At www.robertschoch.com there is a pdf of an article on Gobekli Tepe he had published in the magazine, New Dawn (September 2010) – see www.newdawnmagazine.com. The site of Gobekli Tepe is interesting in so far as little real information has percolated into the English language press. Some comments by Ian Hodder, a report on the discovery, and a recent suggestion the stone structures may have been dwellings rather than a temple. Meanwhile, the excavations are still in progress, under the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, and this is one reason there is nothing to get our teeth into. Robert Schoch, after visiting the site, and taking photographs of the excavation (captured in the pdf) has come up with some startling ideas – getting his theory in before a more sober assessment by Schmidt or Hodder. The relevance of this may be quite fanciful but it is certainly provocative. The T-Shape limestone pillars, 2 to 5m tall and weighing 10 to 15 tons, were erected in circles. The workmanship on display is amazing, according to Schoch, with clear sharp edges. He claims only hunter gatherers were around 9000 years ago but this is not true – in eastern Anatolia and the Fertile Crescent early farming communities were around, and farmers work with wood, and working with stone is an extension of that.
Some of the pillars are decorated with bas reliefs of animals such as fox, boar, snakes, aurochs, wild asses, wild sheep, birds such as cranes and vultures, gazelles, scorpions and even ants. There are carvings in the round, drilled stone beads, and so on – and the site is dated between 10,000 and 8000BC. It was apparently intentionally buried around 8000BC – a mystery akin to the abandonment of Mayan cities and temple complexes. The stones, it is alleged, are aligned to the Pleiades, the constellation of Taurus, and to Orion – and Schoch points out that the same constellations intrigued Ice Age cave painters.