Older than Stonehenge by 6,000-7,000 years, this archeological site in Turkey, called Hill of the Navel or Belly Hill, has just barely begun to expose its secrets. Around 11,000 BCE we humans were just coming out of an ice age--we'd painted figures on caves, but exactly why we created this temple-complex, no one really knows.
Klaus Schmidt, the archeologist, claims 43 of the 250 or more yet to be unburied stones show how accomplished early Neolithic hunter-gatherers were. Boars, foxes, gazelles and lions prance across stones, along with scorpions and many intricate birds--some being hunted with nets.
Like Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, this site was also deliberately buried. "Switched off" and left for the rest of us to wonder why. And like Silbury Hill in England, another pregnant belly, and New Grange in Ireland, the hills containing these wonders were all made by humans.
Why have we been compelled to create sacred patterns like this around the globe
Some recent speculation thinks this site may have been the original Garden of Eden.
Photos are from www.smithsonian.com
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