All language subtitles for Cradle.Of.The.Gods.2012.1080p.WEBRip.x264.AAC5.1-[YTS.MX]

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NARRATOR: An ancient temple
is discovered in the Middle East.

Official YIFY movies site:
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It's thousands of years older
than the Egyptian pyramids.

It dates from long before
the earliest civilizations,

like the Mesopotamian,
the Minoan and the Mayan.

It was built when mankind
was still in the Stone Age.

MAN: This is extraordinary.

NARRATOR: But who built it, and why?

They are not from our world.

They are human-like,
but they're clearly not humans.

NARRATOR: To solve the mystery,
one man travels back 12,000 years

to the end of the last ice age...

long before we discovered pottery,
writing or the wheel.

It's like discovering
that a three-year-old child

has built the Empire State Building
out of toy bricks.

NARRATOR: For millions of years,
mankind evolved slowly.

We survived
by hunting and gathering our food.

Then, around 12,000 years ago,
something extraordinary happens.

Our development speeds up...

and in a comparatively
short space of time,

we go from the Stone Age
to walking on the moon.

What was it that made us change
so dramatically?

Dr. Jeff Rose is an expert
on early human history.

He's spent years
studying this mysterious turning point

in our cultural evolution.

He's now come to Turkey
to investigate an astonishing discovery

that might finally explain how and why

we took that giant step
out of the Stone Age

to become who we are today.

Walking on the moon was not
the greatest leap mankind ever made.

It was probably learning how to farm
and produce our own food.

NARRATOR: The theory is that
farming allowed us to settle down,

to develop religion and build temples.

Settlements grew into cities
and then into powerful civilizations.

Without having to hunt and gather
for every meal,

we had time to think, to invent
and evolve out of the Stone Age.

At least, that was the theory until now.

Something pretty incredible
has been found here in Turkey

that puts a whole new spin
on our cultural evolution.

I cannot wait to see it.

NARRATOR: Turkey is an ancient land
that bridges Europe and Asia.

It's part of the Fertile Crescent,
a swathe of the Middle East and Africa

that includes modern Egypt,
Israel, Syria and Iraq.

In this green belt, humans first settled,

and the world's earliest civilizations
arose around 5,000 years ago...

and here is where the find has been made,
at a place called Göbekli Tepe.

Göbekli Tepe means "Potbelly Hill"
in Turkish.

Local people believe the hill
to be sacred,

perhaps with good reason.

Professor Klaus Schmidt
is a renowned German archaeologist.

In 1995, beneath this hill,
he made an astonishing discovery,

and he's been excavating it ever since.

-Hi, Jeff. How are you?
-Hi, Klaus.

-Welcome here to the site.
-Great to meet you.

Your first visit here?

This is extraordinary.

I mean,
I've never seen anything like this.

NARRATOR: What Professor Schmidt
found buried under the hill

was a cluster of huge stone pillars
decorated with strange carvings.

He knew he'd only uncovered
a small part of the site.

To find out how big it was,

Professor Schmidt commissioned a survey
with Ground-Penetrating Radar.

The survey covered
close to 90,000 square meters,

nearly as big as 20 football fields.

The radar transmits radio waves
into the soil,

which bounce back
when they hit a buried object.

The variations in the reflected signal
produce an image of what's underground.

This enables Professor Schmidt
to roughly establish

the overall size of the site.

ROSE: How big is this site?

SCHMIDT: 300 by 300 meters.

-300 by 300 meters. Massive.
-Roughly.

NARRATOR: With extreme care and patience,
Professor Schmidt and his team

have so far excavated
four huge stone circles.

Each one is surrounded
by a high stone wall,

broken at intervals
by large T-shaped pillars.

In the middle are two massive monoliths
up to five-and-a-half meters tall.

These enclosures don't look like
anything in existence today.

What could they be used for?

How do we know nobody lived here?

It's clearly not for daily life.

NARRATOR: Professor Schmidt
has worked extensively

on other prehistoric sites in Turkey

and is very familiar
with the kind of dwellings

Stone Age people built.

He believes Göbekli Tepe
looks nothing like them.

Perhaps the key
to understanding this place

lies in the impressive carvings
on the pillars.

There you see a masterpiece
of craftsmanship and high relief.

Most probably a leopard.

Is that all one block?

It's one block, made from one stone.

