Hi guys, today I want to share my insights into the mysterious handbag-looking carvings
on one of the Göbekli tepe pillars.
Göbekli tepe is the ground breaking archeological site which changed the paradigm of our thoughts
on the neolithic age.
Its oval structures with magnificent megalithic pillars revealed a much more sophisticated
stone age culture beyond our previous assumptions.
Besides their impressive sizes, many of the limestone pillars have decorative carvings
with animal reliefs.
The most controversial and well-known pillar is Pillar 43, a surrounding pillar in Enclosure
D.
The three handbag objects on top of this pillar have caught a lot of attention for decades.
What were they and what function did they serve?
Since this pillar has an obvious vulture, it is also called the “vulture stone.”
The handbags and the vulture have been widely discussed and speculated on.
Certain researchers proposed that the vulture stone depicts the Younger dryas comet impact.
Some think the bags contained crop seeds to replenish the earth after the flood.
Some claim that the circle near the vulture was a human head because there is a headless
human body down below.
In this video, I’ll offer different ideas on the handbag-like patterns and the vulture.
My new concept correlates with the latest excavation results at Göbekli tepe and recent
findings on numerous other neolithic structures in the Near East region.
Spoiler alert, these so-called “handbags” might not be bags at all.
This particular pillar 43 is like a big puzzle.
It is graphically complex with various elements floating around on three sides of the pillar;
in addition to the vulture and so-called handbags, there are birds, a circle, a scorpion, snakes,
a headless man, a big cat, and more.
The lower portion is damaged so the carvings are incomplete.
Without seeing the full picture, it would be even more difficult to presume the entire
story these reliefs were meant to convey.
Fortunately, there is important background information of Göbekli tepe that can help
us to narrow down the possibilities.
In my last video, I presented some of the most significant archeological new findings
on this site which overturned many previous beliefs.
Archeologists dug several "keyhole" trenches down to the site's bedrock.
They discovered that Göbekli tepe was a permanent settlement with domestic houses, human burials,
cisterns and channels to collect rainwater, and hearths to make fire.
The site contains countless stone points, grinding tools and stone vessels to process
and cook food.
Göbekli tepe was not a mere ritual center visited on special occasions but a populated
town.
It might not be deliberately buried either, but possibly inundated by sediments and erosion
over time during the thousands of years in the pre-pottery neolithic era.
Other than these excavation results, the similarities between Göbekli tepe animal artifacts and
the modern time hunting and exploration clubs also attributed to my proposal.
The psychological motive behind the animal carvings with fangs of Gobekli tepe and the
fanged big animals in the 20th century Explorers Club might be the same: both groups of hunters
were proud of their extraordinary achievements involving subduing big game animals and therefore
showcase them in their communal halls.
Consequently, I propose that at Göbekli Tepe, the large pillars of the oval enclosures,
the ones adorned by mostly animal reliefs might be commemorations to document, memorialize
and honor major hunting trips, game accomplishments, hero hunters and/or hunting gods.
Perhaps each pillar was dedicated to a successful hunting event, like a story board, which recorded
the animals they saw and/or captured, occasionally scenes were included.
These round enclosures were more plausible to correspond to the hunters who lived there,
instead of having celestial or astronomy meanings.
Ancient hunters might have celebrated and shared great hunting stories and legends in
their oval hall of fame.
Using such a scenario, we can explain almost all the pillar reliefs.
But pillar 43 is an exception due to its bizarre bag carvings.
They seem unrelated to hunting.
Or do they?
Before explaining my thought processes on the alleged handbags, I want to quickly explain
my interpretation of the big vulture which gives the pillar the name of the vulture stone.
This vulture is well depicted with wings spreading out almost touching a sphere or circle.
Remember the conjecture claiming that this sphere is the head of the headless man at
the bottom?
I disagree.
There have been many artifacts of human heads and masks found at Gobekli tepe and they all
have prominent noses and brow bones.
On another relief piece, archaeologists suggested that this shape might be a picture of a human
head – which is probable, judging by the typical emphasized nose and brown bones.
While on pillar 43, the circle by the vulture is a real circle thus unlikely a human head.
A sphere hanging in the air during the neolithic time?
What can it be?
The sun or the moon, right?
I say it ought to be the sun in conjunction with the posed vulture nearby, because sun
bathing in early mornings is a signature habit of vultures; it’s called the “horaltic
pose”.
In the early mornings, vultures often will sit with their wings spread wide, increasing
the surface area of their bodies so that the sun can warm them, dry their feathers, bake
off the bacteria and parasites.
So, I think this part of the pillar is presenting the vulture with its wings open by the rising
sun.
