GÖBEKLI TEPE REVELATIONS: Thoughts on 3 days at Göbekli Tepe.
As the first steps in making the Göbekli Tepe to Stonehenge film project, a few weeks ago Rupert and I spent three days at Göbekli Tepe with access to the whole site - we've been down amongst the T-pillars, we've seen the places where the people lived, we've seen excavations that are normally out of the public eye and much more - all in the company of the head archaeologist there, Lee Clare.
So that is what this show about: we so had our minds blown during our visit, we've got so much to talk about, and this is the first opportunity - probably the first of many - to share what we've taken away from our visit.
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Transcript
Hello, welcome to the Quebecli Tapet of Stonehenge podcast. I'm Michael Bott.
Rupert (:I'm Rupert Soskin, yes, welcome.
Michael Bott (:Yes, and we are collectively known as the prehistory guys, as if you didn't know. Look, we're on a bit of a mission right now, and that's to fulfil the promise we made when we set out to make a series of films which we're calling Gebeckli Tablet of Stonehenge. It's what this podcast is piggybacking off, and I think it's fair to say it's our passion project right now. We'll say a bit more about... the actual film thing in a moment. But right now what's important is what to expect in this show that you've clicked through to listen to or watch. To cut to the chase as the first steps in making Gobekli Tepe to Stonehenge, a few weeks ago Rupert and I spent three days at Gobekli Tepe with access to the whole site. We've been down amongst the tea pillars.
We've seen the places where the people live. We've been on, we've seen excavations that are normally way out of the public eye, much, much more, all in the company of one of the lead archeologists there, Dr. Lee Clare. So that is what this show is about. We so had our minds blown during our visit, and we got so much to share with you. And this is the first opportunity, probably the first of many we've got so much to talk about.
Rupert (:Mm.
Michael Bott (:what we've taken away from our visit. So best thing is to strap in, there's quite a lot to get through. Before we do start on that, say a few words about the actual Gebekli Tepe to Stonehenge project itself.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:Yeah, yes. Well, it's a massive project, isn't it? It's huge. And in a nutshell, Gbekeli Tepe de Stonehenge is a series of films exploring how people progressed from being sedentary hunter-gatherer groups to larger, more established farming communities. And it might not sound all that glamorous talking about farming, but the point is it's the embedded lifestyle that comes from working the land.
Michael Bott (:Hehehehe
Rupert (:that enabled communities to become civilizations. It's just such a massive part in the development of human life. So, I mean, for example, the things that we'll be exploring, how did the practice of farming influence the way societies developed over time? Trading across great distances, particularly the huge trade in obsidian, especially from the Aegean, spreading throughout the Mediterranean and into Northern Europe.
How did we ultimately become the megalith building societies that culminated in some of the most famous sites like Stonehenge standing proud on the Salisbury Plain? That's what we're doing.
Michael Bott (:Yeah, that one. I mean, that's yeah. Well, that's the point about doing the series is, isn't it? I mean, not only tells that story, but takes us to some extraordinary places, you know, that people might not otherwise get to. So it's our job, you know, to take you on that journey. That's what we're planning with these series of films. And this podcast is, you know, as I said, springing off the back, this particular one springing off the back of our.
three days at Gobekli Tepe, the first stages. So we've done that bit of filming. The results of that are not out, except there will be tremendous loads of content that we can produce beside the film from the content we've produced. Look forward to that.
But the point is we've still got loads more to do. So this bit we've done has already been funded by kind folk who have helped us via our Buy Me a Coffee campaign. So we'd like to invite you to take a look at the Buy Me a Coffee page link through, click through the link in the description below to see what we're up to in more detail and consider helping us.
produce the rest of the series as we go. We'd be much obliged if you did so. Thank you so much. Yeah, okay, enough said about the project as a whole. Bear in mind as we go through, as Rupert and I talk, that this is primarily a podcast and there won't be maps and supporting images and video as we go through.
That's not to say we haven't got any, we've got loads. So if you want that part of it, we've got about seven hours that needs to be whittled down, which will get compressed and compiled and put on several items on YouTube, several bits of content we'll be putting out on YouTube over the coming weeks and months. So look out for that. OK, enough.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Michael Bott (:let's begin let's take you as far as we can with the power of description and uh and words to uh Gebekele Tepe itself. I suppose a good place to start is at the beginning and on the um first morning that we arrived at Gebekele Tepe and we're walking up the ramp kind of thinking we knew what to expect maybe but open for
Rupert (:Hehehe
Rupert (:the
Michael Bott (:open for anything. What are your memories?
Rupert (:Hmm. Well, it's like any major site, isn't it? That it doesn't matter how many photographs you've seen and how much you've read, nothing actually prepares you for being in the shared space. And it's also funny how you become so blinkered, you know, I mean, walking up that, you know, that wooden trackway to get up to the site, actually oblivious to what we were walking past.
which we will talk about later, but just this blinkered thing. And getting...
Michael Bott (:Yeah. Well, as was as would most of the public be. And there's a lot of public walk up that track, that path. Yeah.
Rupert (:You know, I think the thing there though is that bearing in mind what we do, you know, this is what we do and we always have an eye for the detail that people usually miss. That is what we do. And so when you have, you know, the hordes of tourists, so many tourists arriving who
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Michael Bott (:Hmm.
Rupert (:They are just coming up and looking at these, you know, the special buildings. They seem to be utterly oblivious to everything that's going on around it. So, you know, talking about that first experience in many ways, similar for us, that we were just itching to get that first view of the site itself. And it does just take your breath away on so many levels, not least of all the scale of it.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Rupert (:I was not prepared for, again, doesn't matter how many photographs you've seen, I was not prepared for how big those T-pillars are in building D. I just couldn't believe what I was looking at, really.
Michael Bott (:Mm.
Michael Bott (:And the canopy that's been built over it, you know, to a protect the site.
and B, protect the tourists and the walkway around the major, the main excavated area. You know, it's quite spectacular. Hats off to the design and everything like that. I think, same way you were, it's not just the size of the site but the depth.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Michael Bott (:and the fact that these, the four main special buildings are so sunken down into the ground. So you're looking down quite away from those walkways.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Michael Bott (:and also conscious of the hill rising up behind. Oh, what failed to mention, of course, the other surprise walking up there and to is the elevation and the distance you can see. It's it's quite a way up. It's not any just any old hill. The pot belly pot belly pig hill thing.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Michael Bott (:It's, uh, is it? You know, it's already got an elevation to it by the time you've driven up there, and so the view all around is quite spectacular.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Rupert (:It is. Sorry, I thought you were going to say something else. You interrupted yourself to say that. And I thought you were going to say something else. No, it's absolutely true. And I think an interesting point and in fact, a point that Lee made, you know, he's pointing out across the landscape and showing that, you know, Kara Han Tepe is over there and, you know, just pointing out different sites that you the people at the time would have been very aware of all the different communities.