Very well done. Very naturalistic.

We can see the ribs are clearly depicted
on this animal,

the nose, the mouth, the teeth
and the aggressive habit.

The craftsmanship is amazing.

It looks like
it could've been done yesterday.

So what is the significance
of the animals here at the site?

The animals depicted in high relief
seem to be more like guardians,

guardians of the T-shapes.

NARRATOR: The T-shaped pillars
reveal tantalizing clues

to understanding Göbekli Tepe.

The markings on them show
that they're not just stone monoliths.

SCHMIDT: They are stylized humans.

-ROSE: These are stylized humans?
-SCHMIDT: Yeah.

So, seeing the T-shaping,
the human head seen in profile,

the body here,
and now the arm is coming down

and the hand is depicted here
with its fingers

and the belt is shown below the hands.

So he's got another one here.

Yes, another one,
this is a second hand here.

A belt buckle here
and a loincloth hanging down, a fox skin.

So they're standing
facing this way like this.

Yes, standing like this with a loincloth.

NARRATOR:
But the pillars are all faceless.

There is no trace
of any eyes, nose or mouth.

And this, I think, is a sign
that they are not from our world.

They are coming from the spiritual life.
So, they are not humans.

They are human-like,
but they're clearly not humans.

NARRATOR: If they're not human,
who or what do they represent?

Are these people, or are they ancestors,
or deities?

Maybe they are the earliest gods
depicted in mankind.

NARRATOR: Most archaeologists believe

that if a monumental building
has representations of gods,

it's likely to be some kind of sanctuary.

ROSE: So would this be
the oldest temple in the world?

This is the oldest temple
in the world, yeah.

How old is it?

11,500 years they are standing here.

NARRATOR: Göbekli Tepe is much more
sophisticated than Stonehenge

and yet it's 6,000 years older.

It's 7,000 years older
than the Egyptian pyramids.

But there are more enclosures
still buried beneath the hill.

Some of them might be
even older than that.

What puzzles Dr. Rose
is that at that time,

around 12,000 years ago,
mankind is in the Stone Age.

We know how to make fire,
but we haven't discovered the wheel

and we still haven't domesticated
pack animals to help us.

So how could we have built
something so monumental?

To build a place like this
would have required

a pretty sophisticated level
of organization.

You need a massive workforce
of stonemasons, diggers, quarrymen,

hundreds of people to bring the stones up
and set them in place.

NARRATOR:
So who are these Stone Age people

who can build such a place

before we've even discovered
how to make a clay pot?

What will the oldest temple in the world
reveal about our distant past?

Göbekli Tepe has shocked scientists.

ROSE: Göbekli Tepe is smaller
than an Egyptian pyramid,

but the people that designed
and built this place

would have required
a similar level of organization.

7,000 years earlier.

To carve, build, erect these pillars
would have required a massive workforce,

all needing to be fed and housed.

So who were these people?

NARRATOR: Dr. Rose now goes looking
for Göbekli Tepe's builders.

If he finds out who they are,

he may be able to answer
the other big questions.

Why did they build it?

What was it for?

Even after 12,000 years,

there are some clues
as to who the temple builders are.

A large quantity of animal bones
have been found

during the temple's excavation.

Dr. Rose wants to know
what they might reveal

about Göbekli Tepe's builders.

ROSE: What kind of bones do we have here?

The first important group are the gazelles

which you see here
a number of bone specimens.

There is also the remains of wild boar,

you have remains of red deer, wild sheep.

Most of them represent
bones from meaty parts.

So we are looking at consumption refuse.

ROSE: All of this is wild.

PETERS: All the remains
pertain to wild animals.

There's no sign of domestic herbivore.

So then what does this tell us
about the people at Göbekli Tepe?

It implies that we are still dealing with
hunter-gatherers at Göbekli Tepe...

and that we are dealing with
a pre-agricultural society.

NARRATOR: This evidence
is of immense importance,

because for a long time,
the theory was that

people could only build
something like Göbekli Tepe

once they were living
in large agricultural communities,

like the Egyptians
thousands of years later.

Farming provides a surplus,

so people don't have to look
for food every day.

They settle down
and have the time and resources

to develop religious ideas,
build temples and feed the builders.

That's the theory.

But the ancient bones at Göbekli Tepe
tell a different story.

The temple builders were not farmers,
they were still hunter-gatherers.

