Göbekli Tepe hosted Alcoholic Feasts?

Author : Wahid Ahmad Share

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Around 15000 years ago, the Earth warmed after a long ice age, leading to the melting of large ice sheets covering parts of North America and Europe. Around 12,800 years ago, the Younger Dryas followed this warm period. During this time, the earth quickly returned to near-glacial conditions, lasting for about 1,200 years. The most striking aspect was its abrupt end around 11,600 years ago when temperatures rose by as much as 10 degrees in just 10 years.

A 2017 article about Younger Dryas argues that the story of the Younger Dryas event was carved on stone pillars at Göbekli Tepe. The stone pillars at the Gobekli Tepe tell the story of a comet hitting Earth around 13,000 years ago. But is it just a coincidence, or did our ancient ancestors leave us a cosmic message?

In 1986, some farmers stumbled upon something extraordinary on their farm – mysterious stone artefacts, on Potbelly Hill in the city of Urfa in the southeastern province of Turkey.

They decided to take them to a museum, but only to hear from the museum director: “These are ordinary limestones.” The stones remained idle in the garden of the museum for five years. Later, the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt saw the stones there. After that, they came here and explored this place. Excavations started in 1992.

Klaus Schmidt saw more than just tools; he saw a hidden treasure. He knew this hill, called Göbekli Tepe, held something amazing. For 20 years, he dug and found an ancient sanctuary, predating Stonehenge, and Egyptian pyramids by 6,000 years.  Göbekli Tepe surprised everyone. It made people rethink where civilizations started. Göbekli Tepe is considered humanity's first cathedral. Göbekli Tepe reveals stones intricately carved around 11,000 years ago.

Gobekli Tepe is in an area called the "Golden Triangle," where the roots of agriculture and a new way of life began. Unlike what was previously thought, this region, including Gobekli Tepe, is now considered the cradle of agriculture.

Mystery surrounds the purpose of the Gobekli tepe, belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic era. Were they temples or just places where people lived? Early looks at the nearby sites such as Jericho and Catalhoyuk suggest that permanent shrines were made before people settled in villages.

Some think there were special spaces just for rituals, while others believe that in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period, symbolism was part of everyday life, including residential buildings, with meaning and spirituality.

The discovery at Gobekli Tepe shakes up what we thought about early humans. The big sanctuary built around 10,000 BC wasn't made by farmers like we believed before. Surprisingly, it was the work of hunter-gatherers, challenging the idea that complex societies came only after agriculture.

Recent evidence suggests the dawn of the Neolithic, hunter-gatherers congregating at Gobekli Tepe created social and ideological cohesion through the carving of decorated pillars, dancing, feasting—and, certainly, the drinking of beer made from fermented wild crops.

Standing 1,000 feet above the valley, visitors could have envisioned the landscape 11,000 years ago—a paradise with wild animals, flowing rivers, fruit trees, and fields of wild barley and wheat.

Extensive research, including ground-penetrating radar surveys, reveals that Göbekli Tepe extends beyond the excavated area. Mapping the entire summit, there are at least sixteen other megalith rings across twenty-two acres. The ongoing excavations have barely scratched the surface, indicating the site's vast potential for further exploration.

Prehistoric masons, armed with flint tools, shaped the limestone pillars on-site before arranging them in rings. The builders covered the rings with dirt, creating layers over time. Gobekli Tepe isn't a regular settlement; it's a special place with large T-shaped pillars arranged in circles.

The site has three main layers dating back to the Neolithic period. In Level Three, the oldest structures are oval, about fifteen meters by ten meters in size, with concentric walls and T-shaped monoliths. Some have monumental stone entranceways. A latter phase, level two A, around 7500 cal. BC features smaller rectangular buildings with terrazzo floors and occasionally smaller T pillars. Level Two B is the intermediary between the other two levels. The limestone pillars in Levels Three and Two A are finely crafted, featuring sculpted images of various creatures.

In Level Three, pillar heights range from about 2 to 3.5 meters, and in Level IIA, they are around 1.4–2 meters high. Estimates suggest pillar masses ranging from 740 kg to 10.8 metric tons. The pillars are considered nonstructural, and the buildings were likely unroofed. Traces of quarrying activities around the site indicate the extraction of pillars by cutting vertical channels around the blocks with flint tools, possibly using wooden levers and wedges to split them from the bedrock.

The pillars at Gobekli Tepe are not only plain stones; they're carved with intricate designs of animals like foxes, snakes, and boars. Some even have human-like features, like hands and fingers. These structures were not used as living spaces but served as communal and ritual activities.

According to Sweatman and Tsikritsis, the carved animals on the pillars represent constellations, with a particular stone, known as the Vulture Stone, serving as a timestamp for the night sky during the catastrophic event. By using computer software to match these carvings with star patterns, they identified three possible dates: 2000 BCE, 4350 BCE, and 10,950 BCE, with the last date aligning closely with the estimated time of the Younger Dryas Impact.

The site was intentionally covered over time, after being used for a while. The ongoing excavations around the site have revealed fascinating details of these ancient people's social and symbolic practices. Similar T-shaped pillar structures have been found at other sites in the region, forming a group of sites with a shared cultic community. The evidence comes from the carvings on objects like shaft straighteners, stone cups, and bowls. These carvings depict animals and symbols similar to those found at Gobekli Tepe.

The symbols suggest a shared symbolic world among the residents of different sites in Upper Mesopotamia, indicating a complex system of communication predating written language. This challenges the idea that social systems changed as a result of the shift to farming.

This symbolic system persisted for thousands of years, indicating extensive connections and communication networks among these ancient communities. The construction of monumental sites like Gobekli Tepe required collaboration and organization, possibly facilitated by regular communal activities, including feasting and the consumption of likely alcoholic beverages.

Recent archaeological findings, including those from Göbekli Tepe, challenge the conventional belief that beer and wine production originated later in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Evidence, such as chemical analysis of residues in pottery, suggests that the production of alcoholic beverages likely dates back to the Neolithic period.

At Göbekli Tepe, large limestone basins with residues hint at the possibility of beer brewing, with oxalate suggesting the involvement of cereals like barley. While conclusive evidence is pending, the absence of signs of regular habitation at the site suggests nearby settlements might have been engaged in various stages of beer production.

Genetic analyses near Göbekli Tepe, showing wheat domestication, challenge the idea that domestication was primarily linked to bread making. Early cereals, potentially more suitable for beer production than bread, may have provided nutritional advantages, such as longer shelf life.

The discussions about early societies' use of alcoholic beverages are not new. Beer's potential nutritional advantages and the lack of toxicity in certain cereals add complexity to understanding early dietary choices.

The evidence supports the idea that knowledge of creating alcoholic beverages existed in the early Neolithic period, with reasons for this development remaining subjects of exploration and discussion.

The discovery of alcohol consumption in early societies aligns with models emphasizing social incentives for the shift from hunter-gatherers to farming communities. Göbekli Tepe, featuring large-scale feasting evident in backfilled sediments with animal bones, holds social and cultic significance. Feasts, fueled by beer, played a role in fostering group cohesion, encouraging the transition to agriculture.

Göbekli Tepe's feasts, categorized as collective work events, may have strained hunter-gatherer groups economically, driving the exploration of new food sources and processing techniques. The demand for such feasts, influenced by religious beliefs, played a pivotal role in the adoption of intensive cultivation and the transition to agriculture, with alcoholic beverages playing a crucial part in this transformative period in human history.