NEWS: "... latitude at Harran equals 3/4 atan and at Ur 3/5 atan ..."

2008.04.25 - When is a "moon temple" an observatory? Recent press reports called my attention to Göbekli Tepe in Turkey (Göbekli Tepe - An Introduction). A flurry of news and media has followed the Jan. 18 article in Science, 319:5861. I particularly enjoyed a blog with good photos and critical attention to interpretation: My Visit to Paradise. Location = 37.224 N., 38.922 E.

Since 1994, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt has excavated at the Göbekli Tepe stone circles, circles 7,000 years older than Stonehenge. Schmidt reported, "Gobekli changes everything. It's elaborate, it's complex, and it is pre-agricultural. That fact alone makes the site one of the most important archaeological finds in a very long time." The German Archaeological Institute presents information about their Göbekli Tepe activity online. I include several videos and the links above for more imagery. The videos, German televison reports, contributed immensely to visualizing the site. I confess ignorance of the dialogue or the validity of any interpretaions they present.

None of us, not even archaeos, needs an excuse for being unfamiliar with such early Neolithic megalithic monuments; their existence is still big news. Nonetheless, interpretations about religion and even Adam and Eve have appeared. In researching the exact location, I read more of the regional archaeological context, with which I'm also rather unfamiliar. Literally and professionally, I live in the "New World," the Americas. One interpretation I encountered online called Harran's inhabitants "Septimite idolators." Okay then! It was more explicit associations with astromony that caught my attention with reference to Harran, an ancient center on the great plain south of Göbekli Tepe.

Harran is renowned as a Sabaean center associated with a moon "temple" and as an earlier Sumerian center. Harran was an important, once-populous prehistoric crossroad. I noticed Harran's latitude is 36.87 degrees, the acute angle of a 3:4:5 geodetic triangle (3/4 arc tangent = 36.8699°). Was knowledge of the latitude considered in locating a moon temple at Harran? When is a "moon temple" an observatory? When is idolatry exact science?

At this point the Old World had captured my attention once again, distracting from great pueblo geometry near the same latitude. The history/myth of Mesopotamia holds that Ur and Harran are two important, related Sumerian centers, both associated with the moon. I checked the Ur ziggurat, at 30.963 degrees. At first I did not notice colatitude equals 5/3 arctangent (atan). Colatitude is the distance to the nearest pole, a geodetic reference point. Latitude references the equator, the mid-poles plane perpendicular to the rotation axis. The local level plane at Harran intersects the rotation axis at a 4/3 atan angle, forming a 3:4:5 right triangle, as does latitude in relation to the equator and geodetic center.

Summarizing, colatitude at Harran equals 4/3 atan and at Ur 5/3 atan, while latitude at Harran equals 3/4 atan and at Ur 3/5 atan. Perhaps these "idolators" were doing astronomy? Lucky me, astronomy is not punishable idolatry anymore.

Mesopotamia Placemarks KML text file. Open with Google Earth.

Getting to why I did not notice the Ur colatitude right off, I checked latitude first because the precise value for pi caught my eye in the conversion table. We live in a 360 degree world, probably due to ancient astronomers in this region. Cultures also invent 365 degree worlds, as known from the history of astronomy in China. Divide earth's circumference by days per solar orbit (0.98561° = SO), multiply by 10 pi, and the result is the latitude of the Ur ziggurat, or 30.9638° = 31.4159 SO. This 10x version of pi caught my eye, distracting from the latitude tangents. But, I digress with this precise pi coincidence given a 365.25 degree world.

I turned next back to Göbekli Tepe and Harran. The sites are apparently intervisible, just over 40 km apart. The difference in latitude from Harran to Göbekli Tepe equals precisely 1/1,000 of earth's circumference. This is where we enter a twilight zone in ancient astronomy. Of course, the opposite metaphor is the proper one regarding the inference, "the dawn" of ancient astronomy. Also, Göbekli Tepe features the oldest known room aligned north-south.

Even non-archaeos understand stratification and deposition basics—deeper is older. Göbekli Tepe is 12,000 years old. Harran is equated with Abraham of biblical fame, and with Ur of Sumeria, the "Civilized Land" and a "cradle of civilization." That cradle and astronomy is presumed to be 4,000 to 5,000 years old, not 12,000. Harran is located at 3/4 atan latitude, a fixed parameter, and Göbekli Tepe is at a specific latitude difference north. Because the fixed parameter must come first, the conundrum, of course, is that this precise 1/1,000 of circumference latitude difference is either coincidence, or ancient astronomy just took a leap back to 12,000 years ago.

Anyway, that's how I came to notice the latitudes and colatitudes of Ur and Harran, excitement enough without entering twilight zones of inference and interpretation. But if I must, I might argue the Ur and Harran "moon temples" evidence a relationship to astronomy and precise knowledge of geodesy. In other words, what we call exact sciences. Here is one more video of Göbekli Tepe, where carved stones speak well enough for themselves and for their makers 12,000 years ago.

2008.10.13 - Archaeology magazine has a new article, entitled "The World's First Temple."

2008.11 - Smithsonsian Magazine has the good sense to frame same as a question: "Gobekli Tepe: The World's First Temple? Turkey's stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization," by Andrew Curry with photographs by Berthold Steinhilber.

2009.08 - examiner.com repeats the temple interpretaton in Göbekli Tepe: Standing stones from humanity's oldest temple by Gwynneth Anderson. They are engineers when building, " Building such a site is an engineering challenge...." Then when preserving the monument, they are religious instead ".. worshippers buried Göbekli Tepe under tons of earth...." Most interesting is the posted video with numerous still images of the site. The math is fuzzy, the images are clear:

Mesopotamia is located on the fertile flood plain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in a hot desert ecology. Human settlements based on irrigation agriculture first appeared coincident to the establishment of Eridu about 7400 BP. A great stepped tower, a ziggurat, which culminated a series of 20 structures built one upon another during a span of 3500 years evidences Eridu's importance. Public architectural monuments were the focus of early Mesopotamian community centers. By 6500 BP. large scale canal systems and many towns with public architecture had been founded. Eridu was the largest.

The Eridu period was followed by the Uruk, named for its largest and most impressive city. Settled by 6000 BP, Uruk grew to a population of 10,000 within a millennia. A significant number of developments occur in Mesopotamia during the Uruk period, including increased economic specialization, the introduction of metals, and use of beasts of burden, the wheel, cart and implements like the plow. River based exchange networks existed. Uruk's large and impressive Anu ziggurat was repeatedly enlarged to become Mesopotamia's largest.

During the dynastic period (5600 - 5100 BP.) a dozen city states evolved coincident with a widespread abandonment of rural settlement in the region. The population of Uruk rose to about 50,000 people and sprawled to cover 450 hectares, making it the world's first known urban center. Defensive walls around urban concentrations appeared. A significant new development during the Dynastic period was clay tablets with written script dating to 5,400 BP. A developed system with presentation conventions and 1500 ideographic and pictographic elements evolved. The Sumerian symbols can be equated with the forms of the earlier token convention dated to 10,000 BP. Writing facilitated cultural continuity, community organization and commodity transaction. During this period, about 5,000 BP., the first recognizable states appeared.

The innovation of irrigation agriculture made possible human settlement and population expansion in otherwise inhospitable areas. Mesopotamia exemplifies this emergent phenomena and provides one of the earliest case studies of a circumscribed marginal ecology being transformed into a breadbasket supporting large population centers. Only the Nile river exhibits a parallel situation and parallel developments during the same epoch. In Mesopotamia the earliest period of occupation by irrigation based agriculturalists centers on Eridu. Previous agricultural communities existed in northern Mesopotamia where rainfall adequate to support crops and domesticated animals occurs. What is unique at Eridu and other southern Mesopotamian settlements is a dependence on canal based irrigation, allowing emergent agriculturalists to adapt to an otherwise inhospitable ecology.

Irrigation did occur elsewhere prior to Eridu's settlement. At Eridu irrigation is a community scale enterprise. The earliest occupational levels include significant, central public structures that evolved to ziggurats. These structures remained central to Mesopotamian communities and are probably reflective of the evolution of community and regional organization during a continuum spanning millennia. Their constant rebuilding and enlargement is indicative of their social significance. Their centrality in the community is not only spatial; they are surrounded by important architecture like storage buildings and the most palatial compounds.

Canal works and public architecture evidence community organization. Evidence of land control or ownership systems is more ephemeral. Irrigation works make land more valuable to the agriculturalist or community, a quality dependent on a capacity to construct, operate and maintain a spatially complex, elaborate water transport system. This sort of sophisticated sphere of activity involves foresight, feasibility understanding, good engineering, organized construction and, to insure continuity, constant control and maintenance; in other words a community organization with continuity. Did communities, families or individuals own the land?

The value added dimension of irrigation system construction must have altered the way humans interrelated with land, particularly regarding temporality of ownership. Creators tend to view their products as property and persons and communities in creating extensive canal irrigation works became property owners. The ever larger central mound surmounted with community structures as the locus of the community area represents a form of deed, evidencing the community's longstanding claim to the locality. Today the ziggurats, tells and canal works remain as evidence from which the archaeologist works to reconstruct how the complex web of the first civilization and urban area evolved from a highly successful adaptation of irrigation agriculture.

The combination of agriculture, complex large scale irrigation works and community organization was such a successful adaptation that it sustained 50,000 member urban centers. The massive ziggurats, manifestations of the community's heritage and enduring temporality, encase many chapters in the history of the evolution of Sumerian civilization and statehood. Ziggurats, tells, canals and defensive walls write history for us today as surely as did the Sumerians evolve to utilize writing, annote our most ancient histories and thereby begin to close the door on prehistory.

ArchaeoBlog - An archaeology web log by James Q. Jacobs

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