Gobekli Tepe - 11,000 years and counting

via Wikipedia

Still out gallivanting with my visitors, but something dropped into the ole inbox this past week that I thought you'd like to see.

In the 1960's, Gobekli Tepe was dismissed as a medieval cemetery. Thirty plus years later, German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt believed otherwise. His 1995 dig revealed Gobekli Tepe as the world's oldest temple. It predates Stonehenge by about 6,000 years. (How many points should we give to the Cradle of Civilization?)

All this is really interesting, but the point which gave me pause is this:

To Schmidt and others, these new findings suggest a novel theory of civilization. Scholars have long believed that only after people learned to farm and live in settled communities did they have the time, organization and resources to construct temples and support complicated social structures. But Schmidt argues it was the other way around: the extensive, coordinated effort to build the monoliths literally laid the groundwork for the development of complex societies. Source: Smithsonian magazine
Go read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html#ixzz1ThEjrjZs and check out the interesting pictures too!


Here's a History Channel program about it.

Memorable Mosaics

via Telegraph.co.uk

The most magnificent mosaics I've ever seen were in Italy. St. Peter's in Rome, Ravenna, the Basilica San Marco of Venice....

Water from the infamous Venetian floods is wreaking havoc on Basilica San Marco though, so the floors are a treacherous proposition for anyone to navigate. It's a shame because you want to look up, but then you really need to look down or you'll be making a less-than-graceful swan dive.

Turkey has it's fair share of mosaics too. In fact, experts were busy uncovering some more in the Hagia Sophia recently. The latest find was the seraphim pictured here and there are plans to uncover matching ones in three other corners of the building. But while some historians revel in this piece of news, many are lamenting the flooding of Allianoi.

Mosaics of the Roman baths at Allianoi, near Bergama, suffered from years of disuse and disrepair because of flooding by the nearby Ilya river. When the site was slated to be flooded permanently by a state dam building project however, world heritage organizations finally woke up and said something. Too little, too late, I'm afraid. 

via Mersin.edu.tr

In my MS, the Narlikuyu mosaic depicting the three graces makes a cameo appearance. The Roman bath it's located in is probably Turkey's smallest museum and it could use a dusting!

The moral of my story - go visit some of these places! They're more than worth our time and some of them, unfortunately, won't be around forever.

Related articles

• Sacred Mysteries: An appointment with an angel at Hagia Sophia (telegraph.co.uk)
• Turkish dam plan threatens 'remarkable' Roman ruins (cnn.com)

• Turkish officials bury ancient city of Allianoi under sand (hurriyetdailynews.com)