Martin Sweatman - Prehistory Decoded
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As this book was heading to the printers, news broke on the 14th November 2018 of the discovery of a massive crater on the north west coast of Greenland. At over 30 kilometres in diameter and apparently between 12 thousand and 3 million years old, it might be the Younger Dryas crater. Certainly, this is the view of some members of the discovery team and the Comet Research Group. We will have to wait and see. Whatever the case, this discovery shows how difficult it is to find even relatively young impact craters as this one is easily visible on Google Earth once you know where to look.
Copyright 2019 Martin Sweatman
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Front cover image courtesy of Alistair Coombs.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
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ISBN 978 1838599 669
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
To Alison
This work could not have been completed without the selfless contributions of several others. First, I must express my sincere gratitude to my wife and children for their patience with my most recent obsession. My wife, Alison, was also instrumental in the decoding of Gbekli Tepe, as described in Chapter 2. I must also thank Dimitrios Tsikritsis for his help and guidance in the field of archaeoastronomy. Likewise, David Asher deserves a medal for his patient tutoring in the celestial mechanics of comet Encke. I also thank Bill Napier for his invaluable support, and James Myers for bringing the ancient trident symbol to my attention. Finally, Alistair Coombs deserves a special mention for his crucial supply of images of Gbekli Tepe and Lascaux. He was also instrumental in identifying the connection between Gbekli Tepe and atalhyk, and, along with Baroness Shirley Williams, in encouraging me to write this book.
Thereupon, one of the priests, who was of very great age, said, O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are but children, and there is never an old man who is an Hellene.
Solon, hearing this, said, What do you mean?
I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. And I will tell you the reason of this: there have been, and there will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes.
There is a story which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Phaethon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his fathers chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt. Now, this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving around the earth and in the heavens, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth recurring at long intervals of time: when this happens, those who live upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places are more liable to destruction than those who dwell by rivers or on the seashore; and from this calamity the Nile, who is our never-failing saviour, saves and delivers us.
When, on the other hand, the gods purge the earth with a deluge of water, among you herdsmen and shepherds on the mountains are the survivors, whereas those of you who live in cities are carried by the rivers into the sea; but in this country neither at that time nor at any other does the water come from above on the fields, having always a tendency to come up from below, for which reason the things preserved here are said to be the oldest.
The fact is, that wherever the extremity of winter frost or of summer sun does not prevent, the human race is always increasing at times, and at other times diminishing in numbers. And whatever happened either in your country or in ours, or in any other region of which we are informed if any action which is noble or great, or in any other way remarkable has taken place, all that has been written down of old, and is preserved in our temples; whereas you and other nations are just being provided with letters and the other things which States require; and then, at the usual period, the stream from heaven descends like a pestilence, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and thus you have to begin all over again as children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves.
Excerpt from Timaeus by Plato, c.428c.347 BC.
Not far from the border with troubled Syria, hidden under a huge mound of earth, animal remains and debris on top of a round hill, lay an ancient megalithic monument patiently awaiting discovery for 10,000 years. Its burial appears to have been a deliberate act of preservation, achieved in an era of prehistory so early we can hardly imagine. Whoever was responsible, they made a good job of it. Despite being the size of a grand palace, almost nothing could be seen of the enormous monument at all. Thousands of tonnes of earth and debris had been hauled over it, piled high enough to cover it completely. It was a Herculean effort, likely involving hundreds of highly motivated people. They buried it with their bare hands.
You could have walked right over it, distracted by the fantastic view to the south over the Hurran Plain towards Syria, oblivious to the treasure that lay beneath your feet; oblivious to what is undoubtedly the most stunning and important ancient monument ever discovered. It lay unremarked until its location was recorded in an archaeological survey of southern Anatolia, modern-day Turkey, by Istanbul and Chicago Universities. However, all that could be seen of Gbekli Tepe then, in the 1960s, was the very top of some apparently plain limestone blocks just poking above the ground and some high-quality flint tools and artefacts. Thinking it was a much more recent Iron Age cemetery, and therefore of little interest, it was left alone.
Decades later, Professor Klaus Schmidt of the Deutsch Archaeological Institute, an expert on the prehistory of southern Anatolia, came across their report and, intrigued by their findings, decided to take a look for himself. He knew the region was rich in very ancient archaeology. Only a few years earlier he had assisted with excavations at the nearby site of Nevali ori, itself over 10,000 years old. Perhaps, if he was lucky, this new site might turn out to be even older.
Archaeological interest in this area of southern Turkey had been growing steadily for many decades already. It seemed that wherever they looked, archaeologists uncovered yet another Stone Age settlement that challenged their views about how civilisation began. The sites they discovered were getting older and older, and yet they remained highly sophisticated, pushing back the origin of civilisation to ever earlier times.
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