up on the functional associations of the 88 proteins identified in the current study, Hannon says new research is likely to address other portions of the genome -- particularly those segments responsible for regulating what genes do. In effect, the search for what distinguishes us from our nearest hominid ancestors will shift to from differences in sequence to differences in function.

3.6 Million-Year-Old Relative of 'Lucy' Discovered: Early Hominid Skeleton Confirms Human-Like Walking Is Ancient

ScienceDaily

Meet "Lucy's" Great-Grandfather. Cleveland Museum of Natural History Curator and Head of Physical Anthropology Dr. Yohnannes Haile-Selassie led an international team that discovered and analyzed a 3.6 million-year-old partial skeleton found in Ethiopia. The early hominid is 400,000 years older than the famous "Lucy" skeleton and is significantly larger in size. Research on the new specimen reveals that advanced human-like, upright walking occurred much earlier in the evolutionary timeline than previously thought.

Haile-Selassie is the first author of the initial analysis of the specimen, which will be published in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of June 21, 2010.

Anatomically arranged elements of partial skeleton KSD-VP-1/1. The male Australopithecus afarensis specimen found in Ethiopia was nicknamed "Kadanuumuu." (Credit: Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Liz Russell, Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Used with permission from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.)

The specimen was nicknamed "Kadanuumuu" (kah-dah-nuu-muu) by the authors. This means "big man" in the Afar language and reflects its large size. The male hominid stood between 5 to 5 ½ feet tall, while "Lucy" stood only 3 ½ feet tall.

"This individual was fully bipedal and had the ability to walk almost like modern humans," said Haile-Selassie. "As a result of this discovery, we can now confidently say that 'Lucy' and her relatives were almost as proficient walking on two legs as we are, and that the elongation of our legs came earlier in our evolution that previously thought."

He explained, "All of our understanding of Australopithecus afarenis' locomotion was dependent on 'Lucy.' Because she was an exceptionally small female with absolutely short legs, this gave some researchers the impression that she was not fully adapted to upright walking. This new skeleton falsifies that impression because if 'Lucy's' frame had been as large as this specimen, her legs would also have been proportionally longer."

Kent State University Professor Dr. C. Owen Lovejoy was a co-author of the research and helped analyze the skeleton. When comparing it to "Lucy," Lovejoy said, "They both have pelves, a complete lower limb bone and elements of the forelimb, vertebral column and thorax. However, the new specimen has more complete ribs and a nearly complete scapula, which tells us much more about body form in Australopithecus afarensis than 'Lucy' was able to alone."

Authors of the research include Cleveland scientists Dr. Bruce Latimer, interim director of the Center for Human Origins of the Institute for the Science of Origins at Case Western Reserve University, and Dr. Beverly Saylor, associate professor of geological sciences at Case Western Reserve University. Other co-authors are from Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, Berkeley Geochronology Center and Stanford University.

Australopithecus afarenis is the best-known direct early human ancestor. Until now, the only partial skeleton assigned to this species was "Lucy," a 3.2 million-year-old female individual, which was discovered in 1974 by a team led by then Museum curator Dr. Donald Johanson.

The analysis of "Kadanuumuu" indicates that the shoulder and rib cage of this species were different from those of chimpanzees. "These findings further confirm what we concluded from the 'Ardi' specimen -- that chimpanzees have undergone a great deal of specialized evolution since we shared a last common ancestor with them," said Lovejoy.

"Ardi," or Ardipithecus ramidus is a 4.4 milion-year-old hominid species that was unveiled in October 2009 by a team that included Haile-Selassie, Lovejoy, and Museum scientists and associate researchers Dr. Linda Spurlock, Dr. Bruce Latimer and Dr. Scott Simpson. "Ardi" was named by the journal Science as breakthrough discovery of the year. Click here to find out more about "Ardi."

Remains of world’s oldest human brain found in Armenia

Thaindian News

Washington, October 1 (ANI): An Armenian-American-Irish archeological expedition claims to have found the remains of the world’s oldest human brain, estimated to be over 5,000 years old.

The discovery was made recently in a cave in southeastern Armenia.

An analysis performed by the Keck Carbon Cycle Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory at the University of California, Irvine confirmed that one of three human skulls found at the site contains particles of a human brain dating to around the first quarter of the 4th millennium BC.

“The preliminary results of the laboratory analysis prove this is the oldest of the human brains so far discovered in the world,” said Dr. Boris Gasparian, one of the excavation’s leaders and an archeologist from the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology in Yerevan.

“Of course, the mummies of Pharaonic Egypt did contain brains, but this one is older than the Egyptian ones by about 1,000 to 1,200 years,” he added.

The team in Armenia, comprised of 26 specialists from Ireland, the United States and Armenia, had been excavating the three-chamber cave where the brain was found since 2007.

The site, overlooking the Arpa River near the town of Areni, is believed to date mostly to the Late Chalcolithic Period or the Early Bronze Age (around 6,000 to 5,000 years ago).

It also contains evidence of elaborate burial rituals and agricultural practices.

The skull with the brain was found in a chamber that contained three buried ceramic vessels containing the skulls of three women, about 11 to 16 years old.

The cave’s damp climate helped preserve red and white blood cells in the brain remains.

“It is a unique first-hand source of information about the genetic code of the people who inhabited this place, and we’re now studying it,” Gasparian said in reference to the nine-centimeter-long, seven-centimeter-high brain fragment.

It is still being determined from what part of the brain the fragment comes.

“Microscopic analysis revealed blood vessels and traces of a brain hemorrhage, perhaps caused by a blow to the head,” Gasparian said.

Next to one of the three skulls, the team also found four adult femoral shafts - midsections of a thigh bone - that may have also played a role in the ritual.

“Interestingly, some of them were not just burnt, but rather evenly roasted from all sides, which directly points to a ceremonial practice. This may have been a case of ceremonial cannibalism, but it still needs to be proved,” said Gasparian. (ANI)

Civilization that gave birth to urban life in Middle East still awaits discovery

Thaindian News

Washington, April 25 (ANI): The dawn of urban life in the Middle East still remains uncovered in Syria beneath three large mounds about three miles from the modern town of Raqqa, say American and Syrian experts.

These mounds, the tallest of which is nearly 50 feet high, cover about 31 acres and contain the ruins of Tell Zeidan, a proto-urban community dating 6000-4000 B.C.

During this period much of Mesopotamia shared a common culture, called Ubaid, which triggered the emergence of the first true city centres in the Uruk period that dates between 4000 and 3100 B.C.

However, the mounds remains untouched for over 6,000 years in spite of the site’s significance.

This was a blessing for archaeologists.

Since Tell Zeidan was abandoned in 4000 B.C., large areas of this large Ubaid temple-town can be easily accessed as they are not buried beneath feet of deposits from later occupation periods.

A Joint Syrian-US excavation co-directed by Muhammad Sarhan from the Raqqa Museum and Gil Stein from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, has found significant evidence for monumental architecture, widespread irrigation agriculture, copper metallurgy and long distance trade in luxury goods.

“All this flourished long before people domesticated pack animals for transportation or invented the wheel,” Discovery News quoted Gil Stein, the US co-director of the joint project, as saying.

Stein added: “The Ubaid people used widespread irrigation and agriculture, had powerful political leaders and experienced the first social inequality. Communities became divided into wealthy elites and poorer commoners.”

