gobekli tepe - genesis of the gods (61 page)

A RETURN TO THE SOURCE

So even though I was unable to communicate directly with the Alevi I met, their message got through loud and clear. Finding Eden, ultimately, is not about putting pins in maps and saying, “This is it—I have found Paradise.” It is about an inner journey—it is about returning to the source of human experience and understanding exactly who we were before someone, somewhere, conditioned us to feel guilt and shame for the first time—shame about who we are as individuals, how we should act and behave, and what we should do with our lives. This is not a declaration of anarchy or a license to do what you want. It is a call for us to try to regain some small sense of the innocence and purity of heart that prevailed in the past, and I glimpsed just for a moment among the Alevi people who still occupy the Garden of Eden today, for their world seems a happier place than ours.

APPENDIX

USEFUL DATES

The following is a list of useful dates relating to topics discussed in this book. Many of the dates are generalizations and should not be seen as absolute.

FOOTNOTES

*1
. I would like to thank Richard Ward for his suggestion that the birds represent dodos.

*2
. To read more about Franz Gnaedinger’s identification of Chauvet’s Venus and the Sorcerer panel as the Summer Triangle go to
www.seshat.ch/home/homepage.htm
, and follow the links for Chauvet.

*3
. Dates based on an altitude of 2 degrees including refraction and calculated using Stellarium planetarium software.

*4
. Dates based on an extinction altitude of Deneb at 2 degrees including refraction using Stellarium planetarium software.

*5
. On the subject of which enclosure uncovered at Göbekli Tepe is the oldest, lead archaeologist Professor Klaus Schmidt is in no doubt—it is Enclosure C (personal conversation September 16, 2012). His reasoning is that Enclosure D’s outer perimeter wall abuts that of Enclosure C. Yet a counterargument against Enclosure C being older is easily made. If C was constructed after the latter, then it is possible that D’s preexisting boundary wall was reconstructed in order to allow the completion of C’s own perimeter wall.

*6
. Circular porthole stones associated with megalithic monuments exist at the following locations in Western Europe: England (the Tolven Stone in Cornwall and Devils Ring and Finger in Shropshire); Ireland (Cloch-a-Phoill in Ardristan, Co. Carlow); Germany (Züschen in Hesse and Altendorf, Degernau and Schwörstadt in Baden-Württemberg); France (Guiry-en-Vexin in Île-de-France and Trie-Chateau in Picardie/Oise); Spain (Antequera in Andalusia); Belgium (Lüttich and Weris); Switzerland (Courgenay in Jura), and in South Tyrol (Bozen and Riffian in Austria, and Gratsch in Italy).

†7
. Examples of dolmens or chambered tombs in southwest Asia can be found in Syria (Ala Safat, Amman, and Tsil) and Jordan (’Ain Dakkar). Here in the Near East they are ascribed dates ranging from the Chalcolithic age, ca. 5000 BC, down to the Early Bronze Age, ca. 3200 BC.

*8
. Rimutè Rimantienè (b. 1920) was a friend and colleague of Lithuanian-born anthropologist Marija Gimbutas (see chapter 20).

*9
. In the suspected Swiderian level at the Epipaleolithic site of Erbiceni, near the city of Iasi in Romania, evidence of canine domestication has been found.

*10
. Obsidian bifaces were found at Laugerie-Haute in France’s Vézère Valley in the Dordogne.

*11
. Obsidian sources also exist in Iceland and, possibly, in the Balkans.

†12
. A further source of Carpathian obsidian exists in Ukraine, within the Vihorlat-Gutin Mountains, much farther to the east.

*13
. This name for obsidian is cited on various Internet sites with the following words: “Ancient people called Obsidian ‘Satan’s claws’ fragments.” This sounds so similar to “Satan’s nail” that it has to be the same.

*14
. For instance, my Kurdish contact, Hakan Dalkus, says: “Unlike Genie, the Peri are not our religious beliefs. We, Kurds, believe the Peri were human beings who really lived. I also think they were a beautiful race” (February 10, 2012). He adds: “When I was a kid, my grandmother and some other women from old generation told us many stories of Cin (Genie) and Peri. Those women hardly left the village in all their lives, they could not speak Turkish. They had no influence of the outer world. So their stories wholly reflected old beliefs. I vaguely remember those stories now but I certainly remember that the Peri were human beings. Some kind of super human beings. Human beings could marry the Peri and have kids from them. . . . My knowledge of our old stories is only confined to the region around my village. My village has a proved history of at least 13 thousand years old. On Bingöl road. I read that the region around my village was a center of obsidian trade” (February 28, 2012).

*15
. Intriguingly, the Sámi once played a board game called tablo, whereby one person plays as the wolf or fox and the other as the hunter. Players moved around their pieces, with the hunter attempting “to corner the predator before he or she ‘eats’ all the hunter’s pieces.” See “Sami,” Countries and Their Cultures,
www.everyculture.com/wc/Norway-to-Russia/Sami.html#b#ixzz2J0bfenar
.

*16
. James Torre’s original Latin inscription is as follows: “
Lector si Pietatis amator, si Doctrinae estimator, scias quantus sub hoc lapide thesaurus situs est, Marmaducus Carver, Ecclesiae Hartilluncis Rector, C(h)ronologiae et Geographiae scientissimus, Linguarum peritus, concionando prepotens; hic scilicet, qui cum scriptis ad invidiam usque, verum terrestris paradisi locum orbi monstrasset, ad coelestem quem predicando Auditoribus commendaverat, cujus adeunti ingenti desiderio tenebatur moriendo translatus est, die Aug. 1665.
”