A RETURN TO THE SOURCE
So even though I was unable to communicate directly with the Alevi I met, their message got through loud and clear. Finding Eden, ultimately, is not about putting pins in maps and saying, “This is it—I have found Paradise.” It is about an inner journey—it is about returning to the source of human experience and understanding exactly who we were before someone, somewhere, conditioned us to feel guilt and shame for the first time—shame about who we are as individuals, how we should act and behave, and what we should do with our lives. This is not a declaration of anarchy or a license to do what you want. It is a call for us to try to regain some small sense of the innocence and purity of heart that prevailed in the past, and I glimpsed just for a moment among the Alevi people who still occupy the Garden of Eden today, for their world seems a happier place than ours.
APPENDIX
USEFUL DATES
The following is a list of useful dates relating to topics discussed in this book. Many of the dates are generalizations and should not be seen as absolute.
| 41,000 BC | Cro-Magnons arrive in Europe |
| 40,000 BC | Earliest known settlement sites at Kostenki, Central Russia |
| 30,000 BC | Kostenki-Streletskaya culture established at sites on the Russian steppes and plain, including Kostenki and Sungir |
| 30,000 BC | The Venus and the Sorcerer panel created at Chauvet, France |
| 30,000 BC | Sungir burials take place |
| 23,000 BC | Brünn type appears in Central Europe |
| 23,000 BC | Solutrean tradition established in Europe |
| 20,000 BC | Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) |
| 19,000 BC | Kostenki-Streletskaya culture culminates |
| 19,000 BC | Zarzian culture appears in the Caucasus and Zagros regions |
| 18,000 BC | Solutreans arrive in North America? |
| 17,000 BC | Solutrean rock frieze created at the Roc-de-Sers shelter, France |
| 16,500 BC | Deneb in Cygnus becomes Pole Star |
| 16,500 BC | Shaft Scene created at Lascaux, France (radiocarbon date) |
| 14,500 BC | Delta Cygni becomes Pole Star |
| 14,500 BC | Solutrean tradition disappears |
| 13,000 BC | Vega in Lyra becomes Pole Star |
| 13,000 BC | End of the last Ice Age |
| 11,300 BC | Clovis culture appears in North America |
| 11,000 BC | Vega ceases to be Pole Star |
| 11,000 BC | Swiderian culture appears in Central Europe |
| 10,900 BC | Younger Dryas Boundary impact event (proposed date) |
| 10,900 BC | Younger Dryas mini ice age begins |
| 10,500 BC | Swiderian culture enters eastern Anatolia? |
| 10,500 BC | Zarzian culture disappears |
| 10,500 BC | Gobustan rock art, Azerbaijan (earliest possible date) |
| 10,250 BC | Hallan Çemi founded in Eastern Taurus Mountains |
| 9600 BC | Younger Dryas period ends |
| 9500 BC | Age of oldest known enclosures at Göbekli Tepe |
| 8630 BC | Çayönü founded in southeast Anatolia |
| 8500 BC | Nevalı Çori founded in southeast Anatolia |
| 8000 BC | Göbekli Tepe abandoned |
| 8000 BC | Aşıklı Höyük founded in central Anatolia |
| 7500 BC | Çatal Höyük founded in southern central Anatolia |
| 6000 BC | Halaf culture appears |
| 5000 BC | Ubaid culture appears |
| 2900 BC | Sumerian civilization founded |
| 2600 BC | Foundation cylinder deposited at Nippur in southern Iraq containing the story of the Anunnaki and their Kharsag/ Eden settlement |
| 2300 BC | Assyrian civilization founded |
| 2150 BC | Abraham departs from Harran, according to biblical chronology |
| 1894 BC | Babylonian civilization founded |
| 200 BC | Book of Enoch/Dead Sea Scrolls constructed |
| ca. AD 29 | The disciple Thaddeus journeys to Edessa to cure King Abgar |
| ca. AD 43/45 | Thaddeus conceals relics at Yeghrdut in the Armenian kingdom of Taron (the modern plain of Mush) |
| 3rd century | “Life of Adam and Eve” appears, based on much older material of Jewish origin |
| 4th century | Yeghrdut monastery founded |
| post 367 | Gnostic library concealed at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, containing various Sethian texts |
| 5th century | Cave of Treasures stories begin circulation |
| 5th century | Mount Ararat elevated as official resting place of Noah’s ark by the Armenian Church |
| 1666 | The Reverend Marmaduke Carver A Discourse of the Terrestrial Paradise published, demonstrating that the terrestrial Paradise was in Armenia Major |
| 1821 | First English translation of the book of Enoch published |
| 1883 | Ignatius Donnelly’s Ragnarök: The Age of Fire and Gravel published, demonstrating that a comet impacted with the earth toward the end of the glacial age |
| 1891 | Skulls of the Brünn type discovered at Brünn, Czech Republic |
| 1894 | More evidence of the Brünn type discovered at PÅ™edmost, Czech Republic |
| 1918 | Nippur foundation cylinder published, with English translation by George A. Barton |
| 1940 | Lascaux Caves discovered |
| 1945 | Nag Hammadi library discovered |
| 1947 | Dead Sea Scrolls discovered |
| 1948 | Swiderian cranium found at Kebeliai, near Priekulė in Lithuania, identified as belonging to Neanderthal-human hybrid |
| 1956 | Sungir burials discovered in Vladimir, Russia |
| 1963 | Peter Benedict of the University of Chicago surveys Göbekli Tepe, cataloguing it as site V52/1 |
| 1985 | Christian and Barbara Joy O’Brien’s The Genius of the Few published, containing a new interpretation of the Nippur foundation cylinder, and suggesting that Eden and Kharsag were one and the same |
| 1994 | Chauvet Cave discovered |
| 1994 | Professor Klaus Schmidt visits Göbekli Tepe for the first time |
| 1995 | First digging campaign begins at Göbekli Tepe |
| 1996 | The author’s book From the Ashes of Angels published, proposing that the stories of the Watchers and Anunnaki are a memory of the shamanic elite responsible for the Neolithic revolution in southeast Anatolia |
| 2000 | Göbekli Tepe’s discovery announced to the world |
| | |
FOOTNOTES
*1
. I would like to thank Richard Ward for his suggestion that the birds represent dodos.
