Astro-Mythology of Göbekli Tepe _ the Earliest Creation Story _ JJ Ainsworth _ Origins Conference

Our next speaker has been researching ancient symbolism for many many years. She has been traveling widely mainly with me and and to various other places but especially we've both been researching the work around the Taztebala culture of Gobekli Tepe, Karaitepe and that general area and JJ's research has really taken to a whole other level so I'm delighted she's sharing a brand new research with you at this conference so please give a warm welcome to JJ Ainsworth. So I'm going to speak about archaeo and astro mythology and its possible place in ancient cultures particularly to the builders of Gobekli Tepe because the symbolism that's found at the site. Gobekli Tepe is an ancient site more than 11,000 years old located in the It's just one of the many Taztepler sites in the region. Ancient myths can and have been reconstructed by linguistic analysis, by etymologists, linguists and philologists. They study the history of languages especially by looking closely at literature and oral traditions. They can figure out some of the earliest forms of myths by comparing stories from around the world to each other. It is a scientific process and a very accurate one. This chart shows the various migration routes of the Proto-Indo-European language and with the migration of the ancient myths traveled along it as well. Myths were teaching tools. They might tell an engaging story but for our purposes here today the myth I'm going to read to you also tells you where to look in the night sky. Imagine yourself at night inside the structures at Gobekli Tepe. Fires lit with an at least 20,000 year old primordial creation tale being told. So I'm going to read a reconstruction of one of the oldest myths in the world that came all the way down to Anatolia from the Russian steppes. I'll read it right now. Before there was time before the beginning there was darkness and from the darkness time began and when time began so the cosmos produced fire and ice. This was the beginning of the cosmos and within it two brothers were formed twins their names Manus which means man and his giant brother Yemo and Yemo means twin and with them was a giant cow. Through time gods were created both good and chaotic and through the cosmos they all traveled. Through the eons they lived grew and traveled until the brothers decided that they needed a home a world on which to live to inhabit to create a place of order from the chaos in the cosmos but to create this world a sacrifice had to be made and so it was that Yemo agreed to be sacrificed and Manus killed Yemo. Yemo the first dead man became king of the dead and his realm he opened for all those who followed after and this was the first death and so death was introduced into the cosmos. Manus descended to the world and there became the first priest and so he slew the great cosmic bull with whom he traveled through the cosmos for eons and in doing this he taught ritual sacrifice as this would allow the world and everything inside and outside of it to be kept in order. Manus cut Yemo's body into pieces and from these created the sun, the moon, the sea, the stars, the winds and earthly fire. From this dismemberment of Yemo it was his flesh that became the earth, his hair grass, his bones yielded stones, his blood water, his eyes the sun, his mind the moon, his brain the clouds, his breath the wind, his head the heavens and Manus having killed the great bull dismembered it and watched on as all living animals came from its body one springing forth from another and so on and all edible plants were created too and all this nourishing the people of the land and causing the earth to become fertile and finally Manus created the people and the first was Trito and Trito means third. As Manus had sacrificed his twin Yemo to Skyfather the gods showed their approval and gave cattle to Trito a gift to allow people to be rich in food and materials and all seemed good but on this world chaos had been waiting and had found a home there and the people's cattle were stolen under cover of night in a treacherous move by the three-headed six-eyed serpent Ngwe. Trito was not strong enough to fight off the serpent and so in time he made a sacrifice to the storm god offering his ritual drink to gain the god's strength for a fight with the evil serpent and the storm god was pleased and came to the world and offered to go with Trito to fight Ngwe and so together they traveled far into the mountains beyond the borders of their land to retrieve the cattle when they arrived at the serpent's cave they together battled Ngwe that chaotic three-headed serpent and eventually slew him allowing Trito to bring the cattle home with the cattle free and back on the land of the people Trito was recognized as the first warrior and hunter a hero that the people needed and he was celebrated for recovering the wealth of the people and ensuring the priests received cattle for sacrifice to thank the gods for all they have done for them and so Manus created a sacrificial fire and over it killed a bull offering it to the gods the flames and smoke reaching high into the sky their sky father and the other gods received that sacrifice ensuring their share keeping the gods content encouraging them to keep chaos away and in return the gods continued to give cattle to the people Manus continued to sacrifice and a new king was crowned he was also called Yemo and he was prepared to sacrifice himself to keep the people safe and the land fertile and Trito continued to keep the cattle safe this cattle sacrifice ensured the fertility of earth and all living things upon it and it kept the cosmos in order so I think that that myth I just read to you is speaking about a specific area of the sky the divine twin Yemo is Gemini and who was possibly two beings in one in some of the earliest myths many figures that we might recognize as Siamese type twins have been found at these Tepe sites in Turkey so we know for sure there is a possibility that they have been looking at Gemini in this manner these have been a site close to being 12,000 years old all those three sites are in Turkey the other artifact is from Ein