Speaker 1: Welcome to brainsty a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: Laurena bolobaum here. It's perhaps obvious to say that eleven
Speaker 1: thousand years ago the world looked very different. Lush forests
Speaker 1: existed where there are now deserts, coral reefs where there
Speaker 1: are now grasslands, and humans hadn't yet the gun building
Speaker 1: very many things. Of course, we can't ever really know
Speaker 1: exactly what our ancestors were up to so long ago,
Speaker 1: because no one had invented writing yet, but places like
Speaker 1: the archaeological site Go Beckley Tepe can give us a
Speaker 1: few clues. Go Beckley Tepe is a monumental site situated
Speaker 1: in the mountains of southeastern Turkey. It's along the lines
Speaker 1: of Stonehenge, but about six thousand years older. The name
Speaker 1: roughly means pop belly hill in Turkish, which is a
Speaker 1: pretty good descriptor for the site. It was discovered by
Speaker 1: a team of American and Turkish archaeologists in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: but their discovery of limestone slabs and flint artifacts wasn't
Speaker 1: recognized from what it was until nineteen ninety four, when
Speaker 1: a German archaeologist by the name of Klaus Schmidt realized
Speaker 1: its significance. It's a mysterious site to this day, partly
Speaker 1: because we can make so few assumptions about the people
Speaker 1: who built it. For the article this episode is based
Speaker 1: on How Stuff Works. Spoke via email with Jens Natrov
Speaker 1: back in twenty twenty. He's an archaeologist who at the
Speaker 1: time had been working on the go Beckley Tepe project
Speaker 1: for some fourteen years. He said, monuments, generally speaking, are
Speaker 1: a particular example of architecture standing out due to their
Speaker 1: size and or the effort necessary to create them. Go
Speaker 1: Beckley Tepe is a noteworthy example in this context, since
Speaker 1: the monuments there marked the first yet known example of
Speaker 1: monumental architecture, and that they were constructed in a cultural
Speaker 1: context of still highly mobile hunter gatherers. The site comprises
Speaker 1: over twenty limestone structures or buildings, many of which are
Speaker 1: round in shape and built with sturdy walls. Inside those
Speaker 1: walls stand t shaped limestone pillars, usually laid out in
Speaker 1: a pattern, with two large pillars at the center of
Speaker 1: the structure, surrounded by smaller ones around the edges. Often
Speaker 1: built into the walls and incorporated into stone benches. There
Speaker 1: are some two hundred pillars in total. The tallest are
Speaker 1: sixteen feet high or about five meters, and they weigh
Speaker 1: between seven and ten tons each. The pillars are covered
Speaker 1: with all manner of engravings, most of which depict animals,
Speaker 1: though not always the animals that you'd necessarily expect. In
Speaker 1: addition to game animals like gazelles and boores, the pillars
Speaker 1: depict foxes, snakes, lions, cranes, vultures, spiders, and square orpians.
Speaker 1: The pictographs seemed to be dominated by animals that wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been particularly good to eat. Some of the pillars
Speaker 1: themselves seem to represent larger than life anthropomorphic sculptures, with
Speaker 1: carvings that give them arms, belt with a loincloth, and
Speaker 1: a head with no face. There are other free standing statues,
Speaker 1: for example, a life sized one of a wild boar.
Speaker 1: Some carvings and statues were decorated with pigments. The round
Speaker 1: buildings that they're in range from about twenty feet across
Speaker 1: to over sixty five feet that's six to twenty meters.
