Geometry and Architectural Planning at Göbekli Tepe, Turkey

Abstract

The site of Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey keeps fascinating archaeologists as it is being exposed. The excavation since 1995 has been accompanied by a lively discussion about the meaning and implications of its remarkable early Neolithic megalithic architecture, unprecedented in its monumentality, complexity and symbolic content. The building history and the chronological relations between the different structures (enclosures), however, remain in many ways a challenge and open to further analysis. The study presented here is an attempt to contribute in this direction by applying a preliminary architectural formal analysis in order to reconstruct aspects of the architectural design processes involved in the construction of the monumental enclosures. This is done under the premise that such investigation would shed light on the chaîne opératoire of the enclosures' construction and their history, thus enabling a fresh look as well as an evaluation of past suggestions regarding these structures and the people who built them. Indeed, the results of the analysis brought to light an underlying geometric pattern which offers a new understanding of the assemblage of architectural remains indicating that three of the stone-built large enclosures were planned and initially built as a single project.

Human societal development: is it an evolutionary transition in individuality?

“…The ‘town’ of Çatalhöyük in Anatolia hosted at least 3500 people at its peak, 8.7–8.5 kyr BP [ 62 ]. The strength of Neolithic social networks is also indicated by the Göbekli Tepe structures, dated ca 11.5 kyr BP, with the cooperation of hundreds of people required to erect the massive pillars [ 63 ]. Thus, within seven millennia, social unit size increased from dozens to thousands.…”

The God Table: A New Origins Theory of Religion and Civilization

“…This paper locates the "God" logogram as the architectural blueprint of Göbekli Tepe's Enclosure "D." It will be demonstrated that Abraham's "God Table" derives directly from the mathematics of ‫,יהוה‬ and further, how this same mathematics defines Enoch's Word of God, . Researchers at Tel Aviv University and the Israel Antiquities Authority that they have…"now used architectural analysis to discover that geometry informed the layout of Göbekli Tepe's impressive round stone structures and enormous assembly of limestone pillars, which they say were initially planned as a single structure… The most important and basic methods of architectural planning were devised in the Levant in the Late Epipaleolithic period as part of the Natufian culture…" (Haklay & Gopher, 2020). This corroborates the author's determination that the "Blueprint of Creation" that is encrypted into Enclosure "D" is shaped and structured by Enoch's Word of God, , all of which is a subset of the God Table.…”

Alterity, Otherness and Nomad Geometries: New Trajectories for the Interpretation of Late Neolithic Monuments

“…Perhaps the most striking example in relation to prehistoric monuments is Hawkins's seminal work on Stonehenge, where pioneering use of an IBM 7090 (‘the machine’) led Hawkins to discover a Neolithic computer (Hawkins 1964; 1965, 99). Perhaps more subtly, it is also evident in more recent studies of the planning, spatial form and geometry of early Neolithic monumental structures and the emergence of geometric architecture (Haklay & Gopher 2020, 1). Although the focus of the latter discussion is with the architectural processes of design and execution—in short, how did the builders achieve the final form—essential to the study is the identification of what the authors refer to as the ‘spatial principles and compositional laws’, logics and rules that shaped the final monument (Haklay & Gopher 2020, 5).…”