Traditionally,
that means semi-nomadic people

living in small, mobile bands,

traveling light, following the seasons,
going where the food is.

But in the Fertile Crescent,
hunter-gatherers had started to settle

at least a thousand years
before Göbekli Tepe was built.

And it wasn't due to farming.

They just reached a point
when they realized

that it was of greater benefit
to develop and pass on knowledge

in a large settled group
than in a small nomadic one.

TREVOR WATKINS:
This is the site of Jerf el-Ahmar.

It's exactly the same date
as Göbekli Tepe,

the early period of Göbekli Tepe.

-So it's about 12,000 years ago.
-About 12,000 years ago. Yeah.

It's a small village of clustered houses,

as you can see, but in the center,

there's this extraordinary building
which is much larger.

You can see that
it's got all these internal walls,

but there's no internal doors.

ROSE: So nobody lived in this structure.

No. This is the communal storage facility
for the whole village.

NARRATOR: Communal storage means
that these early settlements

are now harvesting and storing wild grains

and sharing them amongst the community.

With a store of food,

people now do have the time
to plan and build a monumental temple.

Göbekli Tepe sits up on a hill,
with no immediate access to water.

People have to carry
their food and drink up there,

which means they can't stay
in the temple for very long.

So where do they live?

Dr. Rose decides to investigate
the largest city close to Göbekli Tepe.

It's only 15 kilometers away
and is called Sanliurfa.

Its history is impressive.

Local tradition says that Abraham,

the patriarch of today's
three great monotheistic religions,

was born here around 4,000 years ago.

But Dr. Rose finds evidence
that the town is much older than that.

Turkish archaeologist Dr. Bahattin Çelik
is an expert on Sanliurfa's distant past.

(speaking Turkish)

TRANSLATOR:
Here, in the ground beneath the city,

we've found flint tools that indicate

that there was a Stone Age settlement here
close to 11,000 years ago.

NARRATOR: For Dr. Rose, this is evidence

that people are living here
during the construction of Göbekli Tepe.

Could they be the builders of the temple?

He then learns of an intriguing piece
of evidence at the Sanliurfa museum.

This statue was unearthed
during construction work in the town.

It's nearly 11,000 years old,
almost as old as Göbekli Tepe.

But this figure has a well-defined face,

unlike the monoliths at the temple.

Similar statues have been found
at Göbekli Tepe.

They are kept off-site
to help preserve them.

This guy is fairly similar
to the large statue with the black eyes.

Okay, he's a little bit smaller

and he's a little bit more
heavily weathered,

but you can see
he once had facial features.

So the people that built Göbekli Tepe knew
how to make statues with faces on them.

They must have deliberately left
facial features off those large monoliths

because they were trying to depict
some kind of deity or supernatural being.

NARRATOR: These statues show
that it is quite possible

that the inhabitants of Sanliurfa
could have built Göbekli Tepe.

But they were Stone Age people,

and the temple shows
a level of engineering skill

no one thought possible
until thousands of years later.

Dr. Rose is puzzled.

So how did these people,
who had not yet discovered agriculture,

how did they plan, organize and build
something like this?

It's like discovering
that a three-year-old child

has made the Empire State Building
out of toy bricks.

How'd they do it?

NARRATOR:
Could Stone Age people really have built

a place like Göbekli Tepe
thousands of years before the pyramids?

Adding to this puzzle
is that the engineering skills involved

must have been developed
a long time before the temple is built.

The earliest enclosures
are built on the bedrock

into slots
only about ten centimeters deep.

They set the two central monoliths.

They're up to five-and-a-half meters tall,
carved from a single piece of stone,

and weigh up to 14-and-a-half tons.

To make these huge stone pillars
requires considerable skill

and some knowledge of geology.

Dr. Rose now turns
to an expert in stone carving

to understand exactly how they are made.

Dave Chapman has spent years
studying and replicating

the way prehistoric people
worked with stone.

So all of this that we see here
on this rocky landscape

is part of the quarry
that was used to make the monoliths?

CHAPMAN: It would appear so.

-So this is one of the monoliths.
-Yeah, this is one of the monoliths.

This is fantastic.
This is about seven meters long.

So we'd think
this is one of the early ones,

probably about 12,000 years old.

NARRATOR: Using hard granite picks,
the Stone Age masons

roughly carve out the monolith
while it is still on the ground.