*2
. To read more about Franz Gnaedinger’s identification of Chauvet’s Venus and the Sorcerer panel as the Summer Triangle go to
www.seshat.ch/home/homepage.htm
, and follow the links for Chauvet.
*3
. Dates based on an altitude of 2 degrees including refraction and calculated using Stellarium planetarium software.
*4
. Dates based on an extinction altitude of Deneb at 2 degrees including refraction using Stellarium planetarium software.
*5
. On the subject of which enclosure uncovered at Göbekli Tepe is the oldest, lead archaeologist Professor Klaus Schmidt is in no doubt—it is Enclosure C (personal conversation September 16, 2012). His reasoning is that Enclosure D’s outer perimeter wall abuts that of Enclosure C. Yet a counterargument against Enclosure C being older is easily made. If C was constructed after the latter, then it is possible that D’s preexisting boundary wall was reconstructed in order to allow the completion of C’s own perimeter wall.
*6
. Circular porthole stones associated with megalithic monuments exist at the following locations in Western Europe: England (the Tolven Stone in Cornwall and Devils Ring and Finger in Shropshire); Ireland (Cloch-a-Phoill in Ardristan, Co. Carlow); Germany (Züschen in Hesse and Altendorf, Degernau and Schwörstadt in Baden-Württemberg); France (Guiry-en-Vexin in Île-de-France and Trie-Chateau in Picardie/Oise); Spain (Antequera in Andalusia); Belgium (Lüttich and Weris); Switzerland (Courgenay in Jura), and in South Tyrol (Bozen and Riffian in Austria, and Gratsch in Italy).
†7
. Examples of dolmens or chambered tombs in southwest Asia can be found in Syria (Ala Safat, Amman, and Tsil) and Jordan (’Ain Dakkar). Here in the Near East they are ascribed dates ranging from the Chalcolithic age, ca. 5000 BC, down to the Early Bronze Age, ca. 3200 BC.
*8
. Rimutè Rimantienè (b. 1920) was a friend and colleague of Lithuanian-born anthropologist Marija Gimbutas (see chapter 20).
*9
. In the suspected Swiderian level at the Epipaleolithic site of Erbiceni, near the city of Iasi in Romania, evidence of canine domestication has been found.
*10
. Obsidian bifaces were found at Laugerie-Haute in France’s Vézère Valley in the Dordogne.
*11
. Obsidian sources also exist in Iceland and, possibly, in the Balkans.
†12
. A further source of Carpathian obsidian exists in Ukraine, within the Vihorlat-Gutin Mountains, much farther to the east.
*13
. This name for obsidian is cited on various Internet sites with the following words: “Ancient people called Obsidian ‘Satan’s claws’ fragments.” This sounds so similar to “Satan’s nail” that it has to be the same.
*14
. For instance, my Kurdish contact, Hakan Dalkus, says: “Unlike Genie, the Peri are not our religious beliefs. We, Kurds, believe the Peri were human beings who really lived. I also think they were a beautiful race” (February 10, 2012). He adds: “When I was a kid, my grandmother and some other women from old generation told us many stories of Cin (Genie) and Peri. Those women hardly left the village in all their lives, they could not speak Turkish. They had no influence of the outer world. So their stories wholly reflected old beliefs. I vaguely remember those stories now but I certainly remember that the Peri were human beings. Some kind of super human beings. Human beings could marry the Peri and have kids from them. . . . My knowledge of our old stories is only confined to the region around my village. My village has a proved history of at least 13 thousand years old. On Bingöl road. I read that the region around my village was a center of obsidian trade” (February 28, 2012).
*15
. Intriguingly, the Sámi once played a board game called tablo, whereby one person plays as the wolf or fox and the other as the hunter. Players moved around their pieces, with the hunter attempting “to corner the predator before he or she ‘eats’ all the hunter’s pieces.” See “Sami,” Countries and Their Cultures,
www.everyculture.com/wc/Norway-to-Russia/Sami.html#b#ixzz2J0bfenar
.
*16
. James Torre’s original Latin inscription is as follows: “
Lector si Pietatis amator, si Doctrinae estimator, scias quantus sub hoc lapide thesaurus situs est, Marmaducus Carver, Ecclesiae Hartilluncis Rector, C(h)ronologiae et Geographiae scientissimus, Linguarum peritus, concionando prepotens; hic scilicet, qui cum scriptis ad invidiam usque, verum terrestris paradisi locum orbi monstrasset, ad coelestem quem predicando Auditoribus commendaverat, cujus adeunti ingenti desiderio tenebatur moriendo translatus est, die Aug. 1665.
”