Michael Bott (:Oh, did I? Yeah.
Rupert (:across the landscape. They would all have known where they were, whether it was seeing the smokes from each other's fires or what have you. They would have been very, very aware of their wider community, if you want to put it that way.
Michael Bott (:Hmm.
Michael Bott (:So that was the first kind of jaw drop moment. Eyes opened to what you're actually dealing with. But I think there was a second jaw drop moment as we made our way up to the higher bit towards the north-northwest, the back end of there.
Rupert (:Mm-hmm.
Michael Bott (:And of course most people's gaze as they're walking around the walkway is inward, onto the inward edge, over the inward edge of the walkway down into the T-pillar sites, into the special buildings. But when we got up to the higher end there...
Rupert (:Hmm.
Michael Bott (:My memory is that Lee instantly drew our attention to outside the walkway looking up the hill and immediately with almost within arm's reach of the walkway he pointed out several domestic areas, lived in areas, worked in areas and not many people turn around to look at that.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Michael Bott (:So I suppose the first topic, the first eye-opener, is putting to rest this idea that the Gebekli Tepe was just a place that people came to just to do whatever you do in a so-called temple.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Michael Bott (:for religious ceremonies. This is what it's been sold to us as for quite some time now. And yet, and yet, and yet, the evidence for people living there in the settlement is overwhelming. And I think we didn't realise how in your face that evidence actually is once you look. Is that about right, Rupert?
Rupert (:Hmm.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, in fact, whilst the special buildings are astonishingly impressive and all of that, it's the residential stuff that I found far more profound, that you're looking at all the signs of people's daily lives over massive, massive periods of time. You know, when you can see repair work,
in a dry stone wall and the repair work includes a broken grinding stone or you know broken portal stones things like that where it was too useful a piece of stone to throw away so they've actually incorporated it into a piece of repair work in a wall. Now you know grinding stones how long does it take to wear through a grinding stone or to break a grinding
Michael Bott (:Hehehe
Rupert (:generations and generations of people living in these places. It was remarkable for both of us wasn't it when we were walking around the site looking at just how many broken pieces of stuff, whether it was grinding stones or portal stones or worked stones that you couldn't tell what they had been. There's one particular
Michael Bott (:Mm.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Rupert (:wall in room 38 I remember that it looks like and it looks like an entire stone bowl is in the wall and it's sort of I don't know half a meter diameter it's enormous and obviously it's broken and you can only see the perfectly rounded face you know that you can see the rest of it is in the wall
Michael Bott (:Oh yeah.
Rupert (:But it was that level of just, gosh, how much stuff. I mean, there's the, lower down from the residential buildings, the archeologists call it the stone garden because they didn't know what to call it. It's basically where they've been clearing surface stuff and they've just pulled away all these broken pieces of
quern stones, grinding stones and what have you. And they put them all in rows in this field area that they call the Stone Garden. And there's like ten thousand grinding stones and anything. And I'm looking at that and I'm going, good grief, ten thousand grinding stones. And Lee said, yeah, but there's not a lot of grinding stones for a couple of thousand years of people living somewhere. And from that point of view,
Michael Bott (:Yes.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Rupert (:Absolutely true. It's not. But the point is that that's what they've found. You know, you really can't forget underneath all of this, you can't forget that they've only excavated sort of five, six percent of the entire site. Lord only knows what is underneath the rest of it.
Michael Bott (:So far.
Michael Bott (:And what a different perspective. And what a different perspective people would have because the stone garden, as he said, is one of the first things, well, it's the first things you see after you, if you've driven up there in your bus to take you to the site. And it looks like a field full of rubble off to your left as you're walking up. So probably people don't pay that much attention to it. But...
Rupert (:Yeah.
Michael Bott (:10,000 quern stones and grinding stones in a field tells you a lot that you need to know about the site before you get up there. It's not all about T pillars.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Michael Bott (:All right, good point. I can see this kind of, you know, what we're going to say is we'll unfurl in kind of the order that it was unfurled to us during our three days. And I think I sort of rush ahead and say it wasn't until the second day that we actually went down into the special buildings amongst the T pillars and all the other detail with Lee. So.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Michael Bott (:Yeah, I mean, that was our first impression and picking and standing on the walkway and picking out all the details, you know, and where they were and, you know, how beautiful they are and how much detail and variety and the elevation and the geography of the site and the rooms' relationships. The head explodes with so many questions.
That was the first thing. It wasn't just the impression of the depth and size, but there's so much detail that, you know, the question after question after question after question, why is that wall there? You know, how come that carving is half covered by that wall? Just, uh, myriad. They kept pouring out. Yet it wasn't until the next day that we went down amongst them to, you know, to...
Rupert (:Hmm.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Michael Bott (:get more personal with it. But what was revealed to us on that first day is just the sheer extent of the size of the settlement as a whole and the amount of excavation that's been done on the domestic areas. Call them domestic areas, you know, these are not the special buildings, these are cells.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Michael Bott (:small cells, some larger than others, that extend up the hillside, you know, what you could call, legitimately call, a tell site because it's developed and got higher and higher over time, it is a tell, containing mostly domestic buildings with evidence of people living, with evidence of lived lives among them.
Rupert (:Yeah, it's a toe. It is really.
Michael Bott (:And it's astonishing that the meme of Gobekli Tepe has survived so long as merely being a temple. So we were treated to having a look at those excavations, which are quite extensive, up to the northwest of the site, just over the other side of the of the tell. So looking out over another vast landscape, escape over the other side of the hill.
Rupert (:Yes.
Michael Bott (:There's another excavation, two major excavation sites, one with a great sort of spaceship-like covering to it, representing years of excavations. And some of the excavations, you know, have not been touched for quite a long time because you can only do so much at one time. I think the main excavation focus is back in the special buildings now.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Michael Bott (:the domestic areas have been not quite so under the focus, although it's one of Lee's major interests, of course. But what do you remember on that first day he was showing us those excavations that are under the cover? The North West excavations. Stand out moments for you.