One of the most important discoveries from the area was a large, stone stamp seal depicting a deer.

The seal is finely carved from a red stone which is not native to the area, and bears striking resemblance to another seal found at a site in northern Iraq, some 185 miles to the east of Tell Zeidan.

“The existence of very expertly carved seals with near-identical motifs at such widely distant sites suggests that in this period, high-ranking elites were assuming leadership positions across a very broad region. Those dispersed elites shared a common set of symbols and perhaps even a common ideology of superior social status,” Stein noted.

Guillermo Algaze, a specialist on the emergence of urban centres in the Middle East and professor of anthropology at the University of California, San Diego, said in a statement: “Work at this unique site has the potential to revolutionize current interpretations of how civilization in the Near East came about.” (ANI)

Remains of Hammurabi seal discovered in Cairo

Thaindian News

Washington, November 22 (ANI): An Austrian archaeological mission has discovered the remains of a Hammurabi seal in Cairo, Egypt, which is made of burnt clay with inscriptions in cuneiform. The remains of the seal, found by the mission of the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Cairo and the Egyptology Institute of the University of Vienna, were unearthed during excavation works in the archaeological area of Tal El-Daba’a in al-Sharqiya governorate, 120 kilometres northeast Cairo According to Zahi Hawas, the Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said that the seal, dating back to the Babylonian era, namely the ruling time of King Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC), is the second of its kind to be discovered by the Austrian mission. “The first seal is similar to this one. It had been discovered inside the palace of King Khayan of the Hyksos (1653-1614 BC), dating back the late Babylonian era,” said Hawas in statements. Manfred Bietak, the Chief of the Austrian archaeological mission in Egypt, said that the two seals are of paramount importance, being the most ancient Babylonian ones found in Egypt as they date back to 150 years before the discovery of similar seals inside the ancient archaeological city of Tal al-Amarna. Bietak noted that the two seals also indicate that the Hyksos, known as the shepherd kings and had been notorious Asiatic invaders, had trade relations with the Far East that stretched to Babylonia. Hammurabi is the sixth King of Babylon from 1792 BC to 1750 BC. He became the first king of the Babylonian Empire following the abdication of his father, Sin-Muballit, extending Babylon’s control over Mesopotamia by winning a series of wars against neighbouring kingdoms. Although his empire controlled all of Mesopotamia at the time of his death, his successors were unable to maintain his empire. Hammurabi is known for the set of laws called Hammurabi’s Code, one of the first written codes of law in recorded history. (ANI)

World’s oldest leather shoe found

Thaindian News

London, June 10 (IANS) A perfectly preserved 5,500-year-old leather shoe has been found by a team of international archaeologists in a cave in Armenia.
The cow-hide shoe dates back to 3,500 BC (the Chalcolithic period) and is in perfect condition. It was made of a single piece of leather and was shaped to fit the wearer’s foot.

It contained grass, although the archaeologists were uncertain as to whether this was to keep the foot warm or to maintain the shape of the shoe, perhaps a precursor to the modern shoe-tree which is placed inside a shoe to preserve its shape.

“It is not known whether the shoe belonged to a man or woman,” said lead author of the research, Ron Pinhasi of the University College Cork, Ireland, “as while small, the shoe could well have fitted a man from that era”.

The cave is situated in the Vayotz Dzor province of Armenia, on the Armenian, Iranian, Nakhichevanian and Turkish borders, and was known to regional archaeologists due to its visibility from the highway below.

The stable, cool and dry conditions in the cave resulted in exceptional preservation of various objects found, including large containers with well-preserved wheat and barley, apricots and other edible plants.

The floor of the cave was covered by a thick layer of sheep dung which acted as a solid seal over the objects, preserving them beautifully over the millennia!

“We thought initially that the shoe and other objects were about 600-700 years old because they were in such good condition,” Pinhasi said.

But after the material was dated by the two radiocarbon laboratories in Oxford, Britain, and California, US, it was found that the shoe was older, he said.

The shoe was discovered by Armenian doctoral student Diana Zardaryan of the Institute of Archaeology, Armenia, in a pit that also had a broken pot and wild goat horns. “I was amazed to find that even the shoe-laces were preserved,” she said.

The research received funding from the National Geographic Society, among others.

The findings were published online in PLoS ONE.

Manuscript found in Ethiopian monastery could be world's oldest illustrated Christian work

Telegraph co uk

- A still colourful page from the book despite the 1600 age of the worlds oldest christian book found in a remote monastry in Ethiopia. The text was thought to be medieval but carbon dating has taken it back to the 5th century AD.

Originally thought to be from around the 11th century, new carbon dating techniques place the Garima Gospels between 330 and 650 AD.

The 1,600 year-old texts are named after a monk, Abba Garima, who arrived in Ethiopia in the fifth century.

According to legend, he copied out the Gospels in just one day after founding the Garima Monastery, near Adwa in the north of the country.

The vividly illustrated pages have been conserved by the Ethiopian Heritage Fund and it is hoped that the two volumes will be made available to visitors to the monastery which is in discussions to start a museum there.

Illustrations of the saints Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are all included in the book along with what may be the first ever Christian illustration of a building, the Temple of the Jews.

The Garima Gospels, which are believed to have magical powers, have never left the monastery.

They were written on goat skin in the early Ethiopian language of Ge'ez and are thought to be the earliest example of book binding still attached to the original pages.

The earlier date given to the manuscripts coincides with Abba (Father) Garima's arrival in Ethiopia from Constantinople in 494 AD adding weight to the legend that he was responsible, at least in part, for writing the texts.

Mark Winstanley, who helped to carry out the conservation, said: "The monks believe that the book has the magical powers of a holy text. If someone is ill they are read passages from the book and it is thought to give them strength. Although the monks have always believed in the legend of Abba Garima the new date means it could actually be true."

Archaeologists: 5th Century Cathedral Unearthed in Syria

Global Arab Network


Syria (Hasaka) - A 5th century cathedral was discovered in Hasaka by the Syrian archaeological mission working at the site of Tal Hasaka (hill), northeastern Syria.

Director of Tourism Department in Hasaka Abdulmasieh Baghdo said that the 31 m long and 18 m wide cathedral consists of two parts.

The first part is the plate of the cathedral surrounded by a basalt wall whose northern side is 2.10 m high. There is also an adobe floor with three porticos in the north, middle and south, and a number of decorated pedestals and pillars made of basalt.

The inner sanctuary (the Holy of Holies) forms the other part of the cathedral including the Baptism Room, the Temple and the Deaconry.

A grape press was unearthed to the north of the cathedral, said Baghdo, adding that a part of a hall which is believed to have been used as a reception room was found to the south of the cathedral.

The findings of the archeological mission working at the site also included remains of scattered buildings and pottery dating back to the 12th and 13th centuries A.D., in addition to parts of a gypsum-painted building from the modern Assyrian period (11th century A.D.). (SANA)

Recording of World’s Oldest Musical Notation from Ugarit

Global Arab Network

Syria (Lattakia) – Musical scholar Ziad Ajjan composed eight poetry and musical pieces from the musical archaeological cuneiform tablet known as "Hymn of Supplication" H6 discovered in Ugarit in the early 20th century.

Ajjan composed three musical pieces based on the musical notes in the tablet which dates back to 1400 BC, naming the pieces "Sunrise," "Sunset" and "Holiday in Ugarit."

