Is there a black hole at Göbeklitepe?

ERTUĞRUL ÖZKÖK - SAFFET EMRE TONGUÇ

When the tip of the statute was seen above ground, the sun was about to set. They were about to call it a day, but the statue excited the archeologists and they continued on and so did Dr. Schmidt.

Half of the statue was excavated when the tired archeologist stopped his work. The next day someone knocked on his door, his assistant was telling him that there was a problem. When they arrived at the excavation site, the statue was gone. It was a nightmare for foreign archeologists in Turkey. This was the biggest disaster that could happen to a foreign archeologist in Turkey, a country which is still traumatized by the moving of the entire Bergama. Dr. Schmidt was a suspect. Almost everybody knew that the German archeologist had nothing to do with this; he was only after the story these statues were telling.

That statue was never found. The theft, it was later understood, was a result of two groups clashing with one another. 

Dr. Schmidt was searching for the meaning and the place of the naked woman among all these mortal male animals. He was sure of one thing: All these cosmic circles and stone human figures were clearly depicting this message to us: This was a place to conduct religious ceremonies. But, since no human being lived there, who was conducting the ceremonies? Then he thought, maybe this place was a pilgrimage site. He thought of other pilgrimage sites: Mecca, Vatican, Jerusalem, Bodh Gaya where Buddha was enlightened. Cahokia, the holy place of the North American natives…

Could this be the first pilgrimage site of history? His deputy said, “But Dr. Schmidt, there was no religion at these times…”

The site they were excavating dated back to 8,200 B.C., a time when people had not settled as it was a hunting and gathering period. Once people settled, then religions and beliefs started.

The finding of Göbeklitepe revealed that religions and beliefs started before human kind entered the settlement phase.

These excavations showed us that the history of humanity and beliefs may not be as they had taught us.

Maybe the black hole of belief started under that tree.

When Dr. Schmidt saw the craftsmanship on the circles and stones, he turned to his colleagues and said, “Creating these stones and circles with the means of that day is like building a Boeing in your basement today.”

Yes, some kind of a power we do not know today has set up a belief cosmos there in the year 8,200 B.C.

We do not know who that competent artist is. Was it human beings or was it a divine power?

But we know one thing: Prophet Abraham, who we know as the founder of monotheistic religions, started his divine walk in these lands taking humanity into a new system of relationships.

That tree must have had a symbolic meaning.

Dr. Schmidt said Göbeklitepe was a temple in the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve lived.

Maybe the fruit that the naked woman on those T stones ate was not the apple but the mulberry?
The black hole of belief is full of unknowns.

Just as how the meteors that fall into black holes go down with a speed faster than the speed of light and can never come back; maybe the thought of “the other world” is also such a black hole?

Nobody has ever come back from there.

It is up to us, the people to interpret the blanks left by the black hole...

The story of that tree ends here.

Archeologists continue digging the black hole of belief. In Switzerland’s CERN laboratories, people are searching for the god particle. They believe the universe was created after a Big Bang. Black holes were formed after this big bang.

After the excavations in Göbeklitepe, I am asking to myself: Did religions form after such a big bang?
Is the black hole of belief under that tree?