【简译】哥贝克力石阵（Göbekli Tepe）

“Göbekli Tepe” (“Hill with a Navel”, or “Potbelly Hill”) is found approximately 16 km (10 miles) northeast of Şanlıurfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey once named “Edessa” and known as “the City of the Prophets”. While this nearby city has a rich religious history, just how far back religion stretched in this region was unknown until the discovery of “Göbekli Tepe”. The site is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

          “哥贝克力石阵”（“肚脐山”或“大肚山”）位于土耳其东南部古城尚勒乌尔法东北约 16 公里（10 英里）处，该城曾被命名为“埃德萨”，并被称为“先知之城”。虽然附近的这座城市有着丰富的宗教历史，但在发现“哥贝克力石阵”之前，人们并不知道宗教在这一地区的历史有多悠久。该遗址已被联合国教科文组织列为世界遗产。

建筑与艺术

The site is the oldest man-made place of worship yet discovered, dating back to 10,000 BCE. The temples were discovered by a German archeologist (Klaus Schmidt) who had previously worked on the Nevalı Çori site and dig, which is now known to be predated by Göbekli Tepe. The temples contain 3 metre (10 ft) pillars situated in the round. Each T-shaped monolithic limestone pillar contains carved reliefs of animals – gazelles, snakes, foxes, and lions – as well as abstract characters and icons. Bones that have been discovered at the site suggest the hill was used for ritual sacrifices and feasts.

          该遗址是迄今为止发现的最古老的人造礼拜场所，其历史可追溯到公元前 10,000 年。这些神庙是由德国考古学家（克劳斯·施密特）发现的，他曾参与过Nevalı Çori 遗址的考古与发掘工作，目前已知Nevalı Çori遗址比哥贝克力石阵(Göbekli Tepe)还要早。神庙中有 3 米（10 英尺）高的圆形石柱。每根 T 形石灰岩石柱上都雕刻有动物浮雕（羚羊、蛇、狐狸和狮子）以及抽象的人物和图标。遗址中发现的骨头表明，该地曾用于祭祀和宴会。

Found in the cradle of civilization, “Göbekli Tepe” (Potbelly Hill in English) is rightfully named. As you drive through the surrounding villages (Derman Köyü, Göktepe Köyü, and Örencik Köyü) – one of two ways to get to the site – you are directed to the ancient temple by signs spray-painted on the wall. Then you slowly drive up the hills in between fields that have been worked by farmers for centuries until you see it, like a middle-aged man lying on his back with his shirt off, “Potbelly Hill” stands as the highest point in the area.

          位于文明摇篮中的“哥贝克力石阵”（Göbekli Tepe，英语为 Potbelly Hill），名副其实。当您驾车穿过周围的村庄（Derman Köyü、Göktepe Köyü 和 Örencik Köyü）（这是前往该遗址的两条路之一）时，墙上喷涂的标志会指引您前往古庙。然后，在农民耕种了几个世纪的田地间缓缓驶上山丘，哥贝克力石阵就像一个中年男子脱掉上衣仰面躺在山丘上，“哥贝克力石阵”是该地区的最高点。

The hunter-gatherers who built the temple lived in a world that predated writing, metal, or pottery, and at a time when archaeologists thought humanity had yet to group together to worship with priests and sacrifices, yet these Neolithic worshippers somehow organized themselves and found a way to cut and transport these 16-ton stone pillars up a hill and arrange them in a circular, ritualistic pattern.

          建造这座神庙的狩猎采集者生活在一个没有文字、金属或陶器的早期世界，考古学家认为当时人类还没有聚集在一起，在祭司的引导下用祭品进行崇拜活动，但这些新石器时代的崇拜者却以某种方式将自己组织起来，并找到了一种方法，将这些重达 16 吨的石柱切割并运送到山上，并将它们排列成一个圆形的仪式法阵。

The hill was littered with an enormous amount of Neolithic flint tools – knives, choppers, and projectile points. These tools are not out of the ordinary, but the sheer number of them is something of a phenomenon, and the fact that they were used to build a religious site, in a time when many historians and archeologists believed temples and religious practices of this kind did not yet exist, makes this an even more interesting discovery.