This marks the recording of the oldest music notation in the history of the world.

Ajjan said he is still working on the tablet based on information he reached after extensive study and previous experiment, making use of previous research by fellow Syrian scholars Mohammad Ahmad Soso and Sajii Kurkmaz and analyzing the phrases of the tablet's text.

The tablet contains a complete hymn, both words and music, in addition to detailed performance instructions for a singer accompanied by a harpist as well as instructions on how to tune the harp.

This tablet is one of several clay tablets were excavated in the early 1950s at the Syrian city of ancient Ugarit in what is now modern Ras Shamra, 12 kilometers north of the city of Lattakia in the Syrian Coast region, and around 260 kilometers north of Damascus.

Ugarit was an ancient cosmopolitan port city built around 6000 BC, reaching the height of its prosperity from 1450 BC until 1200 BC when it was abandoned.

The first written alphabet, the Ugaritic alphabet, was invented around 1400 BC. It consisted of 30 cuneiform letters, and shared similarities with the Arabic language in terms of meanings and grammar.

Earlier in June, Syrian Soprano Noma Omran performed a song from tablet at Daitoku-Ji, a Zen-Buddhist temple in Kyoto, accompanied by the temple's monks and Japanese percussionist Stomu Yamashta. (SANA)

Ancient Synagogue Discovered in the Galilee

ScienceDaily (July 12, 2010)

Among various important discoveries, the 2010 Kinneret Regional Project discovered an ancient synagogue, in use at around 400 AD. This year's archeological focus is the first systematic excavation on Horvat Kur, a village inhabited from the Early Roman through the Early Medieval periods located on a gentle hill two kilometers west of the Lake of Galilee.

Thirty volunteers -- mostly students of theology, religious studies, and archeology -- and staff from the Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland, Romania, Belgium, Spain, Israel, and Germany explore the material remains of the village life in Galilee, a region that features very prominently in Early Christian and Rabbinic tradition. The 2010 campaign lasts from June 21 until July 16 and is sponsored by the Universities of Bern, Helsinki, and Leiden.

Already after two weeks of excavation, the hardships of digging in the blazing Galilean sun were revealed. Archeologists worked in two different areas. In area A -- situated on the hill-top -- a narrow test trench dug in 2008 was expanded to a larger area of three squares, 5 x 5 meters each, now being fully excavated. At this location, remains of an elaborately built monumental wall were discovered already at an early stage of excavation. This wall, preserved up to 80 centimeters, runs North-South for at least 10 meters and clearly divides the excavated space into two different areas. To the west of it, a cobblestone pavement covered with what the researchers think was a small courtyard. In 2008, a large number of coins were found on the surfaces of this open space, indicating that the building represented by the above mentioned monumental wall might already have been in use at around 400 AD. During the 2010 campaign, another large amount of coins came to light in the same area which are likely to corroborate this dating once numismatic analysis of the newly found coin material is completed. Fragments of pilasters and other architectural elements were found close by in tumble, which will eventually contribute to the reconstruction of layout and design of the building.

To the east of the monumental wall, the researchers found a totally different situation, indicating that this space was inside the building: Here a low bench made of hewn stones and covered with grey plaster runs alongside the wall, interrupted only by an entrance roughly in the center of its excavated part. The floor was made of grey hard plaster. It will need to be checked in the future if there are additional floor layers below.

Taken all the available evidence together, it seems very likely that the Kinneret Regional Project 2010 has discovered a part of the western wall of yet another ancient Galilean synagogue. Together with the well-known synagogues at Capernaum and Chorazin (both around the fifth and sixth century AD, the new synagogue at Horvat Kur -- tentatively dated to the fourth or fifth century AD -- adds new evidence for a very tight net of synagogues in a relatively small area on the Northwestern shores of the Lake of Galilee.

In area C on the fringe of the topmost plateau of Horvat Kur, parts of two courtyards with work installations and a room full with dumped pottery from the middle of the first millennium AD came to light. These findings allow fascinating insights into the social and economic life in a Galilean village during this period. Recycled architectural elements, so- called spoliae, and broad walls made of fieldstones or reused ashlars demonstrate how frequently village space changed to adapt buildings to the needs of their inhabitants. Future excavations will expose the entire structure and allow analysis of the use and organization of space of the inhabitants. The expedition will aim to unearth traces of earlier habitation to clarify the development of the village.

Remains from the domestic quarter in C and the public area in A will substantially add to the knowledge of ancient rural Galilee and they will substantially contribute to solve current research questions like population growth and economic status or cultural interaction of indigenous and external influences in rural Galilee throughout the classical period. In addition, the new finds and findings at Horvat Kur will contribute substantially to the ongoing fierce debate about the chronology of Galilean synagogues.

The Kinneret Regional Project also continued its work on the material remains of Tel Kinrot, a large site situated directly on the shore of Lake Kinneret about 11 kilometers north of modern Tiberias. To date, archeological investigations revealed settlement layers from the Chalcolithic throughout the Ottoman periods, about the fifth millennium BC to the second millennium AD). The site was under excavation by the Kinneret Regional Project until 2008. After that a small in-lab team of experts continuously analyzed the finds and findings from the various settlement layers in order to prepare them for subsequent publication. During the 2010 study season, special focus was laid on the examination of the city layout and the analysis of the architecture in the domestic quarters dating to the Iron Age I period (eleventh and tenth century BC). In addition, the catalogue of the hitherto retrieved small finds, especially those relating to textile industry, could be further completed. As in previous years, the restoration of the uniquely well preserved assemblage of the Iron Age I period was continued.

Future campaigns of the Kinneret Regional Project will return to surveying the region around Horvat Kur and record agricultural installations as already started in 2008, explore the many caves and cisterns on the site to better understand Horvat Kur's water supply system, and of course to continue excavations on the hill itself. After final publication of the results of the first phase of KRP's activities at Tel Kinrot, fieldwork at this important site will be resumed. At the same time, the site's preservation and conservation or restoration of excavated areas will be continuously pursued in collaboration with the local authorities.

The Kinneret Regional Project as an academic consortium of the Universities of Bern/Switzerland, Helsinki/Finland, Leiden/Netherlands, and Mainz/Germany will henceforth also be committed to its educational field program for international students of all disciplines to bring them into hands-on contact with the history and material culture of a region that is at the foundations of both Judaism and Christianity.