Gezel in Jordan dated to about 9,500 years so the concept of twins as being special existed during that time and definitely could represent Gemini and Manus the brother of the giant androgynous twin Yemo is Orion who became the first priest after having slayed the cosmic bull Gemini is located on the ecliptic the apparent path of the sun and other planets and thus this means the sun passes through this constellation at the same time each year Castor and Pollux are twin half-brothers in Greek mythology one is birthed from a king of earth and one born of a god and I'm going to quote this their mother Castor was the mortal son of Tyndareus the king of Sparta while Pollux the brightest star was the divine son of Zeus who raped Leta in the guise of a swan which as Andrew Collins has pointed out may be Cygnus the two brothers shared many adventures together they even accompanied the Argonauts and their leader Jason in search of the golden fleece however during this journey a serious conflict arose and only the immortal Pollux survived in painful mourning for Castor Pollux asked Zeus to let him share his own immortality with his twin to keep them together and they were transformed into the constellation Gemini though accounts of the birth are very they are often said to have been born from an egg by the time the Gemini story reached Rome several changes were made the bovine had transformed into a wolf this wolf allowed the brothers Romulus and Remus to suckle its milk as infants ensuring their survival eventually again fratricide occurs with Romulus killing Remus and creating the city of Rome the divine Mayan hero twins represent complementary forces such as sun moon life and death these hero twins are bird hunters and while fighting the gods seven macaw one twin loses an arm they challenge the gods to a game to retrieve the head and body of their father from the underworld the gods pull many tricks on them and try to kill the twins the gods succeed but the twins are brought back to life in a river probably the Milky Way the twins win and destroy the gods the game is known to be a religious event of creation that they saw as core to their continued existence at Chichen Itza on the wall of the ball court there's a panel which shows the Mayan creation myth a player is decapitated and in its place rise seven blood snakes each representing the central elements of creation the creator god of maze who lives in a ball court in the underworld is kind of like the green man who resurrects every winter solstice when players moved along the ball court they were interacting with the creative deity encouraging him in the game of creation as the player in the above image is killed it again reiterates that creation must have a sacrifice in order to produce so we have the number seven possibly for the heavenly bodies along the ecliptic the Maya hero twins are Gemini and the seven macaw as the Pleiades because remember in this Mayan creation myth the twins were bird hunters and as Gemini sits on the ecliptic near the Pleiades and the fact that the Pleiades are almost always associated with birds and females makes it quite clear that the twin bird hunters were Gemini in my mind going up against the Pleiades another name given to the ball court was the looking place leading to the idea that under specific conditions the area may have been used to show the perpetual motion of the heavenly bodies so there's a cosmological aspect in the game as well another story of creation death and rebirth the shape of the ball court itself resembles the special symbols on the belts of the central twin pillars an enclosure d from Gobekli Tepe this h-type symbol is found all over the world though a lot of people don't realize this this is an artifact from the requay culture of the highlands of Peru and here the symbol on the head above the eyes is the h and also the figure is carved to resemble an egg shape in Zoroastrianism from ancient Persia modern day Iran Ahura Mazda created the world and the primordial bovine of Zoroastrianism cosmogony and cosmology and he set everything in motion the primordial bull was killed by Angra Manu for no reason other than he could Gavavadatta's corpse is taken to the moon and purified and from the bull's purified seed all animals come into being here the bovine is killed also by someone with a similar similar name to Manus from the earlier myth I read Angra Manu and we'll find this theme throughout myths if you pay attention on Crete King Minos which is another play on the older name Manus ordered young noble citizens seven young men and seven maidens to be offered as sacrificial victims to the half human half taurine monster Minotaur who was eventually killed by Theseus so seven seven and a sacrifice again and Theseus would be Orion there are tons of myths with the same motif around the world and I do believe all these ancient stories are pointing to that same area of the sky containing Gemini Orion and Taurus they were teaching about the cosmos through memorable stories that were passed down through many millennia migrating across the world the ecliptic is the orbital plane of earth around the sun from the observer on earth the sun's movement around the celestial sphere over the course of a year marks out a path along the ecliptic against the background of stars the ancient greeks believed that souls reside in the milky way river between incarnations and that there were two gates on the milky way they believed the golden gate or Sagittarius gate was where souls ascend after death the silver gate of Gemini and Taurus were the constellations through which souls descend to earth this gate is also known as the gate of man and these constellations lay opposite each other so I think at Gobekli Tepe enclosure d the ancients were pinpointing the silver gate between Gemini and Taurus specifically Geminis and the Pleiades and Taurus let's talk about why if you were at Gobekli Tepe at about 9600 bc and you were standing between the central pillars of enclosure d staring south the same way the pillars are facing and in the night sky you would see where the virtual ecliptic line passes through the Pleiades and Gemini meaning you will see over time the planet sun and moon orbiting