"This book captures ways of life, modes of thinking and perspectives on relationships that seem rooted and realistic. I was totally persuaded of the breadth and depth of the author’s knowledge. The people depicted make sense as individuals, but at the same time are so removed from contemporary experience as to be surprising. I was impressed by this. If you’re tired of lazy fights between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ you’re going to love this." Druid Life, druidlife.wordpress.com/2020/03/22/broken-skies-a-review/
Broken Skies is the first book in a series about the dawn of civilisation and the continuing legacy of our ancient history. It was inspired by the discovery of Gobekli Tepe in southeast Turkey, dated to 9600BCE and dubbed the oldest temple in the world.
The people of this time developed agriculture and complex stone-working technologies, and their legacy led to the development of city states and civilisation as we know it today. They may also have inspired the legends told across the Middle East of the gods, angels and demons who educated, subjugated and almost destroyed humankind. Broken Skies tells the story of how this all began.
Reconstruction of Gobekli Tepe in Sanliurfa Museum
Gobekli Tepe sits on a hilltop in the midst of the vast Harran Plain, where it dominates the landscape for miles around. Its stone pillars are carved with snarling lions, poisonous snakes, wild boars, foxes, vultures and other dangerous wild creatures, and were once hung with human skulls. It is a sinister and unsettling place. It was perhaps used to initiate shamans and hunters, or for rites of adulthood in a world where life was tough and death was often only a step away. What people endured among Gobekli Tepe’s savage array of spirits prepared them for this brutal life.
Little is known about the people who built Gobekli Tepe. Until recently it was believed the hunters and foragers of 12,000 years ago were still millennia away from complex building work and other skills which are considered the hallmarks of civilisation. Gobekli Tepe and other contemporary sites across the Middle East are redefining everything we once knew.
Stone jewellery, with 1mm-wide perforations made with obsidian drills, found at the site.
The view from Gobekli Tepe
The area of the Middle East known as the Fertile Crescent, once rich in plants and trees and with vast herds of wild animals, was ideal for the great advances which would eventually create the modern world. Turkey is still the most botanically diverse country in the world. The cultivation and domestication of edible plants including wheat, barley, lentils and rye, and later the domestication of wild sheep, goats and cattle, all have their origins in the region surrounding Gobekli Tepe, and some of the earliest domesticated cereals have been excavated from the site. Gobekli Tepe is closely linked to the dawn of civilisation and its legacy still touches us today.
Karacadag, fifty miles from Gobekli Tepe, where the wild ancestor of our modern cereal plants still grows.
Legend perhaps tells us more about the people who gifted us so much. Across the Middle East, from Sumerian mythology to Biblical legends, there are stories about a race of gods, angels or demons, who could take the form of animals and fly like birds. They were skilled in medicine, magic and agriculture, they studied the stars and could read the future in the skies, and they taught these gifts to humankind. Legends also talk of a devastating war between them, which was linked to the teaching of these forbidden gifts.
A Hittite relief from central Turkey, perhaps inspired by the long-ago shamans who built Gobekli Tepe.