14th Century B.C. Written Fragment Discovered in Jerusalem

The Hebrew university of Jerusalem

Oldest written document ever found in Jerusalem discovered by Hebrew University researchers

The tiny clay fragment – dating from the 14th century B.C.E. – found by Hebrew University archaeologists in excavations outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls contains the oldest written document ever found in Jerusalem. (Photo: Sasson Tiram)

A tiny clay fragment – dating from the 14th century B.C.E. – that was found in excavations outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls contains the oldest written document ever found in Jerusalem, say researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The find, believed to be part of a tablet from a royal archives, further testifies to the importance of Jerusalem as a major city in the Late Bronze Age, long before its conquest by King David, they say. The clay fragment was uncovered recently during sifting of fill excavated from beneath a 10th century B.C.E. tower dating from the period of King Solomon in the Ophel area, located between the southern wall of the Old City of Jerusalem and the City of David to its south. Details of the discovery appear in the current issue of the Israel Exploration Journal. Excavations in the Ophel have been conducted by Dr. Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology. Funding for the project has been provided by Daniel Mintz and Meredith Berkman of New York, who also have provided funds for completion of the excavations and opening of the site to the public by the Israel Antiquities Authority, in cooperation with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the Company for the Development of East Jerusalem. The sifting work was led by Dr. Gabriel Barkay and Zachi Zweig at the Emek Zurim wet-sieving facility site. The fragment that has been found is 2x2.8 centimeters in size and one centimeter thick. Dated to the 14th century B.C.E., it appears to have been part of a tablet and contains cuneiform symbols in ancient Akkadian (the lingua franca of that era). The words the symbols form are not significant in themselves, but what is significant is that the script is of a very high level, testifying to the fact that it was written by a highly skilled scribe that in all likelihood prepared tablets for the royal household of the time, said Prof. Wayne Horowitz, a scholar of Assyriology at the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology. Horowitz deciphered the script along with his former graduate student Dr. Takayoshi Oshima, now of the University of Leipzig, Germany. Tablets with diplomatic messages were routinely exchanged between kings in the ancient Near East, Horowitz said, and there is a great likelihood, because of its fine script and the fact it was discovered adjacent to in the acropolis area of the ancient city, that the fragment was part of such a “royal missive.” Horowitz has interpreted the symbols on the fragment to include the words “you,” “you were,” “later,” “to do” and “them.” The most ancient known written record previously found in Jerusalem was the tablet found in the Shiloah water tunnel in the City of David area during the 8th century B.C.E. reign of King Hezekiah. That tablet, celebrating the completion of the tunnel, is in a museum in Istanbul. This latest find predates the Hezekiah tablet by about 600 years. The fragment found at the Ophel is believed to be contemporary with the some 380 tablets discovered in the 19th century at Amarna in Egypt in the archives of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), who lived in the 14th century B.C.E. The archives include tablets sent to Akhenaten by the kings who were subservient to him in Canaan and Syria and include details about the complex relationships between them, covering many facets of governance and society. Among these tablets are six that are addressed from Abdi-Heba, the Canaanite ruler of Jerusalem. The tablet fragment in Jerusalem is most likely part of a message that would have been sent from the king of Jerusalem, possibly Abdi-Heba, back to Egypt, said Mazar. Examination of the material of the fragment by Prof. Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University, shows that it is from the soil of the Jerusalem area and not similar to materials from other areas, further testifying to the likelihood that it was part of a tablet from a royal archive in Jerusalem containing copies of tablets sent by the king of Jerusalem to Pharaoh Akhenaten in Egypt. Mazar says this new discovery, providing solid evidence of the importance of Jerusalem during the Late Bronze Age (the second half of the second century B.C.E.), acts as a counterpoint to some who have used the lack of substantial archeological findings from that period until now to argue that Jerusalem was not a major center during that period. It also lends weight to the importance that accrued to the city in later times, leading up to its conquest by King David in the 10th century B.C.E., she said.

Has the Sarcophagus of Paris, Prince of Troy, Been Found?

BalkanTravellers

Archaeologists Unearth Warrior Sarcophagus at Ancient City of Parion, Turkey

14 July 2010 | A sarcophagus of a warrior was recently discovered during archaeological excavations of the ancient city of Parion, located in Turkey’s north-western province of Canakkale, near Troy.

The sarcophagus was unearthed in the ancient city’s necropolis, Professor Cevat Basaran, head of the excavation team in Parion ancient city in the village of Kemer near the town of Biga, told national media.

According to the archaeologist, the newly found sarcophagus had an inscription of a warrior saying goodbye to his family as he left for a war. The warrior in the inscription, he added, could be Paris who caused the Trojan War.

Parion is among the most important of the dozens of ancient settlements in the region of Troad, in which the city of Troy was the focus. Parion was first found by archaeologists in 2005. Many precious artefacts, including gold crowns and sarcophagi, have been unearthed at the site since, suggesting the city’s importance during the Hellenistic and Roman Age.

Has Noah's Ark Been Found on Turkish Mountaintop?

Published April 27, 2010

| FOXNews.com

A group of Chinese and Turkish evangelical explorers say wooden remains they have discovered on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey are the remains of Noah's Ark.

The group claims that carbon dating proves the relics are 4,800 years old, meaning they date to around the same time the ark was said to be afloat. Mt. Ararat has long been suspected as the final resting place of the craft by evangelicals and literalists hoping to validate biblical stories.

Yeung Wing-Cheung, from the Noah's Ark Ministries International research team that made the discovery, said: "It's not 100 percent that it is Noah's Ark, but we think it is 99.9 percent that this is it."

There have been several reported discoveries of the remains of Noah's Ark over the years, most notably a find by archaeologist Ron Wyatt in 1987. At the time, the Turkish government officially declared a national park around his find, a boat-shaped object stretched across the mountains of Ararat.

Nevertheless, the evangelical ministry remains convinced that the current find is in fact more likely to be the actual artifact, calling upon Dutch Ark researcher Gerrit Aalten to verify its legitimacy.

“The significance of this find is that for the first time in history the discovery of Noah’s Ark is well documented and revealed to the worldwide community,” Aalten said at a press conference announcing the find. Citing the many details that match historical accounts of the Ark, he believes it to be a legitimate archaeological discovery.

“There’s a tremendous amount of solid evidence that the structure found on Mount Ararat in Eastern Turkey is the legendary Ark of Noah,” said Aalten.

Representatives of Noah's Ark Ministries said the structure contained several compartments, some with wooden beams, that they believe were used to house animals.The group of evangelical archaeologists ruled out an established human settlement on the grounds none have ever been found above 11,000 feet in the vicinity, Yeung said.

During the press conference, team member Panda Lee described visiting the site. “In October 2008, I climbed the mountain with the Turkish team. At an elevation of more than 4,000 meters, I saw a structure built with plank-like timber. Each plank was about 8 inches wide. I could see tenons, proof of ancient construction predating the use of metal nails."

We walked about 100 meters to another site. I could see broken wood fragments embedded in a glacier, and some 20 meters long. I surveyed the landscape and found that the wooden structure was permanently covered by ice and volcanic rocks."

Local Turkish officials will ask the central government in Ankara to apply for UNESCO World Heritage status so the site can be protected while a major archaeological dig is conducted.

The biblical story says that God decided to flood the Earth after seeing how corrupt it was. He then told Noah to build an ark and fill it with two of every animal species.

After the flood waters receded, the Bible says, the ark came to rest on a mountain. Many believe that Mount Ararat, the highest point in the region, is where the ark and her inhabitants ran aground.

Colossal Apollo Statue Unearthed in Turkey

Discovery News

A colossal statue of Apollo, the Greek god of the sun, light, music and poetry, has emerged from white calcified cliffs in southwestern Turkey, Italian archaeologists announced.

Colossal statues were very popular in antiquity, as evidenced by the lost giant statues of the Colossus of Rhodes and the Colossus of Nero. Most of them vanished long ago -- their material re-used in other building projects.

"This colossal statue of Apollo is really a unique finding. Such statues are extremely rare in Asia Minor. Only a dozen still survive," team leader Francesco D'Andria, director of the Institute of Archaeological Heritage, Monuments and Sites at Italy's National Research Council in Lecce, told Discovery News.

Split in two huge marble fragments, divided along the bust and the lower part of the sculpture, the 1st century A.D. statue was unearthed at the World Heritage Site of Hierapolis, now called Pamukkale.