And then they're likely
to be using levers,

so they may well have had
a fulcrum at the front

and then the levers go over the fulcrum.

ROSE: So they're just prying
this giant thing up.

Yeah. I think you can see
evidence for this

in the fact that they've actually
broken the stone in lifting it.

-ROSE: This crack here.
-CHAPMAN: Yeah.

Once they've got it pried up,

how in the world did they get it
to the top of that hill?

Basically it's like rowing on land.

The levers go in
and instead of sitting inside the boat,

people stand outside.

You push down on the lever,

then pull back on the lever
and it goes forward.

How many people do you think
it would have taken to do all this?

I think a team of 50 men
could comfortably cut this

and move this across the landscape.

NARRATOR: Around the monoliths,

they then build a wall of stones
and mortar nearly two meters tall.

Set into the wall
are smaller T-shaped pillars

between three and five meters high
and weighing up to ten tons.

Dr. Rose wants to know how long
it might have taken Göbekli's builders

to make an enclosure.

So Dave Chapman begins by making
a replica of one of the temple's carvings

on a slab of local limestone
using the same Stone Age tools.

We're going to use stone picks
and stone blades

for picking, carving and engraving.

These are tools
that we're making ourselves.

We just take a flake off like that.

So you're sharpening it that way.

It gives us a very sharp,
fierce cutting edge.

NARRATOR: This carving expertise
is present throughout the temple,

even in the temple's doorways.

SCHMIDT:
This strange object, it's a portal stone.

And we expect it was an entrance
in a vertical position there in this wall.

NARRATOR: The portal
is the entrance to the enclosure.

It weighs several tons

and was carved
from a single piece of stone.

Earlier you had mentioned ideas
about the netherworld,

going down in and being reborn.

It looks like the entrance
to the netherworld.

NARRATOR: If these enclosures represent
a gateway to the underworld,

then the temple must have had
something to do with death.

Vital to creating this dark world
are the creatures carved on the pillars.

It looks like a laborious process,

but Stone Age masons
were masters of their medium.

ROSE: That is awesome!

It's incredible!

How long did it take you to do it?

It's taken about six hours, so far.

So then, if you figure there's about
20 of these in each enclosure,

how long do you think it would have
taken them to do an entire enclosure?

Well, based on what we've discovered
by actually creating one of the pictures,

I'd guesstimate around 300 hours,
something in that region.

So then start to finish,

how long do you think it would take
to make one enclosure?

Well, just running the figures back,

and based on about 60 or 70 people
working on the site,

it's achievable within, say,
six to 12 months, something like that.

Maybe a bit longer with a smaller crew.

NARRATOR: The finished enclosures
are roughly ten to 30 meters in diameter.

But Professor Schmidt now knows there are
many more than just four of them.

A map generated
from the Ground-Penetrating Radar survey

shows the excavated areas in color,
with the monoliths in red.

It reveals there are at least
another 16 circular structures

buried beneath the hill.

That's a lot of stonework.

But the scan reveals something
even more surprising.

SCHMIDT: In blue here is a phase
we couldn't date for a long time.

But it looks like these structures,
most probably, are the oldest one.

We expect 2,000, 3,000 years more.

That would be coming
to the 12th, 13th millennium BC.

That's the end of the last ice age.

Yes, we're just at the end
of the last ice age.

NARRATOR: That would imply
that the structures that lie buried

under this corner of the hill
were built 14-15,000 years ago.

That's nearly 5,000 years
before people here began farming...

the critical event which, in theory,

made religion and temple building possible

and set us on a fast track
towards the stars.

What I'd like to know is
why did these people undertake

such an extraordinarily big
and difficult task in the first place?

What's it all for?

NARRATOR: Dr. Rose is certain
the key to understanding Göbekli Tepe

lies in the images
carved on its stone pillars.

What do they mean?

To help him understand
the ancient carvings,

he now travels to Istanbul
to look at the symbols in another temple.

The Church of the Holy Savior in Chora
was originally built some 1,600 years ago,

then rebuilt 850 years later.

The mosaics covering its walls

are an excellent example
of Christian imagery.

The key to any place of worship

is that the symbols are understood
by everybody that gathers there.

Its role is to unite the congregation
in a common purpose

through shared beliefs
in all the rituals that go with them.

