Mesopotamia – Co-Geeking

Truly Old Buildings at Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe

September 23, 2026August 16, 2026Eppu2 Comments

Among the world’s oldest buildings are the circular and rectangular structures at Neolithic sites known as the Taş Tepeler culture in Upper Mesopotamia or south-eastern Anatolia (modern-day Turkey).

The earliest Taş Tepeler sites were established by hunter-gatherers some 11,000 years ago (10th-9th millennium BCE)—about 6,000 years before Newgrange and Stonehenge. The two best known are Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe. Apart from similar buildings, both these sites also contain the same kind of carvings and statuary of varying sizes depicting both animals and humans, and distinctive T-shaped pillars with shared symbolism.

The Göbekli Tepe site consists of a Neolithic mound (or a tell) with domestic structures and other small buildings, quarries, and stone-cut cisterns.

The distinctive feature of the circular buildings at Göbekli Tepe are T-shaped pillars in limestone, some of which are up to 5.5 meters tall. Many are decorated with carved depictions or reliefs of humans, items of clothing (e.g. belts and loincloths), as well as wild animals. Four circular buildings have been unearthed so far, but we know from geophysical surveys (with various ground-based physical sensing techniques) that more structures still lie buried all over the tell.

It was thought that the site was probably used only in connection with special social events and rituals, but the discovery of domestic buildings and rainwater harvesting systems has caused a revision of the hypothesis. It has now become increasingly clear that people were actually living at Göbekli Tepe and the other Taş Tepeler sites.

The second widely known site, Karahan Tepe, lies roughly 50 km east of Göbekli Tepe; the two are often considered “sister sites”, although some aspects of Göbekli date to slightly earlier. In addition, unlike the on-ground builds at Göbekli Tepe, at Karahan Tepe chambers were carved into the bedrock.

Evidence of domestic (and not just ritual) life at Karahan includes stone troughs, groundstones, mortars, pestles, and handstones. But one of the most striking elements at Karahan is the repetition of human faces, including a face carved from the rock wall of the so-called Pillar Room.

Another famous find at Karahan Tepe is the 2.3-meter-tall statue of a seated man also known as the Ribbed Man. It was carved around 9400 BCE with a defined eyes and nose, a bald head, carefully incised ribs and spine, and hands brought to the front to hold his phallus.

A website developed by the Karahan Tepe Research & Archive Project collects visuals and facts of the site, with information also on Göbekli. A timeline at tastepeler.net shows the development of the various sites in relation to other early sites and cultural phenomena.

Both Karahan Tepe and Göbekli Tepe indicate the existence of origanized societies capable of carrying out complex, material- and labor-intensive projects, with their own symbolic worlds and beliefs, before the adoption of farming or pottery. Very deservedly, Göbekli Tepe became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018.

Unfathomably ancient, aren’t they!

Images: map of Taş Tepeler sites via Türkiye Today. Via UNESCO: aerial view of the Göbekli Tepe site and closeup of pillar 43 in Building D by DAI, Göbekli Tepe Project. Building by Frank Samol via Unsplash. Karahan Tepe human face by Frantisek Trampota via Wikimedia (CC SA 4.0). Karahan Tepe man by Marco Restano via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

The Opening Lines of the Epic of Gilgamesh Performed in Sumerian

August 31, 2026January 25, 2026ErikLeave a comment

We have no direct evidence for how the epic of Gilgamesh was performed or what it sounded like to hear live, but this is a speculative reconstruction that helps open up our imagination. Canadian musician Peter Pringle performs on a reconstructed ancient lute called a gish-gu-di and sings the opening lines of the epic in the language of ancient Sumer.

The Epic Of Gilgamesh In Sumerian by Peter Pringle via YouTube

While this is an artistic reimagining, not a scholarly reconstruction (as Pringle himself has been clear about), it makes for a fascinating way of bringing the ancient text to life.

An occasional feature on music and sound-related notions.

Some Early Plant Depictions in Prehistoric Art

June 17, 2026May 31, 2026Eppu2 Comments

Although I’m interested in early art, formal art history either as books or lectures typically bores me to tears. Thankfully the Internet and open access allow me to dip in and out where and when my interests take me. Recently an article on some of the earliest plant images in prehistoric art caught my eye.

