Mystery of the Gobekli Tepe "Handbags"

This is part two of my consideration of the video What's Inside the Sumerian Bag by Ancient Architects. If you haven't seen part one, I recommend you go back and watch it before proceeding with this video so you're not kind of lost. I'll leave a link for you below. In his video, Ancient Architects draws attention to the buckets used by the Apkallu, the semi-divine guardians of Assyrian myth, who are depicted on several Assyrian palace reliefs and cylinder seals. He then tries to make a case that the mythology concerning these buckets originated in Australia, where they existed not as buckets but as bags. Yeah, he does this by comparing works of art. Now when my previous video was released last week, Ancient Architects and I have had some discussion and it turns out he has since revised his views on the matter, but I still think there's some value in going over his video because it illustrates some common mistakes that independent researchers make when examining ancient art. So please, stick around. Myths of Ancient History is aimed at dispelling common misconceptions about the past. If you're interested in ancient history, lost civilizations, and secrets from antiquity, I encourage you to subscribe to the channel because you will get lots of it. And if you find this particular video valuable, please hit the like button and comment below with your favorite takeaway. And feel free to ask any clarification questions that you may have. So now about this argument that these bags in different cultures are somehow related to one another. Before we get into it, I just want to take a moment to discuss the concept of archaeological culture. What that is, is an assemblage of artifacts that are united by a number of recurring characteristics. You have various material remains, ceramics, implements, ornaments, burials, ruins, art, that constantly recur together. Archaeologists note this and identify it as a specific culture. These cultures are often named after the type site, which is the first archaeological site that this particular culture was found. Oftentimes when two different archaeological cultures are geographically close and chronologically close, we can see certain characteristics from one culture, the earlier one, carry over to another culture, the later one. That's because people are always borrowing ideas from their predecessors or their neighbors. But now, what if two cultures who are geographically distant, chronologically distant, or both, happen to have similar characteristics in their material remains? Does that mean one of those cultures borrowed from the other culture? Well, it could be. The further away it is in time and space, the less likely, of course, because ancient peoples didn't get around as easily as we do, but it is possible. So, how would we establish this with relative certainty? Well, we would have to have a sufficient number of distinct and unique characteristics that would link those two cultures together and show how unlikely it would have been for the two cultures to have arisen separately and without any communication between the two. All right, so let's say we found two cultures on the opposite sides of the world, and they were thousands of years apart chronologically. And let's say archaeologists found a pot in one of those cultures that was of similar shape to a pot found in the other culture. Would that be enough, do you think, to show that the two cultures must have been connected in some way? No, I think you would agree not. It's entirely possible that these two cultures came up with these pots on their own, right? There needs to be more than that. Okay, so let's say both pots had a circle painted on them. How about now? Would you say that makes the difference? Probably not, right? Two cultures can come up with the idea of a circle on their own. One culture doesn't need to show the other one how to draw a circle. But if we get to a more complex and unique figure, then maybe we're onto something. There are other things to consider. Are the two pots made with the same material and with the same process? Is the same kind of paint used to paint the imagery? Do the images, if of special significance, mean the same thing? Archaeologists generally prefer to see more than one similar characteristic before being certain that two cultures are linked, especially if they existed far apart. They would like to see a bunch of uniting and distinct characteristics to tilt the scale in favor of the unlikely scenario that people of the one culture somehow got on the other side of the world and against the more likely scenario that the two cultures just happen to have some similar styles of art. With that in mind, let's look at how Ancient Architects makes his case that there's a link between the Mesopotamian water bucket and the Australian dilly bag. The oldest depiction of the bags in ancient art is found in Arnhem Land in northern Australia and is thought to be approximately 15,000 years old. There's an interesting use of the passive voice here. Is thought to be 15,000 years old? Thought by whom? Ancient Architects doesn't say, but a quick check of the information on Injilak Hill, where this work of art is, reveals that archaeologists date this art to 8,000 years ago, not 15,000 years ago. If Ancient Architects is going to disagree with the scholarly assessment, he needs to provide evidence that his date of 7,000 years earlier is more accurate. Perhaps he's done this