If I came from a different culture
and knew nothing about Christianity,

all of these images,
the layout, the decor,

would be completely
incomprehensible to me.

Without understanding
the meaning behind the symbols,

I wouldn't have a clue
what any of it meant

and how this place was used.

NARRATOR: But we know Göbekli Tepe's
builders were hunter-gatherers,

which allows us to arrive at a probable
explanation of why it was built.

Hunter-gatherers share their food

with a small, trusted group
of family and friends.

When they settle, they have more children.

Communities grow fast.

Populations reach the hundreds,
even thousands.

Now they must learn
to share with strangers

and live together in peace.

This requires a moral code
and a whole new level of trust.

So you need something
which pulls the community together,

which shows that you share
these ethical codes.

And a project
like building a great facility

and having ceremonies that go with it
and its use does that.

It comprises an ethical code of,

"This is how you behave
if you belong in our community."

Different neighboring communities
draw together an array of talents

to make their religion concrete,

so a stonemason from one group,
a master builder from another,

a carver from another,
and they build a temple.

(yelling)

NARRATOR: A massive project like this
forces people to work together,

to rely on each other,
and trust one another.

It unites people.

Something like, if I see you in my church
or I see you in my synagogue, I trust you.

I may not know you very well,
but I trust you.

NARRATOR: But what belief system
does their temple represent?

For thousands of years
before Göbekli Tepe,

it appears that people believe
that everything--

animals, plants, stones,
natural phenomena--

all have a spirit.

Man is only one small part of nature.

SCHMIDT: In the caves, the nature
is depicted and nearly no humans,

or the humans are inferior to them.

NARRATOR: Now, human-like pillars
tower above nature,

which is represented
by wild and dangerous creatures.

PETERS: These central pillars may indicate

a different mentality.

All of a sudden,
human beings are in the center of things.

The presence of these animals

below the head
of the anthropomorphic figure

suggests that human beings,
that they are superior to animals.

NARRATOR: To put ourselves above nature
is a huge change

from how we see ourselves
in earlier cave paintings.

SCHMIDT:
In comparison to the painted caves,

this is a very, very important shift,

a very important change
towards a very different spiritual world

which is now dominated
by human-like beings.

NARRATOR: The large numbers
of animal bones found at the site

might also suggest that people
gathered for feasts at the temple.

When they had these gatherings here,

when they had the feastings here,
they needed a lot of food.

So they had been now looking
for a constant food supply,

and this, in simple words,

could have been the base for the idea

now to manage the nature,
to be food production,

and not just hunter-gathering.

NARRATOR:
Professor Schmidt's theory is radical.

If these settled hunter-gatherers
are motivated to take up farming

to satisfy the temple's need of food,

then the spark that set off
that giant step out of the Stone Age

was religion.

So do you think, then,
that religion itself

is the impetus that pushed people
or moved people toward farming?

Yes, religion is bringing people
towards farming.

We always thought
that organized religion developed

as people settled and started farming.

But this religion predates agriculture.
So what were they trying to achieve?

NARRATOR: The new religion gives humans
an enormous psychological advantage.

It places us above the animals
and above nature.

It's probably that mental leap forward

which is needed to start
domesticate animals and plants.

NARRATOR: It's now clear to Dr. Rose
that Göbekli Tepe represents

a dramatic turning point
in our development.

Its pillars and carvings depict
the new way we see ourselves in nature,

but what rituals or ceremonies
take place there?

Professor Schmidt has found
some interesting clues.

We see the body of a human:

the shoulders, the arms,
the erected penis, and clearly no head.

It's a horrifying scenario,

together with a scorpion and the snakes
and the vultures and so on.

So we have maybe a depiction
of the netherworld.

All these observations
are strengthening our ideas

that we have here to do with burial rites.

NARRATOR:
Burial rites in other settlements

of the time of Göbekli Tepe
were quite strange.

Bodies are buried and later dug up

and their skulls removed
to be used as relics.

Was Göbekli Tepe dedicated
to death rituals?

It is not difficult
to imagine Göbekli Tepe

as a temple devoted to the dead...

a portal leading into
a flickering netherworld

where the skulls of the deceased
are separated from their bodies

and bizarre rituals performed
beneath imposing monoliths

proclaiming man's mastery
over the wild beasts.

Dr. Rose realizes Göbekli Tepe
has turned history on its head.

