異域文化 How Art Made The World 人、藝術(shù)、世界 15

Then around ten years ago, German archeologists began excavating here. What they found astonished them, because under their feet were colossal structures-- stone circles built from huge T-shaped megaliths. The site is vast; at least 20 stone circles remain buried containing hundreds of pillars. In Britain, Stonehenge was built four and a half thousand years ago, but this site is almost 3 times older. It dates back nearly 12, 000 years to the time when people stopped painting in caves.

It is pretty obvious that Gobekli Tepe was some kind of ritual center, a meeting place in the mountains with great religious power for the people who created it. So how does this help to explain what happened to our ability to create images? Well, the best time to see that is at night. Because it's what's on these pillars that's essential for our story. They're not just megaliths, big stones . They're decorated, covered with carvings of dozens of wild animals. You see these best at night time, by the light of a naked flame just as their creators once saw them.

Lions, cranes, boars, foxes... 12, 000 years ago, it is exactly the time images were abandoned in the caves of Europe. Here on a Turkish hillside they completely gripped people's imaginations. It means images were never an optional extra. Once humans discovered how to create them, they didn't stop. They have been engraved onto the human mind. But this place may contain an even bigger secret, because remarkably it seems to reveal that it was images which created the world we live in today. It's all done to the immense effort that lies behind these images.

words to remeber:

1. megalith:巨大的石頭(建筑用)

2. Stonehenge: 英國的著名巨石陣(見下圖)

3.boar:公豬, 野豬, 野豬肉