Rupert (:What, the Northwest Explorations? Yeah, yeah. Well, but there was a series of them because we were just following Lee and he said, yeah, we're going this way. And so we stepped over the barriers around the main part of Quebec-Litapie where as a tourist, as a visitor, that's where you'd go. So he took us across these rope boundaries and then through this gate.
and through an olive grove and at the back of the olive grove there were the archaeologists' cabins, what they use as their offices, and then you carry on walking past those and then suddenly out there on the landscape is, as Mike just said, this vast UFO of a cover over the excavations in the northwest region. Now that was a surprise.
to begin with, but then going down into these excavations and number one, seeing the amount of T pillars that they've uncovered and some pretty sophisticated stonework that's clearly for irrigation, but these are...
You know, these are by no means finished excavations. They've just withdrawn from those to focus on the main area. But then stepping out from underneath the cover into there's an area to the north of that. I mean, literally just to the side of it, but to the north, where you can see that Lee pointed out, you see that boulder there and you're looking at this boulder on the surface. And yeah, that's the top of another T-pillar.
So, so, so you stand on the ground there with your foot on this T-pillar, knowing that, looking at the scale of or the dimensions of the stone that is sitting proud of the ground and knowing that, well, if that's like the ones in the main area, then you're going four, five meters under your feet is the floor.
Michael Bott (:Huh.
Rupert (:And it's just yet more special buildings. And if it's yet more special buildings, that means inevitably yet more residential buildings. I mean, that was the main thing there. I think this is probably a good time to point out. Something else that Lee showed us was that they've done some ground penetrating radar. And...
Michael Bott (:Hmm.
Rupert (:and underneath the site where the archaeologists' cabins are, literally under your feet when you're standing there, are more special buildings. And because you can tell from the excavations that have been done that the domestic buildings are on the higher ground and the special buildings are in the dips, so you go down to the special buildings.
So you look out across the 20 hectares of this hill and you look at the undulating landscape, this bit of upland and this bit of downland. And so you can just imagine what's going on underneath the soils there of just, how many houses and special buildings are all there to be.
Michael Bott (:Hmm. Yeah.
Rupert (:excavated that it's just not going to happen in our lifetimes. I mean it's decades and decades and decades of work.
Michael Bott (:of archaeological work because only what, five to six percent of the entire site has been excavated so far. And that's over how many years? Since it was, I mean it's just... Yeah. So it's that scale thing. Is there enough, you know, archaeological will and money to...
Rupert (:Yeah.
Oh.
It's half a century, isn't it?
Michael Bott (:excavate not just Gebekeli Tepe but the other Tepe sites that have been discovered laterally, not least of which...
Rupert (:Yes.
Rupert (:You know, you talking about what were the mind blowing moments. And I think one of the biggest shockers of all was because, you know, we've learned about a lot of the Tas Teppala sites. So other teapillar type sites in the region, you know, there's a good number that are known about now, but Lee said that in recent field surveys.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Rupert (:They've identified hundreds, that is the word that he used, hundreds of other sites. Now that doesn't mean to say that they're all T-pillar sites. Some of them can be just basic encampments, but the point is they've identified the locations of hundreds, which means that a good number of them are going to be more T-pillar sites. And if you've got such a sort of a bustling
regional network, if you want to put it that way. I don't think it's unreasonable to put it in those terms. Then it says so much about how people's lifestyles, how settled they were in the way they lived. Okay, this is pre-farming, but the fact that they had these really sophisticated settlements from which they would, you know, they would go out and they would...
hunt and forage and gather and whatever, but they were living in these very, very settled communities for a very, very long time. And the fact that they have identified the locations of hundreds more is just staggering.
Michael Bott (:Yeah, it's worth pointing out, you know, that standing on these sites, that both the Gebekli Tepe and Karan Tepe, as we did later on,
viewing those landscapes around them as massive resources that would enable them to be settled for a long time. We've talked about this in the previous podcast obviously in number one where we talked about the 10,000 years before Quebec Le Tepe. People had
got it nailed as to how to exploit the landscape around them to such an extent and have control of it that they were able to settle. They didn't need to be farmers, they just needed to be exploiting every last inch or available resource that their landscape was providing to them. And that's why the, you know, the fertile crescent is called the fertile crescent
because depending, climate dependent, and there were ups and downs during the period, but climate dependent, it was just that. It provided those resources from gazelle to the wild or semi-wild cereals that they would be, you know, you don't have a grindstone if you ain't got something to grind.
Rupert (:Mm-hmm.
Rupert (:Mm.
Michael Bott (:So although they may not have, you know, got the control of wheat and Amazon and Bali and stuff under control, they certainly got it down how to harvest the wild cereals that were being presented to them. So a combination of gazelle hunting, you know, any other kind of hunting.
Rupert (:No.
Rupert (:Mm.
Michael Bott (:They got it nailed. The broad spectrum diet, there you go.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:Yeah, well, I think it's, you know, it bears repeating because I'm pretty sure we said it last time, but one of the real standout details of, so there's Boncuklu Tala, which is not that far away, which literally translates as the field of beads, and the same applies at Gebekli Tepe, that in the northwest excavations where the public
Michael Bott (:Hmm.
Rupert (:don't go, that one of the areas under that northwest canopy, they found a phenomenal amount of beads. And the point about that, the reason that that's such an important point, is that you don't sit around making jewellery unless you've really got your lifestyle well under control. It's not how you spend your time if you're desperate trying to eke a living out of the landscape.
Michael Bott (:Oh.
Rupert (:You've got to be very settled to be really spending a lot of time on putting fancy stuff around your neck, really.
Michael Bott (:And you don't bother putting in waterways and irrigate and start controlling and harvesting, you know, the aquifers and the water channels around you, the natural flow of water off the hill around you. And in the Northwest excavations, there is, in just one corner of it, there's an enormous deep.
water can only be interpreted as a water system with channels, deep channels in the limestone, covered channels in the limestone which can only be interpreted as some kind of running water control within that area. So stunning. Going...
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Rupert (:Yeah. And an important point that you've made there that covered, that's the point that these water channels were covered with slabs. So, you know, they're going to significant lengths to keep that water clean as it comes through, you know, and also, you know, when you said in the corner.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Michael Bott (:Mm.
Michael Bott (:Hmm.
Rupert (:of the excavations. It's important to also understand that that's in the corner of the excavations. That's as far as they've dug. So how sophisticated those irrigation channels become, we can only guess, really.