Founded around 190 B.C. by Eumenes II, King of Pergamum (197 B.C.-159 B.C.), Hierapolis was given over to Rome in 133 B.C.

The Hellenistic city grew into a flourishing Roman city, with temples, a theatre and popular sacred hot springs, believed to have healing properties.

Standing at more than four meters (13 feet) in height, the newly discovered statue, which is missing the head and the arms, might have been one of the most impressive sights in the city.

"It depicts the Greek god Apollo sitting on a throne and holding the cithara with his left arms. The god wears a wonderfully draped tunic. The cloth has a transparency effect to reveal mighty muscles," said D'Andria.

Inspired by the great classical masterpieces, the artist did not pay the same peculiar attention to the back of the statue.

"This shows that the sculpture was placed against a wall and was supposed to be seen only frontally," D'Andria noted.

Standing in all its massive regality, the statue was particularly important for the city, since Apollo was venerated as Hierapolis' divine founder.

The colossal statue was probably the main sculpture at the sanctuary of Apollo, which was intentionally built over an active fault.

"Hierapolis is a unique site, and archaeologists are bringing to light incredible findings each year. As with all the other ancient buildings, the statue will be virtually reconstructed in full detail," Francesco Gabellone, an architect at the National Research Council in Lecce, told Discovery News.

Gabellone and his team are working on "Virtual Hierapolis," a project which has made it possible to virtually walking in the ancient city as it appeared during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius (42 B.C.-37 A.D.), when it was reconstructed following a devastating earthquake.

The city survived until 1334, when it was abandoned forever after another earthquake.

"We have not lost hope to physically reconstruct the statue in its entirety. We are still digging, and we might be able to find the missing head at least," D'Andria said.

The two separate sections of the statue of the Greek god Apollo appear above. The researchers hope to be able to virtually reconstruct the statue based on their findings.
Francesco D'Andria

Discovery of Bronze-Age `Refrigerators' Expands Homer's Troy

Sept. 17 (Bloomberg)

The remains of two outsized earthenware pots, a ditch and evidence of a gate dating back more than 3,000 years are changing scholars' perceptions about the city of Troy at the time Homer's ``Iliad'' was set.

The discoveries this year show that Troy's lower town was much bigger in the late Bronze Age than previously thought, according to Ernst Pernicka, the University of Tubingen professor leading excavations on the site in northwestern Turkey.

His team has uncovered a trench 1.4 kilometers long, 4 meters wide and 2 meters deep. The full length of the trench, which probably encircled the city and served a defensive purpose, may be as much as 2.5 kilometers, Pernicka said in an interview in his office in Mannheim, Germany. Troy may have been as big as 40 hectares, with a population as high as 10,000, he estimates.

``Troy was not the center of the world, but it was a regional hub,'' Pernicka said. ``This year, we established that the trench continues around the town. We've found a southern gate, a southeastern gate, traces of a southwestern gate and I expect to find an eastern gate. So we have evidence of town planning.''

The discovery of the trench around the lower town vindicates Pernicka's predecessor, Manfred Korfmann, who faced accusations from a fellow German scholar that he was misleading the public in his interpretation of the ditch, which might have been for drainage. After Korfmann died in 2005, Pernicka took over his work and aims to publish the results of 20 years of digging and research.

``I think we have proven that the trench was not for drainage,'' Pernicka said.

Layers of Building

Excavating Troy is a challenge because the city was destroyed and rebuilt 10 times. Archaeologists have to sift through layers of Byzantine, Roman and Greek building to get to Troy VI and VIIa, the era in which the action in Homer's Trojan war epic is most likely to have been set, between 1500 and 1180 B.C.

Parts of two ceramic ``pithoi,'' or pitchers, were found in the trench near the edge of the town. The pots, which could be as much as 2 meters tall, were kept in or near homes, suggesting that houses in the lower town stretched to the trench, another indication that Troy's lower town was fully inhabited and the city was bigger than revealed in previous expeditions, Pernicka said.

``You can call them Bronze-Age refrigerators,'' he said. ``They were used for storing water, oil or maybe grain.''

Troy's wealth -- first discovered by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who excavated a hoard of gold from the site in the 19th century -- probably came from agriculture and horse breeding, Pernicka said. Hittite texts call the city Wilusa and describe it as a vassal state to the Hittite empire.

Trojan War?

Pernicka sees no reason to question that the site in the western Anatolia region of Turkey is the setting for the ``Iliad,'' as a small minority of scholars still do. Homer described the topography, identifying rivers and islands that are visible today. Yet though there is evidence of conflicts, no archaeologist can prove that the Trojan War took place, he said.

``The Iliad speaks of a 10-year war,'' Pernicka said. ``That could be a metaphor. It could be that events that took place over decades were squeezed together. In Troy VIIa, in the 13th century B.C., there must have been an increased threat because at least three gates in the citadel were closed. The surrounding region was also much less populated than in the previous era.''

What archaeology has shown is that Troy's golden era ended in 1180. Where preceding Trojans had used potters' wheels for about 1,000 years, ceramics found on the site show the technology was lost with the arrival of a new people, probably from the Balkans, who reverted to hand-made pots. The newcomers also built their houses in a completely different style.

Regional Decline

``Many other towns in the eastern Mediterranean declined at this time,'' Pernicka said. ``It could have been a kind of world war at the end of the Bronze Age.''

Funding for Pernicka's excavations runs out next year. One of the main projects for the future is a museum in Troy that will double as a research center. The Turkish government has promised funds for an architecture competition, and Pernicka hopes to find sponsors to help finance the museum.

Of the 500,000 visitors to Troy each year, about 80 percent are tourists, he said.

``They don't come just to see traces of walls,'' he said. ``In Troy, you have to imagine a lot, and you can only do that if you have read the `Iliad.' We can't expect, say, Chinese or Japanese tourists to have done that. It is important because it is the roots of Western culture, and that is something you can show much better in a museum.''

The findings of the latest Troy excavations form part of an exhibition at Mannheim's Reiss-Engelhorn-Museum, called ``Homer: The Myth of Troy in Poetry and Art,'' which runs through Jan. 18, 2009.

To contact the writer on the story: Catherine Hickley in Berlin at

The World's First Temple

Sandra Scham

Turkey's 12,000-year-old stone circles were the spiritual center of a nomadic people

It is likely the megaliths at the Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey once supported roofs. Archaeologists have found floors constructed of burnt lime and clay within the stone circles--the earliest such floors ever discovered. (Haldun Aydingün)

Hunter-gatherers used stone tools to create images of male creatures on T-shaped pillars. Most of the carvings show dangerous animals, such as this lion. (Klaus Schmidt)

At first glance, the fox on the surface of the limestone pillar appears to be a trick of the bright sunlight. But as I move closer to the large, T-shaped megalith, I find it is carved with an improbable menagerie. A bull and a crane join the fox in an animal parade etched across the surface of the pillar, one of dozens erected by early Neolithic people at Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey. The press here is fond of calling the site "the Turkish Stonehenge," but the comparison hardly does justice to this 25-acre arrangement of at least seven stone circles. The first structures at Göbekli Tepe were built as early as 10,000 B.C., predating their famous British counterpart by about 7,000 years.

