First Pictorial Representation of Göbekli Tepe Found

Another clue to the hidden history of the human race has been found - the first pictorial representation of Gobekli Tepe

A tiny bone plaque in Sanliurfa museum holds the key to the orientation of 11,500 year-old temple complex.

It was found during routine excavations at the 11,500-year-old site of G>bekli Tepe in southeast Turkey, but no one had recognised exactly what the carved lines on the small bone plaque showed. That was until Matthew Smith, a British telecommunications consultant living in Qatar, visited Sanliurfa’s new archaeology museum, which contains a large collection of objects found at the proto-Neolithic site located just 8 miles (13 kilometres) away towards the northeast. He would seem to have recognised something everyone else had missed, and this was that the little plaque – just 6 cm in length, 2.5 cm in width and 3-4 mm in thickness – bore on its upper surface two T-shaped features positioned side by side. The context of the plaque’s discovery, i.e. at Göbekli Tepe, makes it clear these T-shaped etchings are pictorial representations of the T-shaped pillars found in all the key enclosures uncovered so far at the site. Read more