Friday 27 May 2022

Goat and snake from Körtik Tepe

Two very interesting objects from the 10,000BC  Pre-Pottery Neolithic B site Körtik Tepe, located in the Diyarbakır district of Turkey. Thanks to @MattSibson for the great info about early Anatolian sites...

To understand what these two objects represent, we need to look at the climate in the Körtik Tepe area


You can see that the climatic year in the area is divided into hot, dry half (roughly Ap/May - Oct/Nov) and the cool, wet half (roughly Oct/Nov - Apr/May)

Now lets have a look at these two objects. 

The object on the left is engraved with the depiction of two Ibex goats and a tree...

Ibex goats, which start mating, and fighting, in Oct/Nov, at the beginning of the rain season in the area of Körtik Tepe...

So Goats (of rain) with tree (of life)...

I talked about the depictions of the Goats of Rain in early Anatolian sites in my post "Goats and tree of life from Çatalhöyük"...

The object on the right is engraved with the depiction of three snakes. 


And not just any snakes, Vipers, which start mating in Apr/May, at the beginning of the drought season in the area of Körtik Tepe...

So Snake (of drought)...

These two objects are depicting two animal calendar markers:

Goat, marking the beginning of the cool, wet season in the area of Körtik Tepe (Oct/Nov), 

Snake, marking the beginning of the hot, dry season the in the area of Körtik Tepe (Apr/May)...



So goat and snake...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...

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