The oldest man-made place of worship yet discovered, Göbekli Tepe is "one of the most important monuments in the world," says Hassan Karabulut, associate curator of the nearby Urfa Museum. He and archaeologist Zerrin Ekdogan of the Turkish Ministry of Culture guide me around the site. Their enthusiasm for the ancient temple is palpable.

By the time of my visit in late summer, the excavation team lead by Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute has wrapped up work for the season. But there is still plenty to see, including three excavated circles now protected by a large metal shelter. The megaliths, which may have once supported roofs, are about nine feet tall.

Göbekli Tepe's circles range from 30 to 100 feet in diameter and are surrounded by rectangular stone walls about six feet high. Many of the pillars are carved with elaborate animal figure reliefs. In addition to bulls, foxes, and cranes, representations of lions, ducks, scorpions, ants, spiders, and snakes appear on the pillars. Freestanding sculptures depicting the animals have also been found within the circles. During the most recent excavation season, archaeologists uncovered a statue of a human and sculptures of a vulture's head and a boar.

As we walk around the recently excavated pillars, the site seems at once familiar and exotic. I have seen stone circles before, but none like these.

Left to right: T-shaped pillars at Göbekli Tepe depict two boars accompanied by ostrich-like birds, a crocodile-like creature, and vultures flying above a scorpion. (Haldun Aydingün)

Excavations have revealed that Göbekli Tepe was constructed in two stages. The oldest structures belong to what archaeologists call the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period, which ended around 9000 B.C. Strangely enough, the later remains, which date to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period, or about 8000 B.C., are less elaborate. The earliest levels contain most of the T-shaped pillars and animal sculptures.

Archaeologist Klaus Schmidt downplays extravagant spiritual interpretations of Göbekli Tepe, such as the idea, made popular in the press, that the site is the inspiration for the Biblical Garden of Eden. But he does agree that it was a sanctuary of profound significance in the Neolithic world. He sees it as a key site in understanding the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture, and from tribal to regional religion.

Schmidt and his colleagues estimate that at least 500 people were required to hew the 10- to 50-ton stone pillars from local quarries, move them from as far as a quarter-mile away, and erect them. How did Stone Age people achieve the level of organization necessary to do this? Hauptmann speculates that an elite class of religious leaders supervised the work and later controlled the rituals that took place at the site. If so, this would be the oldest known evidence for a priestly caste--much earlier than when social distinctions became evident at other Near Eastern sites.

Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute believes Göbekli Tepe attracted small nomadic groups from numerous regions throughout southeastern Anatolia. (Haldun Aydingün)

Before the discovery of Göbekli Tepe, archaeologists believed that societies in the early Neolithic were organized into small bands of hunter-gatherers and that the first complex religious practices were developed by groups that had already mastered agriculture. Scholars thought that the earliest monumental architecture was possible only after agriculture provided Neolithic people with food surpluses, freeing them from a constant focus on day-to-day survival. A site of unbelievable artistry and intricate detail, Göbekli Tepe has turned this theory on its head.

Schmidt believes the people who created these massive and enigmatic structures came from great distances. It seems certain that once pilgrims reached Göbekli Tepe, they made animal sacrifices. Schmidt and his team have found the bones of wild animals, including gazelles, red deer, boars, goats, sheep, and oxen, plus a dozen different bird species, such as vultures and ducks, scattered around the site. Most of these animals are depicted in the sculptures and reliefs at the site.

There is still much that we don't understand about religious practices at Göbekli Tepe, Schmidt cautions. But broadly speaking, the animal images "probably illustrate stories of hunter-gatherer religion and beliefs," he says, "though we don't know at the moment." The sculptors of Göbekli Tepe may have simply wanted to depict the animals they saw, or perhaps create symbolic representations of the animals to use in rituals to ensure hunting success.

Schmidt has another theory about how Göbekli Tepe became a sacred place. Though he has yet to find them, he believes that the first stone circles on the hill of the navel marked graves of important people. Hauptmann's team discovered graves at Nevali Cori, and Schmidt is reasonably confident that burials lie somewhere in the earliest layers of Göbekli Tepe. This leads him to suspect the pillars represent human beings and that the cult practices at this site may initially have focused on some sort of ancestor worship. The T-shaped pillars, he points out, look like human bodies with the upper part of the "T" resembling a head in profile. Once, Schmidt says, they stood on the hillside "like a meeting of stone beings."

Sandra Scham is ARCHAEOLOGY's Washington, D.C., correspondent and a fellow at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

© 2008 by the Archaeological Institute of America
www.archaeology.org/0811/abstracts/turkey.html

Excavation and General Survey in Turkey

JIAA

Japanese Institute of Anatolian Archaeology has conducted excavations at the site of Kaman-Kalehöyük (Kırşehir) and a regional survey in Central Anatolia since 1985. Additionally, the institute began preliminary research at the site of Yassıhöyük (Kırşehir) in 2007, and at Büklükale (Kırıkkale) in 2008.

The results of the work are reported every year in Anatolian Archaeological Studies and at an annual conference held at MECCJ in Tokyo. The results of the work carried out in 2008 will be reported at the conference to be held 28-29 March 2009 at MECCJ.

Kaman-Kalehöyük

About the site

Kaman-Kalehöyük (2008)

Kaman-Kalehöyük is in Çağırkan village, Kaman, Kırşehir province, Republic of Turkey. It is situated about 100 km southeast of Ankara, the capital city of Turkey, about 3km east of the city of Kaman, and south of National Route 260. It is a medium-sized, mound site 280 m in diameter and 16 m high.

JIAA conducted preliminary research at the site in 1985, and then the excavation was started with the first spade of earth by Japan's H.I.H. Prince Takahito Mikasa as the President of MECCJ in 1986. Research investigation has been conducted continuously since then.

Four main cultural periods have been identified at the site: Ottoman Empire/Byzantine Period, Iron Age, Middle and Late Bronze Ages, and Early Bronze Age. Artifacts belonging to the Chalcolithic Period and Neolithic Period have been found, so these cultures may also have existed at the site, though no settlements from these periods have been excavated yet.

The four archaeological levels are named as follows:

• Stratum I: Ottoman Empire Period (15th ~ 17th c. A.D.)
• Stratum II: Iron Age (12th ~ 4th c. B.C.)
• Stratum III: Middle and Late Bronze Ages (20th ~ 12th c. B.C.)
• Stratum IV: Last half of the Early Bronze Age (3rd millennium B.C.)

One of the objectives of Kaman-Kalehöyük excavation research is to construct a cultural chronology of the site. The research has led to some new ideas about the ancient history of Anatolia. For example, the period after the collapse of the Hittite Empire, from the 12th to 8th centuries B.C., in the Iron Age, has been called the "Dark Age" as it was considered to be without any significant culture. However, excavation of Kaman-Kalehöyük Stratum IId, belonging to the early part of that "Dark Age " period, has revealed a series of occupied levels and material culture. In the levels belonging to the 2nd millennium B.C., a succession of cultural levels can be clearly seen, from the Assyrian Colony Period, Old Hittite Kindom, and Hittite Empire Period. Artifacts that raise new opinions about when the Iron Age began are excavated one after the other.

The 23rd Kaman-Kalehöyük Excavation (2008)

In the end of May 2008, we removed the protective roof that covers the site during every winter season, and from June to early October we cleaned the site, performed new excavations, and catalogued, studied, and conserved artifacts. The site was photographed from the air using a balloon. Excavation research at Kaman-Kalehöyük is aimed at constructing a full stratigraphic sequence of the site in the North sections and understanding the extent of the Iron Age settlement in the South sections.

