“Potbelly Hill” gives birth to new theories of civilization

By Judy Wearing

Tall, flat stones arranged in circles stand straight, their limestone edges sharply sculpted. Some are six metres in height, and decorated with a menagerie of carvings: lions, gazelles, foxes, donkeys, bulls, reptiles, insects, and birds. The pillars are enclosed inside circular walls. There are four such enclosures, back to back, each surrounding up to eight pillars each. Sixteen more enclosures remain out of sight, under the earth. These 'rooms,' with their rings of standing stones, were buried at Gobekli Tepe (potbelly hill), a man-made mound 15 metres high, located in Southern Turkey. These awesome monuments were made without metal. They were sculpted with stone tools, and transported hundreds of feet from a quarry without beasts of burden or wheels. At the time they were built, writing had not yet been invented. Neither had pottery. Their discovery has changed the way archaeologists think about human civilization.

Gobekli Tepe rivals Stonehenge in its complexity, but predates it by some six thousand years, hailing to 9600 - 8800 BC. It is older than the pyramids and the ancient cities of Ur and Catalhӧyuk. It is the oldest known building project on Earth. But it is not its age per se, its engineering, or even its artistry that make Gobekli Tepe so special. It is that the people who created and used it were nomadic hunter-gatherers living before the invention of agriculture. There is no local source of water, no traces of housing, cemeteries, domesticated animals or plants. The people who built this 'temple' did not live here, nor anywhere else permanently.

The existence of Gobekli Tepe turns the common understanding of the development of human civilization on its head. The old way of thinking has humans in Mesopotamia discovering that wild grains can be saved and planted, and wild animals captured and contained. This ‘Neolithic revolution’ encouraged people to settle in one place, growing and keeping food instead of hunting and gathering it. Then, as a consequence of the new stability, came increased food supply, growth of community, cooperation, division of labour, extra time to devote to art and architecture, religion, organized cemeteries, public buildings, etc. Gobekli Tepe, however, was built by a number of people over a significant amount of time, organized, cooperating, and practicing a common  religion -- all without the existence of stable, permanent settlements.

Besides demonstrating that long-held beliefs can be wrong, and that early human societies were more complex than previously thought, Gobekli Tepe is a spectacular site in its own right. What people were doing here is still a mystery, and the lack of writing means there is no voice from the past to tell us what these structures meant to their culture. There are some intriguing clues, however. For one, some of the T-shaped stones have belts and arms carved on them, suggesting they are stylized representations of people. For another, what look like benches are built into the walls – for visitors to rest awhile, dead or alive, in the company of the stone statues.

Some believe that Gobekli Tepe’s stone circles were sanctuaries to link the world of the living with the world of the dead. Today, they still function as a link to the world of the dead, the only connection we have to the culture that lived and died in that part of Turkey more than 11,000 years ago. The stones still tell stories of their builders, whispering secrets of our distant relatives.

Math, Religion, and Chimpanzees

Photo credit: Aaron Logan

The farmhouse was old. The sixteen foot dining table we were seated at was too. This was a typical gathering with my in-laws, deeply committed Christians. It was during one such dinner that a someone said, "chimps share over 99% of our DNA because they were created by God to test our faith."

By this time, I`d just spent several years of graduate school in the same department as the famed atheist Richard Dawkins. When I passed by his office, I used to stop to read the latest hate mail taped to his door, presumably sent by Christians who believed damning Dawkins to Hell was the best way to help him avoid it. So, while it was a shock at first, I was getting used to the fact that a few of Earth`s modern citizens believe humans walked alongside dinosaurs.

In that Canadian dining room, face-to-face with similarly twisted logic, I realized the root of the "evolution vs. religion debate" is fear. The idea that humans came into being just like all the other beasts lovingly housed on the Ark threatens some Christians` identity in a way that is so terrifying they`ll do mental gymnastics to avoid it, and a few feel pushed to more aggressive defense tactics.

I was glad of this insight when, as a student at teacher`s college, I was charged with teaching evolution to a class of grade 12s in a public high school in a large Ontario city. The experienced science teacher whose class I was borrowing, whose job it was to mentor me, confessed that he'd had a difficult time with the subject, though he'd not succumbed to the temptation of reducing the unit to a brief overview delivered in as little time as possible, as had some of his colleagues. In the photocopying room on the first day, a fellow student teacher exclaimed above the whizzing, flashing 21st century technology, "you`re allowed to teach that?"

This was going to be harder than I thought.

First, I asked the students to indicate if they believed in evolution - anonymously. About half of them indicated so. Then, I taught my heart out, while trying to calm potential fears: I mentioned the polls of scientists, half of whom report belief in a Higher Power; the same stats as the rest of the population. I suggested belief in God is not reliant on science for proof or disproof; indeed it cannot be. I told them about Christians who study evolution, and I compared the issue of evolution in our society to the long since (largely) resolved issue of the Earth being round, not flat.

Three weeks later, I repeated my survey. A little more than half were convinced. From this I concluded:

1. The fear of evolution runs deep;
2. High school is much too late to teach evolution – students have already made up their minds based on only God-knows-what; and,
3. I had failed.

Recently, I’ve decided I might have been complicating the issue. Now, on the rare occasion that anyone asks, "what is evolution?" I say, "evolution is simply math." We have genes. Genes vary, so we`re all different. Any combination of genes that is more likely to survive and reproduce is… (Drum Roll)…more likely to survive and reproduce. I figure it is pretty hard to argue with that, though I`m sure someone will.

Alas, if only our ideas evolved as efficiently as our genes do.