Michael Bott (:The excavation, yes, what a good point.
Michael Bott (:Yeah, yeah. That's the right part of the settlement, you know, if you're bringing water back up the hill, because there's a catchment area just down the hill where there is...
ground out ponds and pools and water control channels of quite a few varieties that you can see. And that's a large part of the time on that first day was actually spent exploring that area just to the north and northwest and west of the hill, where it's clear that they were interacting with
Rupert (:Hmm.
Michael Bott (:what they could from it. And before I leave that point, sorry, just before I leave that point, I'm just reiterating once you stand there and see the extent of the landscape, it's no surprise that a group of people this size could...
Rupert (:You know, what one, yeah.
Michael Bott (:persist from exploiting that amount of landscape because it was fertile then there was much more the climate was different was more wooded and although it's still the open bits um yeah there was a lot more going on lush that's it was lusher if that's a word it's more lush
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:Lush. Yeah.
Rupert (:You know, one of the other real wow moments up there was when Lee took us walking out across the plateau. So basically the area that is immediately to the north of the sites that the public gets to see. So we're walking out across the plateau and he was showing us these various quarries.
sites where they'd extracted building material and amazing how many cut marks so you know where you know these bowls if you like have been ground into the rock surfaces they're all over the place but the real shocker was when Lee took us to a quarry area where there is a tea pillar
Michael Bott (:Hmm.
Rupert (:that it's broken, it's on its side. It's quite likely that it broke when they were extracting it, if there was a floor in the in the rock and it and it just split when they were taking it out. But this T-pillar is when it's lying down on the ground, you really get a sense of how huge it is, don't you? This enormous thing and you think, oh, they must have been spitting feathers when that snapped, when they were levering it out.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Rupert (:That's a lot of work to dig that.
Michael Bott (:Here's a really important point that shouldn't just be overlooked, is that this limestone bedrock, and it's a hard job to hack out T-pillars or any sort of rock shaped from limestone bedrock, but it's relatively easy. And so when we think about these T-pillar sites,
mustn't forget that they're dependent on the availability of the basic work building materials, if you like. So the absence of teapillers in other parts of the world or in other parts of the Levant, you know, or you know, the whole of the fertile crescent doesn't mean that people were living any less sophisticated lives. It just didn't mean that they were living on a limestone plateau.
with these things readily available to pry out of the ground. The analogy is on Orkney where we still have stone buildings extant because they had stone to build out that they build stuff. They were prising their building materials out of the rock beneath their feet. And it's not common.
Rupert (:Mm.
Michael Bott (:It's rare, so just trying to make sure people remember that the T-pillar sites are dependent on geology, they're not just something magical, you know, because people thought it would be a good idea at the time.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Rupert (:Yeah, well it and it's a valid point to make as well that you know when you look at the just the mindset the thought processes that go into that sort of construction that if what you have available is timber instead of stone
then you're just as capable of making something equally sophisticated out of timber, but it's not going to stay in the archaeological record. And that could apply to almost anywhere you care to mention, where there aren't megalithic sites left to be seen. And so it looks like this complete void in human history, but that's pretty much all it means. It's just, no, they were just using timber.
Michael Bott (:Yeah, absolutely. And there's one site that is considered a progenitor site for Gbekeli Tepe and other teapillar sites and that's Chakmak Tepe, which we wanted to visit because I wanted to see the post holes in the ground and I wanted to bring back a film of that. We didn't do that but it seems that at Chakmak Tepe...
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:Yes, yes.
Michael Bott (:You know, it's a similar kind of site, but they were using timber before they used T pillars to support the roofs. So, yeah, you know what? Down in building E, which we haven't mentioned yet at Gbekeli Tepe, there is a post hole in on the circumference there. And I was very tempted to I think I've got some shots of that, you know, timber. I tell you what we haven't mentioned. We haven't mentioned talking about T pillars.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:Mm-hmm. Yes.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:yeah to you yes
Michael Bott (:And of course people think about freestanding things and all the time and the illustrations and all the time we're looking at them. We I think I was doing in my mind and I presume you were doing in yours. We were working out how the roof was supported by these T pillars as well. Perhaps we should talk about that, you know, in this in the.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael Bott (:under the umbrella as it was of our second day when we actually did get to go down amongst the T pillars themselves with Lee. Do you want to say a word about why we were going down? Because it was a very special purpose to being down amongst there. Foot for Lee anyway, yeah.
Rupert (:Hehe. Mm-hmm.
Rupert (:Well, it was, although I mean, obviously we were going down to photograph inside the special buildings anyway. But but the thing is that during this year's excavations, so 2023, during this year's excavations, they uncovered a stunning set of sculptures, one in particular in building D.
Michael Bott (:Anyway, yeah.
Rupert (:that it's quite funny that when they finished the excavations, the previous excavation season, they, you know, if they had only known that, you know, just two inches below the last trowel dig was the top of this amazing sculpture of a wild boar, which we've promised that we won't show pictures of it just yet because the Turkish authorities are quite
Michael Bott (:Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Rupert (:jealous about they want to be the first people to put it out to the world, which is fair enough. So we've promised that we won't put it out just yet until they say that it's all right to do so. But the thing is that this sculpture of a wild boar, it must weigh half a ton. I mean, it's pretty much a life-size wild boar. Not quite, but nearly. And the thing is that it's still got paint on it.
Michael Bott (:Yes.
Rupert (:its mouth inside its mouth is red and on its underside you can still see it's black and obviously most of it on the upper surfaces it's eroded away over 10 000 years but the fact that it's coloured that it's painted it you can you can then look around the rest of the site and go oh this might have been quite colourful in here um
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Rupert (:And that it's details like that give you a completely different perspective on what the site may or may not have looked like. You see another aspect, these tiny little details that all around the site, there are. So if you imagine the four sides of a rectangular pillar and they've drilled a hole diagonally through a corner.
so that you could tie something to it. And so all around the site, there are these drilled holes going through pillars and slabs, where, I mean, we can only guess at what they were hanging, but it's most likely, is it fair for me to say that? Probably not. I think it's quite likely that they were hanging furs and fabrics from these.
from these points and obviously, you know, again textiles wouldn't stay in the archaeological record, got no idea what they might have been. But the thing is they were tying stuff all around the place. And I would imagine from the amount of instances of foxes being carved all through the site, there's loads of foxes all over the place, I would imagine that fox...