along it a pretty good astronomical observation point and that's an image on Stellarium from 9600 bc and this would be the same time except around the winter solstice so let's study the symbolism here the pinda on pillar 18 one of the central pillars twin pillars from Gobekli Tepe enclosure d seems to show two beings holding hands and I postulate this is the constellation of Gemini since all the planets as well as the moon and the sun which is shown below Gemini in the above image always move very closely along the virtual line of the ecliptic all these orbiting bodies are regularly passing through something known as the golden gate of the ecliptic which I'll go into in a minute in the crook of the arm the pillar holds a canid so let's look at what Gemini is doing in its canis minor which could have been seen as a fox during the time of Gobekli Tepe is right next to Gemini on the same pillar with what I postulate is Gemini the symbolism found at the bottom of the same pillar shows seven birds or chicks of some sort these may represent the Pleiades the Pleiades star cluster is known to be the seven sisters seven chicks and almost always female as I mentioned and some of the stories about the Pleiades are the oldest as well some are over 20,000 years old and the aborigines of Australia knew them as the seven sisters okay so hopefully that makes sense the ancients were very clever and sometimes I think it's best to not overthink their symbolism I think they clearly showed us what they were doing and where to look and they created amazing stories in order to draw your attention to where to look in the night sky the other central pillar in enclosure d is pillar 31 and on its pendant is a bull and I believe this t pillar to represent Manus or Orion and it may portray him having slayed the cosmic bull hence the necklace and I believe these pillars are holding their stomachs in an act of showing rebirth or pregnancy or fertility because in the myth once Manus laid the cosmic bowl all animals and edible plants were created from it so the ancient Hittites of Anatolia modern-day Turkey used a writing system we call today hieroglyphic Luwian from the previous panel this hieroglyph set shows a symbol for Deus or God I again think this possibly may represent Gemini twins born from an egg and below the symbol for God is a bull's head probably the Taurus constellation and that symbol is very similar to what is displayed on the central pillars of enclosure d I think the god symbol in the egg shape circle represents Gemini and the bull's head Taurus making up the place of the ecliptic and the silver gate the gate of rebirth follow the path from Gemini to Taurus to the silver gate or the gate of man I descend back to earth the path of rebirth not only that but if you look from above the enclosures at Gobekli Tepe they also somewhat resemble the hieroglyph meaning God just something to think about look see the gateway the entry point back to earth looking to the north and see the ascension journey of the soul through the golden gate look to the south to the silver gate and be reborn and like the myth I read in the beginning Orion slaying the cosmic bull is a necessary act of creation as life bursts forth from the bull's dead body a sacrifice that must take place in order for the cycle of life to continue enclosure d shows us the full circle of life death and rebirth of the soul the builders of Gobekli Tepe seem to know about something called the golden gate of the ecliptic which is an asterism in the constellation Taurus that has been known for several thousand years the asterism is built by the two eye-catching open star clusters of the Pleiades and the Hyades that form the two posts of a virtual gate the two sides of the ecliptic line that goes through many constellations that include Gemini which you can see in the night sky at winter and summer at 9600 BC from Shanley Irfa which is where you know Gobekli is located when I kind of understood what was going on here I was quite astonished so this might be the oldest known representation of the golden gate of the ecliptic in enclosure d the twin pillars there and this is another example of the ancients marking the golden gate of the ecliptic this limestone tablet was found at a site in Malta which I visited called Tal Kadi it's about 4,500 years old so quite younger than Gobekli Tepe but still interesting the site's in ruins and there isn't much left to see unfortunately so this is the Tal Kadi sky tablet matched to the Skari sky with the ecliptic line showing the Pleiades and Taurus prominently and the virtual line would continue through to Gemini this is another example of how the Tal Kadi sky tablet may have been used to measure the ecliptical latitude of the moon and planets also this androgynous twin deity from the ancient site of Jagra on Malta is most likely representing the same thing as well which one of my friends and guests Katie Montanez pointed out while we were on a trip in Malta what is also interesting is they also use the H symbol on altars in Maltese temples just like at Gobekli Tepe perhaps it is representing Gemini or the path that the souls have to travel after dying and one greek tale a fucus tramples on Scorpio at the golden gate and having received the elixir of life from the serpent restores Orion to life at the silver gate maybe the H like symbol is a simplistic way of showing us the path the soul must take in order to be reborn the gateways on either side and the path in between so now i want to talk a little bit about the Saber panel which is at the bottom of the slide it's about 11 000 years old and is part of a newly excavated test teplar site located in Turkey it's also showing a version of the myth i read earlier relating to Gemini Orion and Taurus the slaying of the bull for the fertility of the earth and all living things was necessary to keep the ordering keep order in the cosmos the seal at the top is from the Indus Valley it's about 3300 BC and it too is showing the same type of symbolism so the tradition of slaying the bull continued on for thousands and thousands of years barely changing its aspect which is absolutely amazing and that's it and who's going to come on next thank you