12,000 Year Old Temple Uncovered in Turkey?

"Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 12,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 7,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple

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Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn't just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago - a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture - the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember - the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.

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Though not as large as Stonehenge - the biggest circle is 30 yards across, the tallest pillars 17 feet high - the ruins are astonishing in number. Last year Schmidt found his third and fourth examples of the temples. Ground-penetrating radar indicates that another 15 to 20 such monumental ruins lie under the surface. Schmidt's German-Turkish team has also uncovered some 50 of the huge pillars, including two found in his most recent dig season that are not just the biggest yet, but, according to carbon dating, are the oldest monumental artworks in the world.

Read the entire article here: http://coyoteprime-runningcauseicantfly.blogspot.com/

Nice find Alaskan Girl! That is simply amazing!

Interesting story, but I'd like to see details of the dating technique & results. C-14 dating could easily be off by a few thousand years.

At one time I wanted to be an archeologist, but I sort of lost interest when I realized how subjective all the "evidence" was.

Joe Bese wrote:Interesting story, but I'd like to see details of the dating technique & results. C-14 dating could easily be off by a few thousand years.

At one time I wanted to be an archeologist, but I sort of lost interest when I realized how subjective all the "evidence" was.

Yes Joe, I studied archaeology too. Even if the dating is off by a few thousand years, it would have to be off by at least 7,000 to even begin to compete with more "modern" structures. That margin of error is what I believe makes this find worth watching.