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| The cradle of civilisation? |
We’re in Mesopotamia standing on a man-made tumulus above the new motorway that runs from Iran to Bulgaria. There are panoramic views in every direction, even down to war-torn Syria. At our feet is a huge pit where archaeologists have unearthed several complete stone circles made up of five metre high T-shaped megaliths, finely carved with humans and animals - recognisably foxes, ibis, boar. We’re quite literally standing at the cradle of civilisation and the site is rewriting the history books.
This is Gebekli Tepe (literally Bellybutton Hill!), a Stone Age site that’s 5,000 years older than Stonehenge which is challenging our thinking about the crucial period when Neolithic man changed from hunter-gatherer to settled farmer. It pre-dates the time when plants and animals were domesticated, and hunter-gatherers weren’t supposed to stay in one place long enough to build anything. But here’s the evidence that they did, and they obviously did it with considerable artistic skill. The site is only just beginning to give up its secrets. Watch this space.
Our trip began last Tuesday with a long drive to Selime in the Ilhara valley with Alison Hooper, a friend from Finike and her satnav system which insisted on giving us the wrong directions. We nicknamed it Nemesis after it took us across country through villages last visited by Alexander the Great. Kedir, a 12 year old boy from Piri Pension proved a more reliable guide the next morning. He showed us around the cave cathedral and cliffs where they filmed Star Wars on location.
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| Giving Alison a helping hand |
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| Idyllic walk along the Ilhara Valley |
Stashing our impulse buys – a kilim for Alison and a colourful ji-jim for us - in the boot of the car, we arrived in Goreme, Cappadocia to join a little band of travellers for the three day 1,000 mile round trip along the silk road to Mesopotamia. Among them - Rosa, a young teacher from Brisbane, and Haruka on sabbatical from Hokkaido.
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| The ji-jim we bought |
We’d sent a text to our Finike friends Graham and Gay.
Meet you at sunrise on Friday 14th on the summit of Mt Nemrut. After a 3am start and a twenty minute scramble up a rocky path in the half light to reach the 2150 metre high summit, we heard a shouted greeting and there they were!
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| Cathy with Graham and Gay |
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| On the summit waiting for the sunrise |
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| The dawn light strikes the statues |
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| Each head is a couple of metres high |
Mount Nemrut is the highest mountain in northern Mesopotamia, and it’s topped with a gigantic tumulus flanked by stone terraces facing east and west – a funerary sanctuary constructed in 1st century BC by megalomaniac King Antiochus I of the short-lived Commagene empire. It was an unforgettable experience to watch the rays of the rising sun catch the colossal stone heads of the king and the gods that earthquakes have now toppled from their torsos. Archaeologists have located the tomb of the king lying deep beneath the tumulus, but no-one’s reached it yet. Another Tutenkamoun-style discovery still to come?
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| The view from Mt Nemrut |
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| Leighton watches his step on the way down |
While we’re gazing across the river Euphrates at the Ataturk dam later the same day, we reflect that modern day Turkey is not afraid to build on a colossal scale either. The Ataturk dam, the fourth largest in the world, is over a mile long.
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| Ataturk Dam |
‘What about the people downstream?’ we ask. It turns out Syria and Iraq were quite upset to go without water for the five years it took to fill the valleys behind the dam. Apparently Turkey massed troops on the border to defend their right to the water, except Saddam decided to invade Kuwait instead. The rest is history.
It’s boom time in Mesopotamia. The Ataturk dam is the centrepiece of the US$32bn GAP development project that has brought prosperity to the Kurds who live in this once impoverished region by giving them cheap energy and water. That way Ankara keeps the Kurds compliant and spikes the guns of the separatist movement.
We drive past bright green fields of cotton and tobacco; ripening sunflowers; trees laden with clusters of red pistachio nuts. Where once the peasants scratched a living from the land, now there are two harvests a year. Mesopotamia man has traded in his mule for a European car and he’s moved into one of the many government subsidised apartment blocks springing up in Urfa and Gaziantep.
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| Roman Celendere bridge |
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| Alison covers up Hercules who's shaking hands with Mithras |
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| Halil Rahman mosque, Urfa |
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| Alison makes a wish when feeding Abraham's carp |
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| Mosque over the cave of Abraham in Urfa |
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| Local colour in Urfa's bazaar |
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| In Urfa's copper street |
The only downside of the trip is the long time we spend on the road, despite frequent stops to sample orchid root ice-cream, pistachio baklava, honeycomb with clotted cream – aargh, we’re piling on the pounds.
The early travellers along the Silk Road had it much easier. They would stop at caravanserais placed a day’s journey (40km) apart and then rest up for a day before going on. Like the old caravanserais, every rest stop today still has a mescit (little mosque) where travellers can pray. Although prayer doesn’t seem so effective in reducing the death toll on the roads.
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| Negotiating a rough mountain track |
We’ve come across two fatal crashes on our trip. At the first, the dust was still billowing around an overturned truck whose driver’s cab was completely crushed under the wheels of another truck piled high with cotton bales. The second crash at the pass over the Taurus mountains blocked the carriageway in both directions, forcing all the traffic on a three mile detour up a narrow mountain road. No surprise to learn the driving test was only introduced in the last ten years.
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| A silk road caravansarai |
Gaziantep has one of the most modern museums we've ever seen. The Archeological Museum houses a breathtaking collection of Roman mosaics rescued from Zeugma, a site now under water because of the Ataturk dam.
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| Cathy plays with one of the state of the art touch-screen displays |
We’ve just enjoyed two nights of pure indulgence back in Cappadocia, staying with Alison’s NZ friends, Will and Viv, who run a luxury B&B in Urgup. Their cave bedrooms are stylishly decorated, cool and comfortable. We’d recommend anyone wanting to visit Cappadocia to stay there.
www.vivshousecappadoccia.com. Now it’s the nine hour drive back to Finike to ready the boat for company coming next weekend.
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| Our luxury bedroom |
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| One of the terraces at Viv's |
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| Leighton takes a break on our early morning walk in Urgup |