Speaker 1: It's unknown whether they would have had roofs attached. These
Speaker 1: structures seem to be what's called special purpose communal buildings,
Speaker 1: structures that were not regularly inhabited, or weren't used for
Speaker 1: what's considered daily household kind of tasks. Instead, they were
Speaker 1: perhaps temples, sanctuaries, or other places for dispersed groups to
Speaker 1: gather at appointed time times. It seems go Beckley Tepe
Speaker 1: was a work in process for a couple thousand years,
Speaker 1: from around nine thousand, five hundred to eight thousand, two
Speaker 1: hundred BCE. During that time, and especially towards the end
Speaker 1: of it, people were building settlements, raising animals like goats
Speaker 1: and sheep, and cultivating crops. But from what archaeologists have
Speaker 1: been able to surmise from the side itself, the people
Speaker 1: who built it were still primarily hunter gatherers. There's no
Speaker 1: direct evidence that they kept livestock or planted their own food,
Speaker 1: and their tools and vessels were made of stone but
Speaker 1: not pottery or metal. When excavations were in their early stages,
Speaker 1: researchers like Schmidt theorized that it was a monument of
Speaker 1: religious or other cultural significance used by peoples who never
Speaker 1: settled it. It was an astounding discovery because the assumption
Speaker 1: had always been that people who were scrapping for resources
Speaker 1: pre agriculture wouldn't have wasted time building monuments. There was
Speaker 1: even a theory that perhaps religion drove settlement, not the
Speaker 1: other way around. But in the thirty years since, and
Speaker 1: even in the past five years since, how stuff works
Speaker 1: spoke with Noutrough. Given more discoveries and research at the site,
Speaker 1: the picture is a little more complicated. Archaeologists at goe
Speaker 1: Beecley Tepe have found grindstones, mortars, and carved stone vessels
Speaker 1: that were used to process foods like grains and lagomes,
Speaker 1: which we know because of residues left on them. One
Speaker 1: stone vessel that held grain is big enough to have
Speaker 1: made some forty three gallons of porridge or perhaps beer
Speaker 1: at a go that's about one hundred and sixty three liters.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it was only ever used at infrequent parties, but
Speaker 1: even if that's the case, it indicates that the cook
Speaker 1: or brewer had access to a lot of grain. Maybe
Speaker 1: they were really adept at gathering wild grain, or maybe
Speaker 1: they were working on cultivating crops that weren't quite genetically
Speaker 1: domesticated yet. And other structures have been uncovered there too,
Speaker 1: including lots of smaller rectangular buildings with fireplaces and tools
Speaker 1: that indicate that they were probably homes. The teams have
Speaker 1: recently found other indications of domestic life at the site,
Speaker 1: including middens and large pieces of carved bedrock that were
Speaker 1: likely used to collect and store rainwater. If they were
Speaker 1: collecting rainwater. That clears up one of the original doubts
Speaker 1: about the site ever being used as a settlement because
Speaker 1: it is about three miles or five kilometers away from
Speaker 1: the nearest stream. A Natroft said, while the early monumentality
Speaker 1: of the site is definitely impressive to me, it's the
Speaker 1: social implications at the doorstep of one of the crucial
Speaker 1: points in the history of our species is what makes
Speaker 1: this research so fascinating. When go Beckley Tepe was being
Speaker 1: built and rebuilt over those couple thousand years, humans were
Speaker 1: in the process of transitioning from hunting and gathering to
Speaker 1: agriculture and keeping livestock. The site shows what might be
Speaker 1: a bridge between the two ways of life. Some researchers
Speaker 1: even think the site, with all its engravings of wild
Speaker 1: and dangerous animals, might represent a sort of cultural pushback
Speaker 1: against encroaching civilization, that it was a monument to the
Speaker 1: old ways. We may never know what really went on
Speaker 1: at Goebecley Tepe. One theory goes that it was a
Speaker 1: human skull cult that's based on fragments of skulls found
Speaker 1: there that were carved, painted, and otherwise modified after death.
Speaker 1: But whatever the case, it seems that this was a
Speaker 1: place built and maintained by a perhaps transitioning hunter. Gathers
Speaker 1: society to meet up, trade information and goods, and find
Speaker 1: romantic partners, share life hacks, and make friends who could
Speaker 1: help out in a pinch. And if they were performing
Speaker 1: skull cults ceremonies, what better way to build community. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is based on the article go Beckley Tepe the
Speaker 1: Temple that hints at what humans were up to eleven
Speaker 1: thousand years ago on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Jesslin Shields.
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Speaker 1: stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four
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