Astronomical Controversies at Göbekli Tepe - Dan Richards & Hugh Newman - Megalithomania Podcast

The other thing on Gobekli Tepe that I know you're interested in is the Martin Sweatman work on the lunisolar calendar. Because he's also applied that to Karahan Tepe. The same bit where the winter solstice alignment occurs, it's almost like supposed to be there. I mean, he didn't even know about a winter solstice thing. And he developed this calendar based upon the stone head and the pillars, and with the starting point unclear. And then suddenly it's like, oh, well obviously it's going to start on the winter solstice, because that's when the head gets lit up. And so I've been in discussions with him about that, because we think there could be a strong contender. It backs up his work, and it backs up our work. So we're like, oh, wow. But his Pillar 43 stuff is absolutely mind-blowing. It's really intriguing. And the thing I like about him, he spent two or three years working on that article, working on that paper. Got it thoroughly peer-reviewed, not from the archaeologists at Gobekli Tepe, and they complained about it. But got it peer-reviewed, published in a scientific journal. It's a fact that there are astronomical and possibly astrological parts of Gobekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe, which is like big news. And it was big news. It went crazy. But since then, there was a backlash against it, as you know. Both Neshmi Kural, the head excavator of Karahan Tepe, and Lee Clare both put it out there. No, they had roofs. There couldn't have been any astronomy at all. Even though there's clear symbolism everywhere. And they even kind of deny that there's anything to do with astronomy there. Which is so wild to me. It's so weird. And it's like even the paper that he published, Lee Clare, on the leaders of Gobekli Tepe. He absolutely said nothing in there mentioned anything about the hunter-gatherer data on the way they followed the solstices and the stars. And so they're kind of dismissing it from their own academic writings. Based upon a roof, there's no evidence it ever existed. And so, Mike Sweterman is kind of like, boom. And because it's peer-reviewed scientific paper, it's like pushed it all open again. But I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Because to me, Mike Sweterman, he's a scientist. He's not an archaeologist, but he's a scientist. He knows how to do things properly. Not only that, archaeoastronomy, you know who Sir Alexander Thom was? Oh, of course. Of course. I figured you did. I was pretty sure you mentioned him in your presentation yesterday. Because we talked about the megalithic yard and stuff. But he was an engineer. He was a numbers guy. If you look at, there's a paper that I use frequently when I talk about the temples on Malta. It's about, I think it's 1992. They found that it wasn't serious that they found, but they found those temples were aligned to Crux, the Southern Cross. Now, they determined this with a team of an astronomer, an archaeologist, and a number cruncher. This is always part of the equation. There's two kinds of archaeoastronomy. They call it the old world and new world, basically. And the new world archaeoastronomy, generally speaking, we don't know much about the mythology of the old world. We usually do. But the old world archaeoastronomy will follow the new world methodology if it lacks that knowledge. Which we lack at Gobekli Tepe. Or Karam Tepe. So, you use mathematics to eliminate chance as much as possible. So, this is where a guy like Martin Swetman, David Miano from World of Activity, in my mind, famously blasted him for being a mathematician. He doesn't even belong in this. He's just a chemistry guy. He's a number cruncher. He deals in probabilities and things like this. This is exactly, traditionally, exactly the kind of person they brought to bear on this. So, right off the bat, that argument that you'll frequently hear, that he doesn't belong there, is bullshit. Furthermore, it's extremely intriguing because the ancients, like I said, even the spiders used the dang stars. The ancients used the stars for so many things. I'm not a believer in astrology, but I personally am of the belief that the reason that the astrology belief today harkens back to the time when there was the one guy that said two days we're going to need to plant the crops and five days the buffalo are going to be back. He could predict the future using the stars. This is important stuff. To just assume that the ancients... In my mind, there is absolutely no way that people started stacking rocks before they started marveling at the sky. You would spend all day long protecting your family, protecting your children, feeding your stuff, taking care of your hearth, and then at night you would watch the only show there was to watch. Exactly, yeah. I think it's hubris, and a lot of it is because archaeologists are 180 degrees looking the opposite direction. Their nose is in the dirt, and this is all in the heavens. The most unscientific thing about the whole Gobekli Tepe thing relating to the stars, not relating to the stars, is that there's no evidence for any roofs over the main enclosures. Yeah, they just postulate that. Basically, they found two negatives of poles, which are only about two meters long. And they extrapolated from that and assumed. Assumed. So what that is, though, they've excavated a lot of debris out the way, and no other negatives have been found. Just these two negatives, about two meters long, that doesn't equate to a huge roof. And there's literally no evidence. There's nothing left of it. It's just possible. It could have been a dead snake or stiff. It could have been anything. A place to hang your socks. But they put that out now on Wikipedia, in every possible article, news report, update, everything. And they keep repeating it. And then they paint. They've got painted pictures of it up in the visitor center of Gobekli Tepe. So this is what bugs me. I mean, I'm not an archaeologist. I'm not a scientist. But just an observer, you can see there's something fundamentally wrong with that. Because now, because of this assumption, there's no astronomy at play in the entire region ever. And it's written out of all the literature. And dismissed. And ridiculed. Sadly, pretty common. But the fact that it's not based on anything proven or scientific. I mean, I think there's a lot of... To me, that's a representation of a lot of what is going on. We can't speculate. But they can speculate. And put it out as fact. They can speculate all they want. And they put it out as fact. It goes on Wikipedia. So that really bugs me. I mean, there's many examples you've touched on over the years where that kind of thing's been happening.