We'd always thought that
it was the discovery of agriculture

that transformed scattered hunter-gatherer
groups to farming communities,

and from there,
to today's sophisticated societies.

But now it looks like the big cultural
revolution happened before agriculture.

NARRATOR: And what motivates
that cultural revolution

is the new religion
in which we are superior to the beasts.

We build the temple
to unite us in the new faith,

and this effort pushes us

to take that giant, evolutionary step
into farming.

Göbekli Tepe suggests that it was the urge
to worship that sparked civilization.

And then Dr. Rose learns
something bizarre.

(shouting)

After the huge effort
to build this extraordinary place...

the people who use it then bury it.

Why?

The downfall
of the oldest temple in the world

is as mysterious
as the religion it serves.

For over a thousand years,

the temple occupies a central place
in the cultural life of the region.

People living up to 200 kilometers away
use it as a ritual center

and somewhere they can share
news, ideas and discoveries.

Here, the agricultural revolution
that changes the course of mankind

begins to take shape,

and as this new way of life develops,
so the temple changes with the times.

Around 1,500 years
after the large circular spaces

with the massive monoliths were built,

they were filled in, covered over,
and smaller structures were built on top.

It looks like Göbekli Tepe
was being downsized.

It was part of the program
to erect such a circle,

to use it for some time,
but later to back-fill it completely.

So the final appearance was not
that of a building, but that of a mound.

NARRATOR: Eventually, all these mounds
become one big hill.

Excavating it,
Professor Schmidt has now uncovered

one of the smaller enclosures
built over the older ones.

Now we are in B.

ROSE: This comes later
than what we saw over there.

SCHMIDT: This is later than C and D,
that's quite clear,

with, again, two central pillars,
well-preserved,

but with a height of only four meters.

NARRATOR: These four-meter monoliths

are now a full one-and-a-half meters
shorter than the older ones.

Later on, even smaller rectangular spaces
are built on top of the previous ones.

Göbekli Tepe hangs on
for another 1,000 years,

but the downsizing is dramatic.

The enclosures get smaller,
the monoliths progressively shorter,

and the number of pillars
in the surrounding wall dwindle

until there are none.

Finally, around 10,000 years ago,
Göbekli Tepe disappears,

buried beneath a man-made hill.

But why did they so completely erase
such an important place?

To find out, Dr. Rose drives
over 30 kilometers from Göbekli Tepe

to investigate another settlement
of that time.

When the the Euphrates River
was dammed in 1990,

over 800 square kilometers were flooded.

Beneath these deep waters
lies one of the possible reasons

for the downfall of Göbekli Tepe.

Dr. Rose has come to see some photographs
taken before the flooding

of the ruins of a Stone Age village
called Nevali Çori.

It was inhabited at the time
of Göbekli Tepe.

The pictures show
that around 10,000 years ago,

something new appears in the village:

another kind of communal space.

It's a small, square enclosure
with 13 stone pillars in its walls,

and two faceless monoliths in the center,

with arms and hands carved on them.

It's a smaller, localized version
of the grand cathedral at Göbekli Tepe,

like a village church.

ROSE: These kind of sacred spaces show up
in a number of settlements at that time

and coincide with the downsizing
of Göbekli Tepe.

Local communities had started to build
their own sacred spaces,

maybe because they didn't want to hike up
to the big temple at the top of the hill.

Göbekli Tepe had started
to lose its importance.

In a sense,
it's a victim of its own success.

That unifying faith had taken root
all throughout the local communities.

NARRATOR: But there may also be
another explanation

for the abandonment of the temple.

The descendants of Göbekli's builders
were no longer hunter-gatherers.

They were farmers...

and they weren't interested
in the ways of their ancestors.

SCHMIDT: When the people became farmers,
they didn't need anymore

the place of their ancestors
where they worshipped the spirits

or the gods
of the hunter-gatherers' society.

NARRATOR: The new generation of farmers
are looking to the future,

and the customs and beliefs
of their forefathers fall out of fashion.

Dr. Rose can see that
the cultural revolution is now complete.

Farming is our new way of life

and Göbekli Tepe
must vanish with the past.

But he is astonished to find

that some of its beliefs
are still with us today.

They are at the root

of one of the deepest doctrines
of the Christian faith:

the mystery of the resurrection.