In their article “The Earliest Vegetal Motifs in Prehistoric Art” (in the December 05, 2025, issue of Journal of World Prehistory), authors Yosef Garfinkel and Sarah Krulwich note that systematic depictions first appear on painted pottery of the Halafian culture of northern Mesopotamia (roughly around the headwaters of Tigris and Euphrates) c. 6200-5500 BCE.

(They do later modify this statement with “this is one of the world’s earliest extensive uses of vegetal motifs, and the earliest in the Near East”, so I guess the jury is still out as to what is considered the earliest find we know of.)

Garfinkel and Krulwich analyzed 29 Halafian sites and surveyed of one of the regions, for a total of several tens of thousands of painted pottery sherds with various motifs. The sherds mainly included geometric patterns, but also had depictions of animals, human figures, and plants.

Garfinkel Krulwich Map of Halafian Sites Sm — Map of the Near East showing the location of prehistoric Halafian sites, c. 6200-5500 BCE, in ancient Mesopotamia, as examined in Garfinkel and Krulwich’s survey (2025) of the earliest plant depictions in prehistoric art of the area.

Among the plant imagery, Garfinkel and Krulwich focused on the ones identifiable “without hesitation”. They were able to classify the motifs into four basic categories: flowers, shrubs, branches, and trees.

Garfinkel Krulwich Classification of Plant Imagery Orig Sm — The classification of the Halafian vegetal motifs into four basic categories according to Garfinkel and Krulwich (2025): 1–2 flowers, 3–4 shrubs, 5–6 branches, 7–8 trees.

Apparently, botanical motifs were used in almost all sites and were fairly popular.

Garfinkel Krulwich Imgs 3and5 Mashup — Collage of images 3 and 5 in Garfinkel and Krulwich (2025): examples of flowers.

Despite the fact that each site only contained a small number of sherds with botanic imagery, a meta-analysis yields interesting results. Presumably the average frequency of plant motifs on decorated sherds is around 4-6 %, and they could perhaps relate to aesthetics (instead of religious rites, for example) and to the advance of mathematical knowledge, Garfinkel and Krulwich suggest.

Garfinkel Krulwich Imgs 14and18 Mashup — Collage of images 14 and 18 in Garfinkel and Krulwich (2025): examples of shrubs and branches.

Whole trees are apparently the least common motif among this sample. (I suspect I would initially be hard-pressed to recognize some of these trees as trees, having grown up with very different flora.)

Garfinkel Krulwich Img20 — Image 20 in Garfinkel and Krulwich (2025): examples of trees.

Some items came with two different types of plant designs, while others were decorated with plant and zoomorphic images (i.e., animals).

Garfinkel Krulwich Imgs22and23 Mashup — Collage of images 22 and 23 in Garfinkel and Krulwich (2025): examples of combinations of plant and animal images.

(Garfinkel and Krulwich also analyze the sherds from the point of view of mathematical knowledge and counting in the Halafian culture. I’m not interested in ethnomathematics, but if you are, I urge you to visit the article for their finds.)

It seems clear that these sherds from 8,000(!) years ago indicate not just a long history of competent pottery-making but also an established visual language. Considering how random overall the survival of pottery (and glass) remains over the millenia can be, it’s nice to see such a variety and richness in the decorated vessels, especially from an era we tend to (erroneously!) consider backward and dull.

Found via Pottery by Osa on Mastodon.

Images by Yosef Garfinkel and Sarah Krulwich (CC BY 4.0), mashups by Eppu Jensen

Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

The Colors of Ecbatana

January 20, 2025January 12, 2025Erik2 Comments

It’s an all too well-known trope that the past is drab. When we picture ancient or medieval buildings, we tend to imagine white marble or gray stone. This assumption of colorlessness spills over into fantasy as well. When we imagine the built environments of made-up lands, we tend to see a lot of white and gray there too, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

The ancient Greek historian Herodotus gives a fantastical description of the Median city of Ecbatana, modern Hamadan, Iran, featuring a series of concentric walls topped by brightly colored parapets:

This walled city is built in such a way that each wall is higher than the wall encircling it by only the height of its parapet, partly by the fact that it is built on a hill, but largely by design. All together there are seven circles, with the palace and treasury in the innermost one. The largest wall is about as long as the walls of Athens. The parapet of the first wall is white, the second one black, the third red, the fourth dark blue, and the fifth amber. The first five walls had their parapets painted in these bright colors, but the next was covered in silver and the final one in gold.