Michael Bott (:It's a fair... Yeah.
Michael Bott (:Mm-hmm.
Rupert (:fur and fox pelts were pretty ubiquitous.
Michael Bott (:A thing. A thing, yeah. The striking thing about going down into particularly building D for the first time and standing with our own feet on the stone floor, which is the bedrock by the way, it's the chiselled out bedrock to form that floor, is the sense of space. The pillars are flipping high.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Michael Bott (:And even imagining a roof on it, I wouldn't say it's not quite cathedral-like space, but it has a sense of airiness about it. I don't know how light or dark it would have been back in the day once it had a roof on and very little light coming in, but the sense of airiness in that space was just quite extraordinary.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:Hmm. Yeah.
Michael Bott (:quite extraordinary. I expected it to be really quite tight and, you know, sort of claustrophobic, but no, it's not.
Rupert (:Isn't that an interesting thing? In fact, it's probably a good comparison to make that you go to Karahan Tepe. And Karahan Tepe has an enclosure, let's call it a room, a building where the floor space is vast. It's, you know, you said cathedral-esque. I mean, I think it's fair to say cathedral-esque.
Michael Bott (:Oh yes, it's bigger isn't it? It looks bigger. I haven't done them.
Rupert (:Now the difference, the fundamental difference between Carahan Tepe and Kabakli Tepe is that Kabakli Tepe had the constant slip of the hill and if you look at the main floor area that it's, I don't think it's unreasonable to imagine that
The original floor space was probably as vast as it is at Carahantave, but as the hill kept on slipping down and they had to keep on making repairs and they were bringing walls inwards because that was the best way to deal with the slippage of the hill was just to make the room slightly smaller so that essentially you could make the wall as a revetment to hold the slope back and they had to keep on doing that.
Michael Bott (:Yes, good point.
Michael Bott (:Ew.
Rupert (:over centuries and centuries. It was just running repairs the whole time. And so I think that's why the rooms at Quebec-Litépe seem to be broken up into smaller areas. I suspect that it was probably just as vast as Carahan originally.
Michael Bott (:Yes, yeah.
Michael Bott (:Yeah, I think here's a thought to keep in mind when you look next looking at images of the special buildings. What you're looking at is a site in disrepair and would have been in disrepair back in the day. These folks have been for some time fighting a losing battle against the hill above the site. And well...
Rupert (:Hmm.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Michael Bott (:also probably the weight of their own endeavours creating a settlement further up the hill because it was not stable. And here's the point, you know, I suppose where we can later rest one of the other memes or...
Rupert (:Hmm.
Michael Bott (:common misconceptions and I don't know when it started. Exactly. And that is of the deliberate infill of these buildings and abandoned and abandonment of them. If ever there was, you know, we got it in our face that was not the case.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Michael Bott (:was standing down there and you, I'll ask you to take over here Rupert because you're the one, I was holding the camera, you are the one that's standing with your hand from time to time on the wall of fil, of refuse, not the built wall but the...
Rupert (:Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Um, yes. W-
Rupert (:Yes.
Yeah.
Michael Bott (:the stuff that the archaeologists have had to be excavating through to get to the site. Say more.
Rupert (:Yes.
Yeah, so if you imagine that you've got the dry stone walls of the buildings that are the 10,000 year old buildings, but then you've got, as Mike just said, you've got the edges of, it's just where the archaeologists have been digging and excavating. So you're looking at these earth surfaces that they have just been troweling their way through.
And I commented to Lee that just everywhere there were these fragments of bone. And he said, oh, yeah, there's bone all over the place. Tons of the stuff. And I just picked out one little piece and you could see that it was a piece of it was probably dark or waterfowl of some description, just this little piece of bird bone. And I looked at that and I was just evaluating, you know, that's just, you know, somebody's tea. You know, somebody had a meal then. And I
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Rupert (:and I said, oh look, there's another one. And I could see the edge of another piece of bone and I pulled on this and this bloody great rib came out, pork rib. And honestly, it was just such, on one level it's a nothing, but on another level it's, but this is dinner. You know, this is, someone's eating chicken or whatever that bird was, and someone's eating pork ribs. And it's just the fact that it's
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Rupert (:everywhere, absolutely everywhere. And what's happened is that over the millennia, as the hillside has just been slowly creeping and creeping and creeping the way hillsides do and just been slumping down into the special buildings and it's just gradually been engulfing it. And so all these soils from centuries and centuries of
you know, generation upon generation of people just putting their rubbish into middens and what have you, and this is all gradually. You can't even say tumbled. It's just slumped down into the site. And what for me was so exciting about that is that you can just randomly pull out a couple of pieces of bone that you can say, well, these, you know, this was dinner for somebody. But the point is that these two pieces of bone could have been.
dinners separated by a century. They've all just tumbled down. You know, they might have been in the same week or the same couple of days, but not necessarily. The way it's all tumbled, they could be decades apart. And I find that quite evocative. It's like being in a time machine, really.
Michael Bott (:Hmm. Extraordinary. What else about being down amongst the you know, actually in the buildings in the world? So there were so many details to take away, you know, a lot least of which, you know, the leopard sculptures and then go on.
Rupert (:I'll tell you one of the big ones. Well, one of the big ones is, you know, you mentioned that when you're standing on the floor, you're standing on the bedrock and what was happening in my head was that. So when they started this, when they decided let's live here and OK, so they were probably living in.
timber buildings to begin with, for however long, we've got no idea. Could have been a thousand years. We've got no idea. But when they actually decided, all right, let's build a special building here. And so they started cutting away, chipping away the bedrock. And they left standing proud the plinths on which they then erected the T pillars.
So they've got down to a level, they've clearly, they've had this, the design is well in place. You know, they knew exactly how they were gonna build this. So they've dug away the entire floor, leaving these two platforms standing, and then they're not very high, what, five inches tall, roughly? All just hammered away. And then when you look around,
Michael Bott (:Chipped, hammered away the floor, yeah.
Rupert (:the rest of the site and you see the amount of carving on not on all the pillars but certainly on most of the pillars at Kibakli Tappi more than we see at the other sites which is still carved but not as lavishly and you think well you're talking about millennia before metal tools and so they're using stone to carve stone and
that, you know, that you're obviously you're getting through an awful lot of stone because you're chipping it and breaking it as you go. So so your tools are breaking and you're replacing your tools on a regular basis. How long did that take? And when you look at the level of detail in some of them, particularly this, the sculpture of the wild boar, you know, you think, well, how did you do that? Just it's so stunning in its detail. You think how?