elsewhere, but by wording it this way, Ancient Architects is misleading the public to think that he's simply repeating what archaeologists have determined. The image in question, found at Injilak Hill, is of the goddess Yingarna, known as the Earth Mother. According to an old creation myth, the Yingarna carried babies in her bags. As she traveled far and wide, she scattered her babies, giving rise to different linguistic groups and tribes. There is also another depiction of the goddess giving birth. The goddess Yingarna appears in many Australian Aboriginal myths, but there are hundreds of variations across the tribes. Yes, in one, she accompanies the Earth Mother, the two goddesses are not the same, and carries a bag full of babies or new spirits to populate the earth. But I have to ask, is the story of a goddess carrying her babies in bags similar to the story of the Apkalu carrying water in buckets to cultivate date palms? Do you think they match up well? I'm not seeing the correlation. Do you think they look the same? By the time of Ancient Mesopotamia, the bags, although prominent, probably held a different meaning. So, if I understand him, he's saying that over time, the bags turned into buckets. They became a different shape, were made of different material, were reduced in number, and meant something different. If they're not the same, why are we connecting them again? Water is the life force of the world. So, although the ancient Australian bags contained the seed of life, the Sumerian buckets held the life force. Water. Ah, so that's the connection. The babies in the Australian bags and the water in the Mesopotamian buckets are both linked in some way to life. Therefore, he argues, the Mesopotamian culture must be derived from the Australian one. Hmm. The thing is, life, like enlightenment, which we talked about in the last video, is such a general concept. It could be connected with almost anything. We could find art from any culture at any time and concoct a with the idea of life. I mean, what culture isn't fascinated by the birth of humans and animals, the sprouting of seeds, the blooming of flowers? They all are. It isn't unique. It isn't distinctive. In order to establish that one culture comes from another, we need more concrete and specific connections than just the general idea that they have something to do with life. In ancient Babylonia, the term used to describe the Anunnaki was Sir, S-I-R, which when translated means Big Serpent. Interestingly, the most important deity to the ancient Aborigines of Australia was the Rainbow Serpent. Is this another coincidence? Also, the ancient Anunnaki god Enki was believed to have belonged to the so-called Brotherhood of the Snake. Okay, so he suggests another link. He says the Sumerian word Sir, which means Big Serpent, was used for the Anunnaki and that the Anunnaki god Enki belonged to the Brotherhood of the Snake. Then he points out that the Rainbow Serpent goddess of Australia was the most important deity of the Aborigines and she was a snake. The snake concept links the two. You should know that the Sumerian word for snake is not Sir. It's Mush. Now, we used to believe it was pronounced Sir back in the old days, but we have since discovered that that was wrong and it's pronounced Mush. Mush is the word for snake. You also should know that there are no texts from ancient Sumer or Babylonia or Assyria that say that the god Enki belonged to a Brotherhood of the Snake. None. Enki, who was occasionally represented by a fish or a goat, was never represented as a snake of any sort. This is not to say that the Sumerians didn't have snake deities. They did. Ningishzidda was one, for example, but their chief god was not represented as a serpent, nor were all the gods thought to be serpents, as ancient architects implies. Regardless, since the Assyrian images are of the Apkallu, semi-divine figures and not the Anunnaki, full gods, ancient architects cannot rightly use the Anunnaki in his comparison. The Australian goddess Yingarna, when in animal form, is depicted as a snake, the rainbow serpent, but the Apkallu are part fish or bird and not snake. But it's possible that he's not referring to the buckets anymore. Maybe he's just trying to show a link, any link, between Australia and Mesopotamia by pointing out snake deities in both cultures. Unfortunately, deities associated with animals, whether snakes or any other animals, are common throughout the world. If you had snakes in your land, chances are you'd have snake deities. There were real snakes in Mesopotamia and there were real snakes in Australia, which means that they each were liable to make snake gods without having to learn those gods from elsewhere. So again, he still has provided nothing distinct or unique enough to link Australia with Mesopotamia. He hasn't demonstrated that Mesopotamia couldn't have come up with snake gods on its own, that it somehow needed Australia to teach it about snake gods. One of the main features of the Aboriginal rock art are numerous thin elongate humanoid figures, known as mimis or mimis, as well as countless depictions of animals. Mimis are said to have taught the ancient Aborigines how to hunt, to paint, to perform rituals and ceremonies. They brought knowledge. They were wise spiritual teachers. Take a look at these ancient Sumerian figures and compare them to the Australian mimis, separated by more than 10,000 years of history. We are seeing the same imagery and iconology. Are we? Here