North sections at the end of the 2008 excavation season.
Front right is section XXXV, front left is section XXXVI.

In 1994 and 1995, in sections 0, I, XII, XXI~XXIV and XXVII~XXX in the middle of the site, severely burned architectural remains consisting of many rooms and belonging to the Assyrian Colony Period were excavated. In this large structure, over fifty human skeletons* were unearthed, and from a nearby structure, two inscribed clay tablets belonging to the Assyrian Colony Period were found. Based on these finds, these architectural remains were thought thought to house an ancient archive. In 2008, in order to understand the total extent and context of these architectural remains, two new sections were opened to the west of the sections mentioned above, North sections XXXV and XXXVI. It is hoped that further study of this large structure will help to reveal activities of Assyrian merchants in Central Anatolia. Excavation in the new sections uncovered architectural remains belonging to Stratum I, the Ottoman Empire Period. It will take a few more years to reach the layer belonging to the Assyrian Colony Period. As excavation proceeds, each cultural layer will be studied and compared to layers already excavated in the North and South sections.

*All human remains excavated at Kaman-Kalehöyük are being studied and will be preserved in a respectful manner for our future research.

South sections at the end of the 2008 excavation season

In the South sections, the Iron Age settlement was the focus of research. The Iron Age at Kaman-Kalehöyük is divided into four levels: Stratum IIa, IIb, IIc and IId (from youngest to oldest). This season, the settlement dating to approximately the 8th century B.C. (Stratum IIc) was investigated. Stratum IId, just below IIc, has been called the “Dark Age” in Anatolian archaeology and is considered to be a historically and culturally trivial period. However, excavation research at Kaman-Kalehöyük has revealed that this period was never trivial but enjoyed a advanced culture. This season, research aimed at understanding how the culture of Stratum IId influenced that of Stratum IIc. Painted pottery types excavated from Stratum IIc are thought to show influences from Stratum IId. Study of these pottery types will provide clues to understanding the relationship between these two cultural levels.

Acknowledgements

Excavation at Kaman-Kalehöyük has been supported by many funds and grants-in-aid. We sincerely appreciate the generous support we have received. In 2008, the institute received grants from the following:

• Japan Keirin Association
• Sumitomo Foundation
• Seki Memorial Foundation for the Promotion of Science and Technology
• Yomiuri Shinbun Osaka Headquarters

Yassıhöyük

About the Site

Yassıhöyük (2008)

Yassıhöyük is a mound site at Çaiaız village, Kırşehir province, Republic of Turkey. It is located about 170 km from Ankara, Turkey's capital city, about 30 km from Kaman-Kalehöyük, and north of National Route 260. Japanese Institute of Anatolian Archaeology conducted research at this site and in the surrounding area during its general surveys in 1986, 1988, 2000, and 2002. Based on the potential of the site, JIAA conducted a magnetic survey, a topographic survey, a photographic survey, and a surface collection survey in 2007 and 2008.

Yassıhöyük measures 500 m north-south, 625 m east-west, and 13 m high. The condition of the site is good except that part of the east and south slopes have been lost to road construction.

The top of the mound is surrounded by high, buried features thought to be the remains of a city wall, and inside the apparent wall, three other high areas are visible. The magnetic survey indicated that in the highest part, there is an immense structure – 45~50 m in length and 40 m in width – thought to be a royal palace or a temple. Small structures thought to be affiliated with the large one and parts of another major structure were also recognized.

During surface collection, pottery shards belonging to the Iron Age (parallel to Stratum II at Kaman-Kalehöyük) and to the 2nd millennium B.C. or the middle of the Bronze Age (parallel to Stratum IIIb and IIIc) were found. The date of the immense structure indicated in the magnetic survey cannot be confirmed, but two possibilities can be proposed: the first half of the 2nd millennium B.C. or the first half of the 1st millennium B.C. The early date is proposed because the buried structure is similar to a structure excavated at Açemhöyük, an important site of the first half of the 2nd millennium B.C.; also, Yassıhöyük is comparable in size to Açemhöyük, as well as to Kültepe, another important site from that period. A possible 1st millennium B.C. date is strengthened by the find of a lead document written in late Hittite hieroglyphic text, which local people brought to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara.

Research at Yassıhöyük in 2008 was conducted with a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Basic Research B) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

Do these mysterious stones mark the site of the Garden of Eden?

MailOnline/ Tom Knox

For the old Kurdish shepherd, it was just another burning hot day in the rolling plains of eastern Turkey. Following his flock over the arid hillsides, he passed the single mulberry tree, which the locals regarded as 'sacred'. The bells on his sheep tinkled in the stillness. Then he spotted something. Crouching down, he brushed away the dust, and exposed a strange, large, oblong stone.

The man looked left and right: there were similar stone rectangles, peeping from the sands. Calling his dog to heel, the shepherd resolved to inform someone of his finds when he got back to the village. Maybe the stones were important.

They certainly were important. The solitary Kurdish man, on that summer's day in 1994, had made the greatest archaeological discovery in 50 years. Others would say he'd made the greatest archaeological discovery ever: a site that has revolutionised the way we look at human history, the origin of religion - and perhaps even the truth behind the Garden of Eden.

A few weeks after his discovery, news of the shepherd's find reached museum curators in the ancient city of Sanliurfa, ten miles south-west of the stones.

They got in touch with the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul. And so, in late 1994, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt came to the site of Gobekli Tepe (pronounced Go-beckly Tepp-ay) to begin his excavations.

As he puts it: 'As soon as I got there and saw the stones, I knew that if I didn't walk away immediately I would be here for the rest of my life.'

Remarkable find: A frieze from Gobekli Tepe

Schmidt stayed. And what he has uncovered is astonishing. Archaeologists worldwide are in rare agreement on the site's importance. 'Gobekli Tepe changes everything,' says Ian Hodder, at Stanford University.

David Lewis-Williams, professor of archaeology at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, says: 'Gobekli Tepe is the most important archaeological site in the world.'

Some go even further and say the site and its implications are incredible. As Reading University professor Steve Mithen says: 'Gobekli Tepe is too extraordinary for my mind to understand.'

So what is it that has energised and astounded the sober world of academia?

The site of Gobekli Tepe is simple enough to describe. The oblong stones, unearthed by the shepherd, turned out to be the flat tops of awesome, T-shaped megaliths. Imagine carved and slender versions of the stones of Avebury or Stonehenge.

Most of these standing stones are inscribed with bizarre and delicate images - mainly of boars and ducks, of hunting and game. Sinuous serpents are another common motif. Some of the megaliths show crayfish or lions.

The stones seem to represent human forms - some have stylised 'arms', which angle down the sides. Functionally, the site appears to be a temple, or ritual site, like the stone circles of Western Europe.

To date, 45 of these stones have been dug out - they are arranged in circles from five to ten yards across - but there are indications that much more is to come. Geomagnetic surveys imply that there are hundreds more standing stones, just waiting to be excavated.

So far, so remarkable. If Gobekli Tepe was simply this, it would already be a dazzling site - a Turkish Stonehenge. But several unique factors lift Gobekli Tepe into the archaeological stratosphere - and the realms of the fantastical.

The Garden of Eden come to life: Is Gobekli Tepe where the story began?