          山上散落着大量新石器时代的燧石工具：刀、砍刀和射弹尖。这些工具并不罕见，但数量之多却是一个不寻常的现象，而且在许多历史学家和考古学家认为还不存在神庙和宗教活动的时代，这些工具被用来建造一个宗教场所，这使得这一发现更加有趣。

对理解宗教发展的意义

The historian K.Schmidt believed that what he called this "cathedral on a hill" was a pilgrimage destination attracting worshippers up to 160 km (100 miles) distant. The discovery of Göbekli Tepe “suggests, at least to the archaeologists working there, [...] that the human sense of the sacred—and the human love of a good spectacle—may have given rise to civilization itself.” As excavator Klaus Schmidt put it, "First came the temple, then the city." Schmidt believes that civilization rose not due to ecological reasons, as has been the concensus, but rather that "civilization is the product of the human mind," a theory that would change the landscape archeology and our understanding of history.

     The new discoveries are finally beginning to reshape the slow-moving consensus of archeology. Göbekli Tepe is "unbelievably big and amazing, at a ridiculously early date," according to Ian Hodder, director of Stanford's archeology program. Enthusing over the "huge great stones and fantastic, highly refined art" at Göbekli, Hodder—who has spent decades on rival Neolithic sites—says: "Many people think that it changes everything…It overturns the whole apple cart." [If this is true, then, as Hodder puts it] "All our theories were wrong." (Newsweek)

          历史学家 K.Schmidt 认为，所谓的“山丘上的大教堂”是一个朝圣地，吸引着 160 公里（100 英里）以外的朝拜者。哥贝克力石阵的发现“至少对在那里工作的考古学家来说，[...]表明人类对神圣的感觉以及人类对美好景观的热爱可能是文明的起源。”正如发掘者克劳斯·施密特所说：“先有神庙，后有城市”。施密特认为，文明的兴起并非像人们所认为的那样是由于生态原因，而是“文明是人类思想的产物”，这一理论将改变景观考古学的面貌和我们对历史的理解。

          新的发现终于开始重塑缓慢发展的考古学共识。斯坦福大学考古学项目主任伊恩·霍德 （Ian Hodder）表示，哥贝克力石阵“大得令人难以置信，令人惊叹，而且年代早得离谱”。霍德对哥贝克力的“巨大的石头和奇妙、高度精致的艺术”充满热情，他曾花了几十年时间研究与之相似的新石器时代遗址，他说：“许多人认为它改变了一切......它颠覆了整个apple cart（Upset the apple cart是一个成语，意思是改变了事物的既定秩序）。[如果这是真的，那么正如霍德所说，“我们所有的理论都是错的”。(新闻周刊）

Even with these new theories and changes in understanding the development of civilizations, religion, and cities, at present Göbekli Tepe still raises more questions for archaeology and prehistory than it answers. The site seems to have lost its relevance and was abandoned in the 8th millennium BCE, but it clearly has strong implications for our understanding of the ancient world today.

          即使在理解文明、宗教和城市发展方面有了这些新理论和新变化，但目前哥贝克力石阵对考古学和史前史提出的问题仍然多于它所回答的问题。该遗址似乎已经失去了联系性，在公元前 8000 年就被遗弃了，但它显然对我们今天了解古代世界有着重大影响。

参考书目：

Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?Accessed 1 Dec 2016.

Schmidt, K. "Góbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey A Preliminary Report on the 1995-1999 Excavations." Paléorient, Vol. 26 / 2000, pp. 45-54.

Schmidt, K. "Göbekli Tepe – the Stone Age Sanctuaries. New results of ongoing excavations with a special focus on sculptures and high reliefs." Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Documenta Praehistorica XXXVII (2010), pp. 239-256.

The Birth of ReligionAccessed 1 Dec 2016.

The World's First TempleAccessed 1 Dec 2016.

Turkey: Archaeological Dig Reshaping Human HistoryAccessed 1 Dec 2016.

Wilson, M. Biblical Turkey. Ege Yayinlari, Istanbul, 2014.

原文作者：Ronnie Jones III

原文网址: https://www.worldhistory.org/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe/