Portasar, The oldest temple of the world

Portasar (Göbekli Tepe), The oldest temple of the world. In southeastern part of the Armenian Highlands (present-day Turkey).

Discovered in 1994 by the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, Portasar (Gobekli Tepe) is composed of pillars formed into concentric rings built on top of each other.

It is the oldest manmade religious complex ever discovered, and its use has been dated as far back as 9600 B.C.E.

At 12,000 years old, Portasar (Göbekli Tepe) predated humanity’s oldest known civilizations. Its megalithic temples were cut from rock millennia before the 4,500-year-old pyramids in Egypt, 5,000-year-old Stonehenge in England, or 7,000-year-old Nabta Playa, the oldest known astronomical site.

The Gobakly Tepe so-called temple, a pre-pottery Neolithic A period (9500 B.C.-8500 B.C.) complex of Portasar (in Armenian) is excavated by the German archeologist Dr. Klaus Schmidt.

The site is claimed to be about 12,000 years old. During a span of 25 years, Schmidt unearthed giant stone monoliths, covered in intricate carvings of mostly animals, some weighing as much as 20 tons.

What a challenge for Stone Age people to carry the two kilometer away from the quarry and to carve them with stone tools, and then have them erected as imposing tee-shaped pillars. It is a feat of engineering that boggle the mind.

Of the 20 enclosures, only eight have been excavated. Although the size of the complex is smaller than that of the Stonehenge, scientists consider it a crucial find for the people who built these structures did not have the knowledge of making pottery and did not engage in farming, metallurgy or writing.

Nevertheless, we cannot deny them the attributes of immense planning and cooperation in building such monumental history-changing structures.

Now, the left brain question: will we ever find out the secrets of Portasar? Only when we get another Dr. Schmidt to continue with the excavations of this Armenian “Sphinx”

by Nouné Yeranosian