The first is its staggering age. Carbon-dating shows that the complex is at least 12,000 years old, maybe even 13,000 years old.

That means it was built around 10,000BC. By comparison, Stonehenge was built in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2,500 BC.

Gobekli is thus the oldest such site in the world, by a mind-numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant, right back in our hunter-gatherer past.

How did cavemen build something so ambitious? Schmidt speculates that bands of hunters would have gathered sporadically at the site, through the decades of construction, living in animal-skin tents, slaughtering local game for food.

The many flint arrowheads found around Gobekli support this thesis; they also support the dating of the site.

This revelation, that Stone Age hunter-gatherers could have built something like Gobekli, is worldchanging, for it shows that the old hunter-gatherer life, in this region of Turkey, was far more advanced than we ever conceived - almost unbelievably sophisticated.

The shepherd who discovered Gobekli Tepe has 'changed everything', said one academic

It's as if the gods came down from heaven and built Gobekli for themselves.

This is where we come to the biblical connection, and my own involvement in the Gobekli Tepe story.

About three years ago, intrigued by the first scant details of the site, I flew out to Gobekli. It was a long, wearying journey, but more than worth it, not least as it would later provide the backdrop for a new novel I have written.

Back then, on the day I arrived at the dig, the archaeologists were unearthing mind-blowing artworks. As these sculptures were revealed, I realised that I was among the first people to see them since the end of the Ice Age.

And that's when a tantalising possibility arose. Over glasses of black tea, served in tents right next to the megaliths, Klaus Schmidt told me that, as he put it: 'Gobekli Tepe is not the Garden of Eden: it is a temple in Eden.'

To understand how a respected academic like Schmidt can make such a dizzying claim, you need to know that many scholars view the Eden story as folk-memory, or allegory.

Seen in this way, the Eden story, in Genesis, tells us of humanity's innocent and leisured hunter-gatherer past, when we could pluck fruit from the trees, scoop fish from the rivers and spend the rest of our days in pleasure.

But then we 'fell' into the harsher life of farming, with its ceaseless toil and daily grind. And we know primitive farming was harsh, compared to the relative indolence of hunting, because of the archaeological evidence.

To date, archaeologists have dug 45 stones out of the ruins at Gobekli

When people make the transition from hunter-gathering to settled agriculture, their skeletons change - they temporarily grow smaller and less healthy as the human body adapts to a diet poorer in protein and a more wearisome lifestyle. Likewise, newly domesticated animals get scrawnier.

This begs the question, why adopt farming at all? Many theories have been suggested - from tribal competition, to population pressures, to the extinction of wild animal species. But Schmidt believes that the temple of Gobekli reveals another possible cause.

'To build such a place as this, the hunters must have joined together in numbers. After they finished building, they probably congregated for worship. But then they found that they couldn't feed so many people with regular hunting and gathering.

'So I think they began cultivating the wild grasses on the hills. Religion motivated people to take up farming.'

The reason such theories have special weight is that the move to farming first happened in this same region. These rolling Anatolian plains were the cradle of agriculture.

The world's first farmyard pigs were domesticated at Cayonu, just 60 miles away. Sheep, cattle and goats were also first domesticated in eastern Turkey. Worldwide wheat species descend from einkorn wheat - first cultivated on the hills near Gobekli. Other domestic cereals - such as rye and oats - also started here.

The stones unearthed by the shepherd turned out to be the flat tops of T-shaped megaliths

But there was a problem for these early farmers, and it wasn't just that they had adopted a tougher, if ultimately more productive, lifestyle. They also experienced an ecological crisis. These days the landscape surrounding the eerie stones of Gobekli is arid and barren, but it was not always thus. As the carvings on the stones show - and as archaeological remains reveal - this was once a richly pastoral region.

There were herds of game, rivers of fish, and flocks of wildfowl; lush green meadows were ringed by woods and wild orchards. About 10,000 years ago, the Kurdish desert was a 'paradisiacal place', as Schmidt puts it. So what destroyed the environment? The answer is Man.

As we began farming, we changed the landscape and the climate. When the trees were chopped down, the soil leached away; all that ploughing and reaping left the land eroded and bare. What was once an agreeable oasis became a land of stress, toil and diminishing returns.

And so, paradise was lost. Adam the hunter was forced out of his glorious Eden, 'to till the earth from whence he was taken' - as the Bible puts it.

Of course, these theories might be dismissed as speculations. Yet there is plenty of historical evidence to show that the writers of the Bible, when talking of Eden, were, indeed, describing this corner of Kurdish Turkey.

Archaeologist Klaus Schmidt poses next to some of the carvings at Gebekli

In the Book of Genesis, it is indicated that Eden is west of Assyria. Sure enough, this is where Gobekli is sited.

Likewise, biblical Eden is by four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates. And Gobekli lies between both of these.

In ancient Assyrian texts, there is mention of a 'Beth Eden' - a house of Eden. This minor kingdom was 50 miles from Gobekli Tepe.

Another book in the Old Testament talks of 'the children of Eden which were in Thelasar', a town in northern Syria, near Gobekli.

The very word 'Eden' comes from the Sumerian for 'plain'; Gobekli lies on the plains of Harran.

Thus, when you put it all together, the evidence is persuasive. Gobekli Tepe is, indeed, a 'temple in Eden', built by our leisured and fortunate ancestors - people who had time to cultivate art, architecture and complex ritual, before the traumas of agriculture ruined their lifestyle, and devastated their paradise.

It's a stunning and seductive idea. Yet it has a sinister epilogue. Because the loss of paradise seems to have had a strange and darkening effect on the human mind.

Many of Gobekli's standing stones are inscribed with 'bizarre and delicate' images, like this reptile

A few years ago, archaeologists at nearby Cayonu unearthed a hoard of human skulls. They were found under an altar-like slab, stained with human blood.

No one is sure, but this may be the earliest evidence for human sacrifice: one of the most inexplicable of human behaviours and one that could have evolved only in the face of terrible societal stress.

Experts may argue over the evidence at Cayonu. But what no one denies is that human sacrifice took place in this region, spreading to Palestine, Canaan and Israel.

Archaeological evidence suggests that victims were killed in huge death pits, children were buried alive in jars, others roasted in vast bronze bowls.

These are almost incomprehensible acts, unless you understand that the people had learned to fear their gods, having been cast out of paradise. So they sought to propitiate the angry heavens.

This savagery may, indeed, hold the key to one final, bewildering mystery. The astonishing stones and friezes of Gobekli Tepe are preserved intact for a bizarre reason.

Long ago, the site was deliberately and systematically buried in a feat of labour every bit as remarkable as the stone carvings.

The stones of Gobekli Tepe are trying to speak to us from across the centuries - a warning we should heed

Around 8,000 BC, the creators of Gobekli turned on their achievement and entombed their glorious temple under thousands of tons of earth, creating the artificial hills on which that Kurdish shepherd walked in 1994.

No one knows why Gobekli was buried. Maybe it was interred as a kind of penance: a sacrifice to the angry gods, who had cast the hunters out of paradise. Perhaps it was for shame at the violence and bloodshed that the stone-worship had helped provoke.

Whatever the answer, the parallels with our own era are stark. As we contemplate a new age of ecological turbulence, maybe the silent, sombre, 12,000-year-old stones of Gobekli Tepe are trying to speak to us, to warn us, as they stare across the first Eden we destroyed.