Michael Bott (:Hmm.
Rupert (:How it's just breathtaking, utterly breathtaking, the sheer ingenuity and brilliance of that artistry, gosh, when it's that old.
Michael Bott (:And there are so many hints at the richness that we can't see now, of the potential richness of carvings and things that we can't see now. For instance, according to Lee, they have plenty of, you know, freestanding animal carvings that they reckon were actually shaped to fit in some of the
Rupert (:Hmm.
Michael Bott (:existing holes that have been drilled and would have occurred as stone gargoyles. So they weren't carved, so they had carvings that weren't carved out of the stone but were carved separately, then had special places where they could be inserted right round the walls. So if you take on board the pig, calling the pig the wild boar,
Rupert (:The niches, yeah, yeah.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Rupert (:Mm.
Michael Bott (:from building D that he's got colour on him. What if, you know, a lot of the other, the rest of the site was painted, had colour. And then the whole thing takes on another complexion again.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:It really does. I must admit, one of the things that intrigues me there is that you can, when you look at the wild boar, and we know that it had red in its mouth and black on its underside, and you could see how both of those colours could be achieved through easily acquired natural dyes.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Rupert (:So, you know, you think, well, you know, what other colours could they have easily extracted and how sophisticated was their biochemical knowledge of...
Michael Bott (:Well here's the thing, I don't know, I don't know, I remember asking Lee this question, is there evidence for plastering of walls?
I don't know, I can't remember, but because of course you asking that question takes me, takes my mind to our later visit to Chatham Hoyuk where of course the colours you have available which are majorly that red, ochre red and black, they stand out on a white plaster wall. So, oh my goodness, you know, you begin to wonder.
Rupert (:Yeah, yeah.
Rupert (:Hmm. Yeah.
Michael Bott (:While I talk about, you know, while I mention Chatham Hoyik, you know, when we're looking back to the domestic buildings, there wasn't that much to distinguish them because we are looking at buildings, domestic buildings and the special buildings, buildings that mostly seem to have been accessed through the roof.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Michael Bott (:And one thing that you'll find littering the whole site of these stone portal stones, which would have been set into the roof, supported, I presume, on timber rafters of some sort, that would have provided the access into the rooms below, through the roof.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:Hmm. Yeah. Well, Lee did say that there was one of the buildings. I don't remember which one, but one of the buildings at Quebec, the top of it that they were excavating where they found the negatives, if you like, of it. So where the timber boast that the timber supporting posts had been in the soil. So that's quite an exciting thing to have found. I think one of the big surprises.
Michael Bott (:Oh yeah.
Rupert (:there really is when you look at the size of some of the portal stones and you think how heavy they must be because they're the size that, well, they're the size of a trap door. If you've got a trap door in the floor and you drop down into your cellar or a trap door going up into your attic, that kind of size, but made out of stone, again, they're going to weigh...
Michael Bott (:Hmm.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Rupert (:maybe not half a ton, but they're not going to be far off in some of these cases, sitting on top of a timber roof. So clearly they're made, they're incredibly strong to be supporting that sort of weight, particularly when you think that there's going to be most likely there's going to be more than one, uh, entry in or entry, call it a
a roof light, if you like. There's going to be more than one hole in the roof because they'll have been letting light down as well. They wouldn't have just had one entrance and nothing else. And one of the big surprises for me was that you might have seen pictures of these portal stones. And it looks, well, it certainly did for us anyway. It looks as if you'd have a hole cut in your timber roof and you would slot this
Michael Bott (:Hmm. Presumably.
Rupert (:this stone portal. Yeah, exactly that. Flanged. It looks like that you would slot it into the hole in your roof and the flanges would be overlapping at the top to stop it falling through. And it was Benny, the other archaeologist who was with us, who showed us pictures of...
Michael Bott (:flanged, carved bit of stone, yeah.
Rupert (:No, and it was when we were at Carahan actually, and he showed us one of the portal stones there. It's broken and on its side. But he was showing us, no, these are carvings. And so the carvings, no, the portal stones were actually, they were the other way up from the way we'd been imagining it. And these flanges, in a lot of cases, they actually had intricate carvings of animals.
Michael Bott (:Yeah, yeah.
Rupert (:on them and you could use those as handles, you know, you could grab the animals, you know, as you lowered yourself down through the portal. And that threw me completely because now I was having to completely re-imagine how these roofs were constructed. I still find it incredible.
Michael Bott (:both of us.
Michael Bott (:Yeah. The question remains, you know, why go to all that trouble making a stone portal when presumably you could have made it one out of timber? Much easier job.
Rupert (:Yeah, yeah, why?
Michael Bott (:and the extra structural strength that you need to support these very, very heavy pieces. I suppose there would be an argument that maybe says that actually if you put weight on a timber structure like that, it adds to its strength and security by stressing the timbers and forcing stuff to really jam up against each other by the application of weight.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:That's a good point actually, yeah.
Rupert (:Yeah. That is a good point. Yeah.
Michael Bott (:integrity of a site but who knows we'd have to ask an engineer that question yeah I also I've got in my mind no I've got in my mind sort of what looked like little recesses on the floor they look like dog kennels which is sort of very tempting way of you know I do they have dogs back
Rupert (:Yeah. I'll tell you something else that was a bit of a... yeah, go on. Big one.
Michael Bott (:Dogs in use back in 9500, 600 BC.
Rupert (:That's a good question, because as we do know that dogs were beginning to, and cats as well, I think, were beginning to be domesticated then, or domestication is going a little bit far, we they'd become, but you wouldn't have had a, there would no way would there have been a dog at that time that would have fished in one of those. That was years before the pug.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Michael Bott (:I say this more by way of illustrating what you can see rather than declaring that it is what it must have been, but if you can imagine a little dog kennel on the ground and decorated with boars either side. You know, well, how were they hunting boar? Were they trained dogs?
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:Yes.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:There's one in particular, I've got a photograph of you filming it. And it's one of the little niches at foot level. And there's a wild boar over the top of the hole and a fox on either side of it. And clearly, foxes and wild boars really were a thing.
Michael Bott (:Damn, you see, look, I can't show it.
Michael Bott (:Huge.
Rupert (:for these people, they're just ubiquitous.
Michael Bott (:I was wondering if the foxes were actually dogs.
Rupert (:Well, do you know, I mean, you, but the thing is you can domesticate a fox though. And I think it's also.