– Herodotus, Histories 1.98

(My own translation)

Now, Herodotus probably got this description wrong. It does not match up with the archaeological remains on the ground in Hamadan. Herodotus never saw Ecbatana for himself, but relied on second-hand reports, which likely got garbled in the telling. In fact, Herodotus’ description of Ecbatana as a hill covered by concentric rings of walls fits a bit better as a description of a Mesopotamian ziggurat. A ziggurat is a pyramid-like structure made up of a series of terraces built one on top of another, getting smaller as they go up. Seen from ground level, they might well look like a series of concentric walls ascending a hill.

Ruins of the ziggurat of Choga Zanbil, photocollage by Pentocelo via Wikimedia (Khuzestan Province, Iran; c. 1250 BCE; brick)

Ziggurats had been built in Mesopotamia for thousands of years by Herodotus’ day, primarily to serve as temples. While not many new ziggurats were being built in the time of Herodotus, older ones were being restored and rebuilt, so news of a freshly (re)built massive structure with impressive concentric walls may well have reached Greece. The brightly colored walls Herodotus describes are not too far-fetched, either. Ancient Mesopotamians decorated important buildings with colorful glazed tiles, which still retain some of their impressive coloring even today, as can be seen in the Ishtar Gate from Babylon.

Detail of the Ishtar Gate, with modern reconstruction, photograph by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin via Wikimedia (Babylon, currently Pergamon Museum, Berlin; 6th c. BCE; glazed tile and brick)

All of these things put together mean that Herodotus invented (albeit unintentionally) a fantasy version of Ecbatana flavored after a Mesopotamian ziggurat with colorful tiled walls. And if Herodotus could do it, there’s no reason the rest of us can’t do the same. Let’s see more fantasy cities with vibrant scarlet walls, turquoise roof tiles, or streets paved with lush green stone!

History for Writers looks at how history can be a fiction writer’s most useful tool, from worldbuilding to dialogue.

Visual Inspiration: Late Babylonian Clay Map

September 4, 2024August 18, 2024Eppu1 Comment

Recently I ran into this Late Babylonian map of the world on a clay tablet from the British Museum:

BM Late Babylonian World Map — The Map of the World, Late Babylonian (found Abu Habba (Sippar), currently British Museum; c. 6th c. BCE; clay)

The map shows the world as a disc surrounded by the circular “Bitter River”. Babylon is marked as a rectangle, the river Euphrates flows south in the middle, and small circles show cities or districts.

The curator’s comment in the BM catalog says that according to the tablet it was copied from an earlier one. Clearly there was an established practice by 6th c. BCE—this object is quite recent in Mesopotamian terms, after all.

Obviously, the map was meant to be more conceptual than realistic. However, there are many notes (and even some time / linear measurements) which make it more usable. (Please visit BM and read the item description; it’s quite fascinating.)

BM Late Babylonian World Map Drawn Plate — The Map of the World, Late Babylonian (found Abu Habba (Sippar), currently British Museum; c. 6th c. BCE; drawing of clay tablet)

What an intriguing map, isn’t it?

As the fragment is approximately 12 by 8 cm (approx. 3″ x 5″), it’s believable that it could’ve easily been transported if desired. Which makes it quite plausible that intrepid adventurers in a story or role-playing campaign in a similar setting could carry around maps made in the same style. There could quite well be professional mapmakers and a developed cartography for your world, even if writing doesn’t happen on sheets of paper as we know it.

Images: The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

The Visual Inspiration occasional feature pulls the unusual from our world to inspire design, story-telling, and worldbuilding. If stuff like this already exists, what else could we imagine?