A fairly grand scene admired by the neolithic people as well as observers today.
Were there symbolic or ritualist meanings behind this depiction?
Maybe.
But if that’s the case, we would have seen similar repeated carvings onsite, though the
vulture with open wings and the sun is a unique picture based on current findings.
Therefore, it’s more likely that the stone masons who created the vulture and sun reliefs
intended to record a scene they deemed interesting and noteworthy of permanent documentation.
That same logic contradicts the various theories that the handbag-looking carvings were ritualistic
or symbolic, wherein symbolic items should have been represented in a repetitious motif
and not singular like on one pillar.
According to excavation analysis, scientists think that the grains processed, cooked and
fermented at Göbekli tepe were wild grains.
This challenges the suspicion that the handbags contained crop seeds.
If there were advanced beings, who somehow came here to offer domesticated crop seeds
in handbags, then there should be evidence of such grains especially considering that
Göbekli tepe prospered for over 2,000 years.
During this long period there would have been plenty of time to utilize and spread domesticated
seeds if they existed, which there is no evidence of.
As a result, the seed bag idea is not convincing.
The intriguing bag reliefs might in fact speak for something entirely different.
Let’s take a closer look.
On top of pillar 43, apart from the woven kind of pattern, three ‘handbags’ are
each accompanied by a small zoomorphic carving.
The right bag has an upside-down quadruped animal.
The left one has a figure that looks like a ‘bent-ostrich’ with the bird’s head
facing downwards.
The middle ‘handbag’ is accompanied by a big cat-like animal falling off the slope.
One could argue this animal is a standing quadruped, perhaps a gazelle or goat with
long horns facing the handle of the bag.
That’s probably not accurate.
From the diverse onsite animal portraits, we can see that the thicknesses of an animal’s
limbs are all depicted similarly, which are truthful illustrations.
If the animal at the middle bag was standing or charging at the bag handle, then that would
make its hind legs much thicker than the front ones which is not the artistic custom of Göbekli
tepe masons.
Hence, I think this figure was meant as an animal facing down with a long tail over its
back.
Now, the three animals associated with the three bags are all facing down as if falling
over something – that’s very interesting to me and worth pondering.
In what situation would that happen?
Animal pit traps come to mind.
Animal traps are a rarely discussed topic in the stone age archeology.
Usually, we assume that hunter-gatherers just chased animals and hunted them with stone
points.
This is a gross underestimation of these ancient people who were far more advanced.
Think about it, compared to many animals, humans have rather constrained physical abilities.
We are not as strong or fast, we lack fangs and claws.
So how did stone age humans compete with megafauna during the Pleistocene?
Not only competed with megafauna, but became the top species over all the other predators
on the planet.
A 2021 paper reconstructed the nutrition of stone age humans and found that humans were
apex predators for two million years.
The conclusion was based on the acidity of the human stomach, the structure of the fat
cells in our bodies and our genome which jointly indicate that humans ate mostly meat during
the exceedingly long stone age.
For example, the acidity of our stomach is high when compared to omnivores and even to
other predators.
This study does not exclude the fact that humans also ate starch-rich food as early
as 100,000 years ago though the majority of human food source was meat.
These researchers postulate that only the extinction of larger animals in various parts
of the world, and the decline of animal numbers toward the end of the stone age, led humans
to gradually increase the grain and vegetable elements in their nutrition, until finally
they had no choice but to domesticate both plants and animals -- and became farmers.
Back to the question of how did early humans become the apex predators.
Ancient hunters did not achieve this status by merely throwing stone spears and arrows,
even though that’s what most illustrations present.
There are other crucial factors that have been overlooked.
Humans’ physical powers cannot rival other predators.
Plus, close range hunting is a very dangerous job even for lions and wolves.
Humans’ exceptional advantage came from our brain which provides a superior cognitive
capability.
Neolithic, possibly paleolithic hunters had better and more effective hunting methods
that helped avoid injuries and maximized the outcomes – by using traps.
Unlike active hunting, which requires a human presence during the kill, trapping can capture
animals at any time, especially when humans are gone.
In 2019, anthropologists found two human-built pits in Mexico, which were dug at least 15,000
years ago and used to trap mammoths.
They contain the remains of 14 woolly mammoths.
From Middle East, Levant, North Africa, Central Asia and Arabia, over 6,000 mega hunting traps
constructed at different times over the last 10,000 years have been identified.
Multiple such traps are not far from Göbekli tepe and other “Tas Tepeler” neolithic
sites, like this one is at the south of Karahan tepe.
Although Göbekli tepe is older, timing wise these huge traps might well overlap with these
long-lived stone hill towns.