Michael Bott (:Ta-da! Let's move on.
Michael Bott (:No, you know. Anyway, sorry, I'm getting that's that would get us into the weeds of speculation and stuff. Yeah.
Rupert (:It wouldn't, it wouldn't. I think it's also it's important to make a point here, though, because you brought it up. So I'm not going to let it go. And that's that one of the things that we mentioned before was that in previous podcasts was that one of the things that really forced people to settle down was the fact that as soon as you can harvest or gather enough grain to support a family for a year, then you can't carry it around with you.
you've got to have somewhere to store it. And as soon as you've got to store something, you've got to stay with it. So as soon as you're storing grain on any significant scale, you have a problem with mice and birds. And and so I don't know when cats first appeared in the domestic scene. I don't think it was as long ago as that, but there is clearly a reason for people to be welcoming.
Michael Bott (:Hmm. Yeah.
Michael Bott (:Oh.
Michael Bott (:No.
Rupert (:predatory wild animals or accepting them within the confines of their community if you like, if they're going to be eating the mice and frightening away the birds. So that's a strong possibility for the niches on the ground. Place for the cats.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Michael Bott (:Hmm.
Michael Bott (:Fair point. Fair point. Fair point. Yeah. You shall never know.
Rupert (:the
Michael Bott (:It's tantalizing little detail, though. But talking about details, you know, the carvings, if we spread the net a bit wide, can we talk about the consistency of iconography, shall I put it that way, the consistency of stylistic consistency from, you know, we can only speak to the sites we've visited, really. But I mean, I think it's a subtopic
Rupert (:Hmm
Yes.
Michael Bott (:archaeologists before that there is a unification of style and themes in what's portrayed here and elsewhere.
Rupert (:Hmm. Well, one of the standout details is that pretty much all the animals depicted are male. You know, you know, genitalia is very, very deliberately carved. And when you think that particularly if you look at, well, say, butch, there's the the.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Rupert (:the carving of the man standing between two leopards very proudly holding his bits for all to see. And then you've got the carving that was excavated at Karahan Tepe this year. That's a big statue of a man holding his bits. And then there's Sanliofaman, which, how long ago did they find that? That he was the beginning of it all, wasn't he? That was decades ago that they found Sanliofaman, who once again
Michael Bott (:Oh yeah. Yeah.
Rupert (:tall statue holding his bits. So it's very interesting that when you think of all the other instances of art in prehistory that we know about tend to be focusing on the female form as relevant to fertility. So we have the Venus goddesses and all this sort of stuff. But here in this culture, it's very much...
the male aspect of fertility that is being displayed all over the place. I found that quite an interesting detail.
Michael Bott (:And man... Yeah, and man or men in relationship to nature.
Rupert (:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Michael Bott (:Yeah, or in relationships, but you know, there are no depictions of plants, are there? Not that I can, not that I know has been reported or not, you know. Yeah.
Rupert (:That's a good point, actually. That is a good point. It is all animal, yeah. But an interesting aspect, again, ubiquitous stuff, is that you look at the statues, the most famous statues at Quebec-Lutepé, where the T-pillars, however crude the design seems to be, the T-pillars are people.
Michael Bott (:Mm-mm. Mm.
Rupert (:you can see the arms coming down, you know, the bent arm coming down the side of the body on each side of the T-pillar with their hands on their waist. And when you look at the carvings of the animals, it does make you think that the carvings of the people are a lot more crude.
Michael Bott (:Mm.
Rupert (:But that's clearly that's as important as they thought it was. The point is that the pillars do represent people. And then you go to other places and say Birch is a wonderful example where you've got the low relief. So it's on the inside of a bench where you've got the man between two leopards holding his bits. And then alongside that, you've got
Michael Bott (:Who is... just put that in context that the... Well, the... Saboch man in relief. How high is he? What, is he back? Is he... is he... is he...
Rupert (:He's, yes, well he's a little bit bigger than that isn't he, but he's bigger than that, but yeah, because if you think the two of us kneeling beside him, so he's about two foot tall, 18 inches to two foot tall, something like that, half less than half a metre, yeah, but the thing is that you've got those carvings, but then you go outside of this building, because the carvings at
Michael Bott (:Yeah, that's generous, I think.
Michael Bott (:is.
Rupert (:Um, so, you know, it's, yeah.
Michael Bott (:When we say modern houses, I don't want to be rude to people's houses in the village of Saburch, but they're a bit ramshackle. Shall we leave it at that?
Rupert (:Well, they're less than 100 years old. They're very... Yes, they're less than a century old. Let's put it that way. But the thing is that you go out into the... What do you want to call it? You just go outdoors and there's... You see, I...
Michael Bott (:There's a court courtyard, you know, it's like a sort of cross between a farm courtyard and a garage, something like that. I don't know. What? A yard? Yeah.
Rupert (:Shall we just call it a yard then? Because I was avoiding courtyard because that made it sound a bit grander. But the point is that, but how tired is this place? That there is a gate post for a gate that doesn't exist anymore. But the point is that the gate post is half of an old T-pillar.
Michael Bott (:ground. It's an untidy yard, shall we say.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Rupert (:And when you start looking around this yard, you find that, well, that stone wall over there, well, there's two tea pillars on their sides making up most of that. And when you look closely at them, you see that, no, they're people as well. Look, you can see the arm down the side of that. And, yeah, and the people that have built this now derelict.
Michael Bott (:the carving of the arm and the hands grasping the, you know, in the same style as at Quebec L'Etat.
Rupert (:set of buildings, you know, they've just dragged these tea pillars out. I mean, this is stunning archaeology and they've just dragged it out and reused it. And that tickled me because how many times in the past, you know, particularly with British archaeology, that we've been looking at places and saying, well, that's reused. Clearly, that's come from somewhere else and clearly that's come from somewhere else. And here we are standing in a farm yard.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Rupert (:where there's just T-pillars all over the place that have just been dragged out and used for something else.
Michael Bott (:I hope that kind of makes the point about the ubiquity of T-pillar sites.
Rupert (:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Michael Bott (:Talk about the one in the centre of Saint-Léophe, for example. Yeah. I mean, there are two points that you like to make, you know, and that is successful sites persist. And also, it's another example of the ubiquity of T-pillar sites.
Rupert (:Oh, Yanny Mahali. No, Yanny Mahali.
Rupert (:Yes.