he suggests another link, this one again having no connection to the buckets or bags. He shows Sumerian figures next to Australian mimis to demonstrate similarity. By the way, he cut out one of the figures from the picture because it didn't match up as well. Now let me just ask you, as the viewer, are you so struck by the sameness of these images that you come to the unavoidable conclusion that the people who drew the Australian mimis must have influenced the Sumerians who made the figurines? Here's a better question. Do you think these Sumerian figures could not have been made without knowledge of the Australian mimis? Or do you think it is possible that they could have been made without knowledge of the mimis? If you do think it's quite possible, then Ancient Architect's argument is unconvincing. Now, I have a revelation to make. This image here that Ancient Architects is saying represents mimis, these aren't mimis. These are called wangina, and they're a different kind of Australian mythical figure. These are mimis. These are wangina. The earliest depiction of the wangina in Australian Aboriginal art comes during and after the Sumerian period in Mesopotamia. In other words, these images do not predate the Sumerian period. Mimis, according to the Australian Aborigines, are fairy-like beings who live in rock crevices, and that's why their bodies are so thin and elongated. Do you think these Sumerian creatures could fit in rock crevices? Their bodies are nothing like the bodies of the mimis. The only similarities that I can see are the big eyes and absence of a mouth. That's simply not enough to hang one's hat on. Everything else about them is different. Because Ancient Architects could not find a strong link between the bags of Yengarna and the buckets of the Apkallu, he was forced to look for similarities, any he could find, from other images in Mesopotamia and Australia to establish a connection. But even then, even when he doesn't restrict himself to the handbag imagery, he's still unable to provide us with concrete links between the two cultures. Maybe his example from North America will be better. Over in North America, the petroglyphs in the Koso rock art district show multiple bags on one rock face and are believed to be more than 10,000 years old, and they could well be the same age as the Australian depictions. I hate to break this to Ancient Architects, but the petroglyphs to which he refers are probably only a few hundred years old. The natives of the region express knowledge of the creation of the petroglyphs in recent times, and although their descriptions are not scientific, they do say the petroglyphs were made even into the 20th century. The images of men in cowboy hats and people riding horses and mules seems to confirm this. We know that bows and arrows were not used to hunt in this region until after 600 CE, so any images with bows must be from after that date, and there are quite a few of them. An analysis of the weathering of the rock art has shown that 81% of the rock art depicting bighorn sheep shows little or no weathering. And guess what? The rocks with the bags depicted on it have bighorn sheep on them. That means probably less than 1,500 years old. It also means most of the petroglyphs are less than 1,500 years old. This doesn't mean they all are, just that the majority are. Other scientific dating methods, Cajun ratio and weather rind organics and varnished microlaminations dating have shown that a substantial number of the petroglyphs were made just in the past 700 years. Some researchers believe that in this image the bags carry the seed of life. Like in Australia, there are also petroglyphs of strange human-like figures and a huge amount of animals. Could this be a mere coincidence? Just so you know, when ancient architects says some researchers believe the bags carry the seed of life, he is not referring to archaeologists or anthropologists who interpret these as medicine bags that the natives have used for a long time. While the contents of these bags can certainly help save lives, the natives do not speak of these bags containing, quote, the seed of life, unquote, and most certainly not in the sense that is spoken of in Australian myth. What about the fact that there are strange human-like figures? That's not distinct enough because every culture draws strange human-like figures and they also all have animals. The real question would be, are all the animals local? You see, if ancient architects could show that the American petroglyphs depicted some animals indigenous to Australia and not North America, then he would have something there. But he can't. All the animals depicted on the rocks are indigenous to the area, although ancient architects doesn't discuss it. He does show another Native American work of art, this one older than the Coso rock art, La Venta Monument 19 from the Olmec culture of Mesoamerica. I'm a little surprised ancient architects didn't go into it because it has a snake god on it as well as the handbag. Superficially, it looks similar to the images in Assyria. Could it be a water bucket? Even if so, much like pots, a bucket with a handle is generic enough that it need not have been a technology imported from another culture. But archaeologists have interpreted the object in the figure's right hand to be a copal bag, which was used to carry hardened tree sap to be burned as incense in There's a long tradition of using copal in this way in Mesoamerica, so again, quite