Gobek Tepe and Nevali Cori

[friendly]

Gobek Tepe is part of a 12,000 year old temple complex in Turkey that was purposely buried thousands of years ago for reasons unknown and recently uncovered. The complexity of the temple is astonishing, especially since it was built several thousand years before civilization was supposed to have begun. There is evidence that the people who built it were the first to cultivate grains and domesticate animals, pushing the dates for these two advances back several thousand years. There are several other temples of similar age as yet unexplored in the area.

Some of it's estimated 200 carved pillars have, for instance, "...a naked woman with her hair in the shape of a hemispherical mushroom cap." and "...The side of one pillar features a series of serpents with mushroom shaped heads, four winding their way downwards and a fifth one climbing up to meet them, while the other side shows several interwoven serpents wearing mushroom-like caps, eight emerging at the bottom and one at the top." I was unable to find photos of these in the article, but there were other photos that were very informative.

A sister temple Nevali Cori is now under water, but you can see photos, including one of a sculpted head seen from the back wearing a serpent-like ponytail with a mushroom cap shaped object at what would seemingly be the top of the ponytail. This can be found by googling 'Nevali Cori' and clicking on the link "Images from Nevali Cori" The photo I mentioned is the third one in from the top left.

The article I quoted can be found at www.philipcoppens.com/gobekli.html.

Edited March 15, 2011 by friendly

[Teotzlcoatl]

Very interesting stuff! I'd like to see more links and sources if you got any!

[friendly]

If you google the two names mentioned above, plus Cayonu, you will find much more information than I presented.