From the ground, these extensive traps consist of low stone walls which look obscure.
They were first discovered from the air during the 1920s and named ‘desert kites’ by
aviators because they looked like old-fashioned children’s kites with streamers.
Regardless of form, all kites in the region have driving lines of low stone walls that
converge to funnel animals towards a trap such as a pit or precipice.
These hunting traps are considered some of the largest ancient structures of their era.
The constructions of these kites are carefully designed to cross herding animals’ regular
paths and stretching over large landmasses.
The entrances and the ends of the kites often lie where a slope breaks or changes to deceive
the animals.
These gigantic structures suggests that the hunter gatherers in these regions were much
more sophisticated than had been initially thought.
According to archaeologists, even the earliest builders of these kites knew that high walls
were not necessary.
They were aware that shorter walls would be enough to control the flow of animals into
the enclosed area because migrating animals like antelopes and gazelles were prone to
avoid unusual structures like rows of stones and shallow ditches.
These early hunters, therefore, laid obstacle walls to compel the animals into the traps
without scaring them off.
These walls are hundreds of meters to 5 km or 3 miles long; ending with pits which are
usually lined with stone up to 4-m or 13’ deep.
A kite can have one to more than 20 such pits to trap animals.
Some kites have multiple pits side by side at the enclosure.
The pits were covered with lattice work or other materials thus not noticeable on the
ground.
Once animal herds were directed into these kites and walked on these traps, they would
fall and be captured.
In this way many animals can be caught in one shot.
Here are some photos of excavated pit traps.
The shapes of these pits look quite familiar, don’t they?
They resemble handbags, wouldn’t you agree?
Let’s compare them with the bag-like reliefs on Pillar 43 of Gobekli tepe.
They do share common features.
Moreover, I suggest that the woven patterns directly above and below the bags might represent
the lattice covers of the pits.
Is it possible that these so-called handbags were actually neolithic pit traps to hunt
animals?
I want to remind you of the three animals carved next to the bag objects are all facing
down like they are falling off cliffs.
In fact, the right and middle ones have their heads touching the ground.
These figures might be demonstrating various kinds of animals falling into hunting traps.
In all likelihood, these hunters could have used the same concept to set up baited traps
for predatory animals and snake traps.
I suspect another pillar carving at Gobekli tepe, the one with multiple birds, is indictive
of bird traps with nets.
On another note, the overwhelming number of the desert kites spanning in these regions
point to the abundance of animals back then which enabled mass hunting.
These traps must have been very successful hunting methods, or the ancients would not
have built so many of them and continued to use the same technique for thousands of years.
With these massive traps, the hunters would have captured plenty of game animals for food,
hides, and likely extras for trading; which means the hunter-gatherer groups would need
to settle down somewhere not too far from their traps in order to process and store
the great amount of meat products.
Meat would have been dried, cured and stored for leaner/winter seasons.
Btw cured meat, such as prosciutto, sausage, and salami are still widely popular today.
These settlements could be either seasonal or year-round.
Furthermore, if a group of people invested significant effort and time to build vast
hunting traps, then they must have long-term plans with them and wouldn’t abandon them
lightly or quickly.
The game achievements from these mega traps might be able to support bigger, settled hunter-gatherer
communities.
And a bigger community would have more helping hands with the construction, maintenance and
upkeep of these mega traps.
So long and so forth, the community would have grown continuously and reach to the height
of a large, permanent hunter-gathering town.
Could that be the origin of Gobekli tepe?
So, my proposition on the Göbekli tepe handbag carving on top of pillar 43, is that these
figures along with the three downward facing animals might be indications of hunting traps.
Stone age humans became the apex predators not only because of their stone points but
also their strategic and clever trap settings.
They were good at assessing situations, learning patterns, lining up strategies, and finding
solutions.
I expect nothing less from them, after all, their brain-to-body ratio was higher than
ours.
Trapping is considerably more efficient and much safer than stalk hunting with stone points,
and in the right seasons and settings, trapping was probably highly reliable and easier.
With bountiful animal meat products and wild grains, neolithic people built permanent settlements
at Göbekli tepe and other Tas tepeler/ stone hill sites.
These traps were able to keep the captured animals alive for a while which might eventually
lead to animal domestication in the Near East.
It’s possible that these desert kites facilitated the founding of these enigmatic sites and
were a crucial innovation in human history and development.
What do you think?
If you have any insights, please leave me a comment.
If you like my video, please subscribe to my channel and share with others.
You can also support me on Patreon which is a monthly charge, or on buymeacoffee.
I appreciate your support.
This is Curious Being, I am Tina.
Thanks for watching and see you next time