different from water buckets. If we then look at the ancient megalithic site of Gobekli Tepe, which is around 12,000 years old, three bags appear on Pillar 43, the so-called vulture stone, which made the news in 2017 as experts said that that stone told the story of a comet impact on Let's take a closer look at the so-called bags on Pillar 43. Do you notice how the thing that looks like a handle is not attached on the right side, but further in? Why is that? A portion of the bag sticks out on the right side. And it's not just a messy depiction because all three are constructed that way, so it's deliberate. None of the other images we've looked at has this form. Notice also that there isn't anyone holding these objects. There's nothing to indicate the size these objects would be in real life. Do you know what the archaeologists who excavated the site suggest these might be? The buildings of Gobekli Tepe with arched or corbelled roofs, flanked by an animal image which may identify each building. I think that's a reasonable interpretation, don't you? There's room for debate on this, but there's nothing to suggest that these images must be handbags or water buckets, and the position of what would be the handle argues against it. Also found at Gobekli Tepe is a carving of the earth goddess giving birth, and of course there are countless animal carvings and reliefs across the site. There's nothing unusual about images of animals or a female figure giving birth in religious art that would suggest that they are not of indigenous origin, especially when the animals are found locally. When you study ancient civilizations, you learn that every new culture has taken aspects from previous cultures and used them to create a new. Each religion or belief system has the same core esoteric meaning, but a different outward appearance, so that it can appeal to the local people, a people who never get to learn the truth behind the religion, but just get a watered down version of the teachings. Every religion or culture has done this. I don't know anyone who disagrees with the claim that every new culture incorporates aspects of previous cultures. It's an observable phenomenon. In fact, archaeologists and historians generally believe that there were very few pristine civilizations in the world. By pristine civilizations, I mean urban societies that arose indigenously, without merely copying features of an existing urban society. Currently, we hold that there were six pristine civilizations, which arose in the following areas. Southern Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the Nile River Valley in Egypt, Peru, the Indus River Valley, the Yellow River Valley in China, and in Mesoamerica. Now, this does not mean that there was no influence of one of these upon another. Most certainly, Mesopotamia in Egypt influenced one another, and Mesopotamia in India influenced one another, and Peru and Mesoamerica influenced one another. But these influences occurred after these civilizations had already formed. They arose indigenously. It's possible that, as more information becomes available, we will need to tweak this list. But ancient architects would have you believe that these urban societies did not arise indigenously, but all of them, every single one, are to be traced back to Aboriginal culture in Australia. So far, he has not established a definite correlation, much less causation. So his conclusion that all religions can be derived from a single source is unfounded. What we see is the same religion, the same culture, propagated down through the generations, but taking on different forms. There has always been one true religion that has continued under many forms and kept hidden from the masses. The same teachings and secret initiations hidden in the plain sight of religion. If ancient architects had argued that certain religious teachings had gotten lost or forgotten as the centuries passed, I consider that a reasonable supposition. You probably would too. But instead, he ventures into conspiracy theory territory, claiming that the true meaning of religion is not lost, but has been kept secret from the public by religious elites. Has he interviewed religious leaders to bring this to light? I sincerely doubt that. Of course, he might say, well, their silence on the matter just proves that they're trying to keep it secret. It's an unfalsifiable claim. You can't prove me wrong, therefore I'm right. This is an enormous subject, but the point is, although religion has evolved, religious leaders and the leaders of civilization have always ensured the ancient wisdom is kept within. And each religious holy book has a number of layers, the deepest of which can only be read by an enlightened few. And that is the point of this video, the evolution of the belief system of humanity. I think the reason why ancient architects and others who hold this view might find this idea appealing is that it provides some hope that the meaning of life, the universe, and everything is out there somewhere, and that maybe someday it will be revealed. It's a comforting thought. But I don't want to psychoanalyze them, so you'll have to ask them why they prefer to believe this. All I can say is that in his video, ancient architects did not convincingly demonstrate to us that the Yungarna handbags of Australia have anything to do with the water buckets of Assyria, the medicine bags and kopal bags of Native Americans, or what may be the corbelled roof buildings of Gobekli Tepe.