Rupert (:Yes, unfortunately there's nothing to see there now. So this is right in the middle of Sanl'Iofa, right in the middle of the city. And it looks like a derelict building site. We went right up, there's a hill over the city that you can...
Michael Bott (:Yeah, yeah.
Michael Bott (:Oh, it should say how far St. Louis is from Quebec-Luttepe itself. What is this about for?
Rupert (:20 miles roughly, is it 20 miles or 20 kilometers? It's something like that. 20 kilometers, yeah. And see, we climbed up this hill where there's a Roman, again, derelict, but there's a Roman fort on the top of this hill. But from there, you can look down over the city and you can see what looks like a derelict building site right in the middle. And...
Michael Bott (:20 kilometers I think, it's not quite 20 more.
Rupert (:That derelict building site is the site of Yenumahale, which is an old tea pillar site, same age as Gebekli Tepe. And it is that point of over time settlements just get bigger and bigger and bigger. And if you want to be a purist about the information, you know, be really accurate about the information,
Rupert (:permanently inhabited over thousands of years. It was abandoned in favor of something close by but the point is that we know that many sites were abandoned. Abandoned is probably the wrong word to use in these cases because there can be all sorts of reasons why over time you might want to stop using a particular site. It might be
because of a build-up of your own sewage. It might be because it's become louse-infested, and there's all sorts of reasons why you might want to move to something cleaner.
Michael Bott (:Or you might have been fighting a losing battle about the hillside coming down into your...
Rupert (:That, yeah, also true. That's a good point. So when you get the information that they know the site was abandoned, the point is that it was abandoned in favor of something very close by. So once again, when you're looking at things that are right in the middle of a city, then you still can apply that rule that a successful settlement does just get bigger and bigger over time.
And we see so many instances of that, whether it's Cairo, Jericho, it doesn't matter, that these sites that you go back that period of time, and the land was so lush and giving that it is, it's the proverbial Garden of Eden. It's no mystery that it's so deeply entrenched in global mythology, really.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
And of course there would have been settlements all over the place and those settlements that had access to the limestone bedrock with which to build their buildings made T-pillar sites. And as in so far as that geological area is concerned, they are the T-pillar sites are there to be found.
Rupert (:Mmm.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Michael Bott (:you know what other you know sites that are maybe the largest of them it might not only time will tell in these instances i guess i think i tell you what potentially they're having been to kahan tepe it's potentially bigger than gebecle tepe
Rupert (:Yes.
Michael Bott (:looking out over the landscape and seeing, you can see the tops of T-pillars unexcavated that are still poking out, you know, looking like ordinary boulders, elongated boulders in the landscape. Oh look, a T-pillar over the T-pillar! It's extraordinary. So...
Rupert (:Yes.
Rupert (:Yes.
Rupert (:Yes.
Rupert (:Yeah. It's it's quite. I don't want to say mind blowing. I don't. God, it's because that makes the impression that it's a constant surprise. It's not that it's the it's the information overload when you're walking across a landscape and you know that, oh, look, here's another one. And you know that.
That's going down at least 10 feet, three meters below your feet and possibly more. And and everywhere you walk, it's like that. And Rebecca is big. Twenty hectares, I can't remember how big Karahan is, not quite so big, I don't think. But the point is, you're still talking about roughly the same percentage of the site that's been excavated, five, six, seven percent, never more than seven percent. And
Michael Bott (:Okay.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Rupert (:And when you look at the sophistication of what they've found, bearing in mind that they only find them because of T-pillars, they don't find them because of domestic buildings, because the domestic buildings aren't standing proud of the landscape. So you just you can only guess at what is still remaining, waiting to be seen under the other 95 per cent.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Michael Bott (:Yeah. And of course it is absolutely no surprise that the special buildings are the ones that have been concentrated on because it's the T pillars, the surface.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Michael Bott (:tops of the T-pillars that have alerted archaeologists to where a site might be. So where do you dig? You dig down on the special building and the site becomes about the special building, not the people that were living just up there, around there. So look.
You mentioned the word information overload and I think, you know, we were overloaded and we've done our best to unload some of it in this podcast. I have a feeling that we've only scratched the surface, you know, in so many areas, but we hope that's not too much information overload for you lot out there to take in.
Rupert (:Yes.
Rupert (:Indeed.
Michael Bott (:because believe me, there's more to come. But I hope that gives you a different flavor perhaps than you've taken on before about this extraordinary sight seen through our eyes, obviously, on the ground. But I can promise you we've got stuff coming up, which will be published on YouTube. So there'll be lots of pictures, lots of video to watch. Sorry, again, that.
Rupert (:Yes.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Michael Bott (:this being the concentrating on this being a podcast, there's not much supportive material as far as that is concerned. But but there's stuff coming. I mean, it'll almost be that I think one of the next things out will probably be almost the video version of this as you
Rupert (:There will be. Yeah.
Rupert (:There will be though, there will be.
Michael Bott (:I carry you with the camera through those three days and follow Rupert and I and Lee through those buildings so you can see with your own eyes the journey that we undertook and the riches that are on that site beyond the special buildings and at that point, this point I think it's time for us to wind up Mr. Soskin.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:Yes.
I have to say, I... Yes, we do need to wind up, but I think it's a point... One of the things that I am so happy that we are able to do in this is to actually show people all that...
Michael Bott (:Oh, yeah.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Rupert (:the domesticity and all this kind of stuff. When you think how many books have been written on the basis of this was a temple and nobody lived here and this was deliberately buried when no it wasn't. It's so nice to be able to actually have a reality check on that and get some of the real information out there.
Michael Bott (:Yeah.
Michael Bott (:Mm-hmm.
So folks, thank you so much for listening, thank you so much for watching. As I said before, please do take a look at our Buy Me a Coffee page. If you feel supporting about the Deputy Stonehenge, the film series would be something you'd like to contribute to. And also take a look at our Patreon page, because, you know, we've got a wonderful community there that also help us do what we do and keep our motors running.
Rupert (:And there is a wealth of stuff on the Patreon site that is only there for patrons as well. It's, uh, there's a lot of stuff on there, yeah. Yeah.
Michael Bott (:For sure, for sure. So take a look. Thanks a lot if you do. Look forward to seeing you again very, very soon. So that's it for now. Till the next time, goodbye from me.
Rupert (:Yeah.
And it's goodbye from me, take care folks.
Michael Bott (:Well done. Bye.
Rupert (:Bye.
Rupert (:Bye.
Michael Bott (:Bye.