Dr. Rose has learned many things

on his journey
through our prehistoric past,

but there's still one piece of the puzzle
he wants to understand.

When Göbekli Tepe is buried
around 10,000 years ago...

what happens to the powerful beliefs
that created it?

Dr. Rose now travels
over 400 kilometers west

to search for traces
of the religious ideas

that built the world's oldest temple.

Çatalhüyük is over 9,000 years old.

Some believe
it's the world's earliest town.

Up to 8,000 people
are known to have lived here.

They were farmers.

Dr. Tristan Carter
has worked on the excavation

and discovered a number of links
with Göbekli Tepe.

ROSE: So you're seeing
the same imagery here

that we saw at Göbekli Tepe.

We've got wild bulls, we've got leopards,
we've got wild boars,

and it ties in
with this very deep set of beliefs

that goes back to at least 2,500 years
to Göbekli Tepe.

A belief system, a moral code

that's maybe come out
of a hunter-gatherer world

is still essentially the basis
of a community of farmers

many hundreds of kilometers,
many thousands of years later.

NARRATOR: So the burial of Göbekli Tepe
is not the end of its story.

Its seeds, both spiritual and physical,
were spread far and wide.

Whatever the meaning of its symbolism,

the same imagery is found at later sites
all throughout the region.

NARRATOR: Dr. Rose finds the same symbols
he saw at Göbekli

now brought into the home
2,000 years later.

What do you think the significance
of having this inside the house is?

The bull is obviously
this incredibly important symbol to them,

whether it represents a specific deity,
a specific god,

or is symbolic for something deeper
in terms of ritual.

NARRATOR: This is a small reproduction.

Prehistoric wild cattle, called aurochs,

would have stood over two meters tall
at the shoulder,

with horns spanning three meters.

These are large, scary killing beasts,

so to bring that power, that violence,
and domesticate it in here,

it's a celebration of the hunt
and the prowess of the individuals.

Think today, still,
of the bullfights in Iberia.

Think of the prowess and the honor
associated with that.

There's a real pragmatic
and very reasonable fear

of such a huge beast.

NARRATOR: The awe and respect
we have for these powerful beasts,

and our desire to conquer them
is still with us to this day.

This depiction of burial rites
is another intriguing image

Dr. Rose finds here
2,000 years on from Göbekli Tepe.

It looks at first
like the deceased have been left out

to be consumed by vultures.

CARTER: We now appreciate
from excavations of hundreds of burials

that these characters
were buried fully fleshed.

People have gone back
and re-excavated the dead...

and then they very carefully
removed the skulls.

NARRATOR: The skull cult is associated
with ancestor worship.

A person's skull
is a physical reminder of them.

Once removed from the body,

it's displayed alone or with other skulls
in a house or communal space.

This is a way of bringing back to life
an important person

in order to keep alive a history
that binds people together.

It's a resurrection
of a particular character

who's very important
to this particular lineage.

NARRATOR: Dr. Rose realizes
that the headless man of Göbekli Tepe

could represent a very early expression
of the resurrection idea,

in which a deceased person or deity
is brought back from the dead,

uniting a people
in a common cause or belief.

Over the following millennia,

this resurrection idea turns up
in the religions of many civilizations

including Babylon...

Egypt...

India...

and Greece.

It survives to this day
in the Christian faith.

Dr. Rose now understands that
although the ancient temple disappears,

the beliefs it represents have continued
to shape our culture for 12,000 years.

ROSE: We might never fully understand
what went on at Göbekli Tepe,

but from the clues
I've gathered on this trip,

some things have become clear.

The construction of that temple
represents the culmination

of a long tradition
of thought and craftsmanship

that must extend back
into the last ice age.

It was a social nexus that brought
communities together from far and wide...

and most importantly,

it represents a quantum leap
in our spiritual expression.

Instead of being
just part of the natural world,

we began to see ourselves
as masters of it.

By creating a temple for those giant
stone deities fashioned in our image,

we opened a portal to a new way of life.

It was there,
under those towering pillars,

that we gave birth to the gods.

NARRATOR:
Göbekli Tepe marks what is possibly

the greatest turning point
in our cultural evolution--

a point when people began to form
large communities...

began to reevaluate
their place in the world

and began to domesticate
plants and animals--

the first giant step out of the Stone Age
towards the space age.

Captioned by Pixelogic Media