11 New Hills Discovered at Gobekli Tepe Megalithic Site
Turkey just made an announcement about a major archeological discovery at Gobekli Tepe. Could this finally shed light on who built the world’s oldest megalithic site, and why?
First unearthed in 1995, the 11,000-year-old excavation site at Gobekli Tepe has yielded the most significant collection of stone pillar monoliths ever discovered. While most archeologists agree that the structure is the world’s oldest temple, they have long-debated the origins and motivations of its builders. The recent findings of 11, possibly 12, new sites around Gobkeli Tepe may provide those answers.
Andrew Collins is an ancient history researcher who has written extensively about the site.
“Gobekli Tepe is in many ways the best evidence that we have of a lost civilization—a pre-Ice Age civilization that existed worldwide and was probably wiped out by very harsh conditions and possibly some kind of comet impact about 13,000 years ago, and that the sole remnants of this went on to create Gobekli Tepe,” Collins said.
Watch more:Â
About the Author
Evidence of Seven Levels Beneath the Giza Plateau
Five miles from Cairo stands one of the most ancient and alluring sites in human history. This mystery comprises the three main pyramids of Giza that have come to represent one of the most famous ancient civilizations. The megalithic stones that form these structures lie on a great plateau, and now investigators have found something else fascinating that lies below the pyramids.
Gregg Braden explains that some of the earliest credible accounts of the Giza Plateau come from the Greek historian and geographer Herodotus, who, in the early 400s B.C.E, compiled a reference book on ancient civilizations, cultures, and technologies predating his time by thousands of years.Â
Prior to Herodotus, no one had presented a systematic, thorough study of the past, attempting to link events with how they shaped history. Herodotus speculated there were hidden passages beneath the pyramids, as well as chambers, pathways, and great spaces — all of which were created when the climate and topography of Egypt were very different than it is today. Herodotus felt that beneath the pyramids lay the remnants of other ancient civilizations.Â
If Herodotus was correct, the pyramids may be sitting upon the most amazing time capsule in history, revealing not only long-lost cultures but also their technologies and origins saved in the earliest of writings and images.Â
Two researchers stand out in the search to uncover the underground spaces beneath the pyramids: British Consul General Henry Salt and his hired explorer Giovanni Battista Belzoni. These men were able to survey the area with the limited technology of their time in the early 1800s and were led by the desert topography to an area at the edge of the Giza Plateau, now an archaeological find of its own called The Tomb of the Birds.Â
