Gobekli Tepe's grooved skulls

Angela

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See:
http://www.archaeology.org/news/5700-170629-turkey-gobekli-tepe-carved-skulls

I have no idea what this could have been about.

"At a 12,000-year-old temple in southeastern Turkey, researchers have discovered parts of human skulls stripped of flesh and carved with deep grooves, according to a report from Science Magazine. The temple, known as Göbekli Tepe, well-known for its structures and carved reliefs, which predate the development of agriculture. Starting in the mid-1990s, researchers discovered tens of thousands of animal bones at the site, with around 700 fragments of human bone mixed in. More than half of the human bone fragments analyzed so far have been parts of skulls. A detailed study of three of these skull fragments found that their flesh had been removed and grooves carved from front to back. One fragment also had a hole drilled in it. “The carvings consist of many deep cuts—somebody clearly did it intentionally,” said Julia Gresky of the German Archaeological Institute. The site’s stone artwork includes depictions of heads that are missing or lopped off, and the heads of some stone statues appear to have been intentionally removed."


See also:
https://phys.org/news/2017-06-skull-fragments-deliberate-lines-gobekli.html

This article has schematics of the modifications.

"Göbekli Tepe is the name given to an ancient temple in what is now southern Turkey—it was built approximately 11,000 years ago, during the Stone Age. Workers have been at the site for the past 20 years removing the soil covering the tall pieces of T-shaped limestone, some of which rise up to 18 feet from the ground. Thus far, researchers at the site report that it does not appear that the temple was used as living quarters, but was instead a temple where the locals gathered to perform rituals. One such ritual appears to have involved using human skulls—hundreds of them, broken into pieces, litter the areas between the limestone columns. These findings have caused researchers to label the site as evidence of one of the earliest skull cults. In this new effort, the researchers report that some of the skull pieces have been found to have lines cut into them."


"Because it is not clear why the grooves appeared only on three skulls, the researchers were left to generate theories—they believe one of the likeliest possibilities is that the grooves were made to hold cords in place while the skull was hoisted onto a pole using the drilled hole—possibly as a way to scare off enemies."
 
they don't have complete skeletons/skulls, just a few splinters
some of the skull splinters have carvings which are coloured
hard to tell what this all is about
 

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