More ancient cradle-of-civilization stuff in the Sanliurfa area. First, Gobekli Tepe, the recently-discovered 10,000-year-old stone structure that has forced archaeologists to push back the presumed dates of the earliest known human civilizations. It\u2019s an active dig with archaeologists still on the job. We gaze at these oddly shaped stones carved with animals, human limbs and strange symbols as though they\u2019re crystal balls, and we try to find answers. Our guides tell us stories about what they are, and what they might mean. One of the people on the trip says he observed a lot of ghosts at the site and that he gave them a \u201clight elevator\u201d so they could move on. <\/p>\n
On my 13-hour plane ride to Istanbul a couple of weeks ago I spent most of my time watching episodes of a BBC documentary series on the big cats of Africa\u2014lions, cheetahs, leopards. Very articulate and photogenic zoologist\/videographers rode around the savannah in jeeps following the cats and narrating their exploits, getting really involved in their lives (even naming each one) in dramatic stories (\u201cThis lion cub named Bobo hasn\u2019t eaten in a week and is getting weaker. Will his mom be able to take down that antelope and save him?\u201d). After a while I tried turning off the sound. It was just animals walking around, sometimes hunting, sometimes sleeping, sometimes playing, in peaceful, beautiful settings. Then I alternated watching with the sound off and on, observing how the stories that the narrators were creating were the source of all kinds of drama that buried the no-meaning peace. Eventually I reached a state where I floated story-less in that plane, aware of how I\u2019m the one who creates the stories about life and the world around me.<\/p>\n
After Gobekli Tepe we ride our buses to Harran (where Abraham and his family settled while traveling from Ur to Canaan) that has those beehive houses that really do keep out the 100+ degree heat. The Girlfriend and I feel so much peace and protection in those small, dark, humble dwellings that look out into the sun-scorched courtyard. She guides me through them like someone giving a tour of a house they just bought, talking about her many happy lifetimes in these clay-brick bungalows. John does a blessing in the courtyard that amplifies the peace. Some of us get camel-ride photo-ops, and we dodge the sun and sip cool drinks in the superheated shade.<\/p>\n
Then a great museum with extensive Paleolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age artifacts and life-size replicas of parts of Gobekli Tepe. I haven\u2019t seen a museum with so much care taken to explain the evolution of human technology and tool-making, culture and language, all together in one place. This Mesopotamian area (meaning \u201cland between the rivers\u201d\u2014the Tigris and Euphrates) is like one big archaeological family photo album recording our common roots as evolving humans. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a big, dramatic story constructed one tiny artifact at a time by thousands of scientists in a worldwide myth-creation. The peace extends further and further back in history. The hot weather enforces more relaxation and dilates time. But are the stories really true? Are the people in the photograph album really who we\u2019re told they are? Doesn\u2019t the story evade all the evidence\u2014both psychically observed and materially derived\u2014of technologically advanced civilizations before ours? Why does the story always seem to contain subliminal messaging that we\u2019re un-sacred beings stumbling through a limited 3-dimensional godless world, guided only by the flesh inside the skull? We travel from exhibit observing amazing evidence and unconsciously accepting other people\u2019s stories about it.<\/p>\n
Then we do a walking tour of Sanliurfa that includes the Mosque of Abraham with a cave where Abraham did something-or-other. More it\u2019s-sacred-and-you\u2019re-not stuff in a glorious walled-city setting by a small lake flanked by a traditional open air market. Walking around at sunset, watching the birds sailing through the mosque courtyard silhouetted against a pale blue evening sky and families strolling through the illuminated thousand-year-old arches by the Pool of Sacred Fish (yes it\u2019s really called that) on this warm summer night is enough to make one forget all about all the day\u2019s piled story-excretions, as well as one\u2019s own traveler\u2019s (with a small \u201ct\u201d) diarrhea.<\/p>\n