9 Comments

  1. PeaJay

    “…known as Göbekli Tepe, a Turkish name meaning ‘navel hill/mountain’…” Interestingly, the original name of Cuzco, Peru, was Qosqo meaning ‘navel’.

  2. Dan

    Please forgive my being naive. Don’t our scriptures lead us to believe that Adam and Eve lived sometime around 6,000 to 7,000 years ago? Also, you said, “While it is highly suspect that this was actually the original Garden of Eden, particularly from an LDS point of view, just the fact that people are describing this “temple” as such is fascinating. The Garden of Eden story has endless connections and parallels with the temple[21].”
    What of Joseph Smith identifying an area in the USA as the site of the Garden of Eden? Is this a case of there being two of something? Or have we dated things wrong previously? Don’t get me wrong, I find the info about this “temple” to be very compelling, but how does it fit with what we already “know”?
    I’ll appreciate your feedback.

  3. Hi Bryce – thanks for bringing this to our attention. I think there is a lot of symbolism and meaning behind the concept of the “navel”. One concept that I had no idea about until a few years ago was the navel marker’s link to astronomical survey.

    If the temple is a place where we get our “bearings” as Nibley said it was, there seems to be more to the idea of getting our “moral” bearings at the temple. If I remember correctly, the Delphi navel is placed at a very specific latitude and longitude. In any case, Hamlet’s Mill has some interesting things to say about the “navel” in mythology. Also, I believe it is Tompkins’ Secrets of the Great Pyramid that discusses the Delphi navel and other “navels” in relationship to certain ancient capital cities.

    As you know, Nibley held de Santillana in very high regard. And although he thought the book by Tomkins was inappropriately titled, Nibley did cite it quite a number of times in The Message of the Joseph Smith Papryi: An Egyptian Endowment”.

    Great post.

  4. Willis Todd

    This is a very interesting article! I am perplexed though at why this isn’t more well know if it is twice the age of Stonehenge?
    Also, I think Dan’s question deserves a better answer, though I don’t know that I am able to give one. Perhaps you could say that while the Bible gives a record of genealogy saying Adam and Eve were not that long ago, perhaps that was one of the things altered by men who got tired of writing a long genealogy every time they made a copy. I don’t know, but it seems pretty clear to me that man has been here longer than the approximate 6,000 years you see in the Bible.
    The link posted by Bryce about the Garden of Eden has a lot of quotes in it that make it hard to believe anything but that Missouri , or very close to it was the original Garden of Eden, with reference to a pile of rocks there being the alter Adam used after being cast out of the Garden. And yet I would agree that it is better to look for early evidence of worship in the Middle East, as that is where we have continued to find the oldest structures. My two cents, though I am a bit of a doubting Thomas myself, yet I love hearing about things like this. 🙂

  5. Tim

    Ancient ruins will always have the challenge of being dated correctly. However, I feel that there are many items of LDS doctrine that are not always compatible with the secular world, but at the same time are still reasonable. For instance, we assume that Adam and Eve were the only human forms on the earth, but the Bible says that Adam and eve were created in the image of God – but does not hint as to whether other humanoid beings were created, and allowed to prosper under a different law. Also, there are many things in scripture which have a spiritual and physical principle, but we often can only figure out which part is which under direct revelation from the same source that all righteous men have gained their knowledge. So, how long were Adam and Eve in the GArden of Eden for? Is it possible that principles of evolution were at work during the time they spent in the garden of Eden…and was a real place anyway? And, when ‘the flood’ receded weren’t the lands separated? And didn’t people live longer before that time? Consequently, we assume that the earth has always spun asthe same revolution, in the same solar system – but no-one can tell us whether it has always located this position in the Universe. So…….all the laws of time, physical places and so forth are always refered to in the frame of our current position, but………they may have omitted some other unknown variables. So, bring on the millenium, where all things will be made known!

  6. Leslie Vadas

    I have spent thirty years thinking about religion and its origins and since have become a total nonbeliever. However, I have come to some interesting conclusions which may be of interest to readers. As to the Garden of Eden, I believe there was one, but not in a religious sense. The bible provides important clues as to the location. It was between the Tigrus and Eufrates rivers from the north and two other rivers coming from the east and west respectively. Using images taken from space, which show ancient dry river beds coming from the east and west, this places the Garden of Eden in the middle of the Persian Gulf. Ten thousand years ago so much water was tied up in the glaciers of the ice age that the ocean water levels were hundreds of feet lower than today so the the Persian Gulf, the Black Sea, and many other areas around the world were dry land. Many areas such as the Persian Gulf and the Black Sea had fresh water lakes in the middle as water accumulated from the glacial melt water. As the sea levels rose, ocean water invaded previously dry land, flooding it, covering existing civilizations and giving rise to the folk memory of The Flood. Because of it’s southern location away from the northern glaciers and the fresh water lake at it’s heart, the Persian Gulf had a climate suitable for all kinds of vegetation and wild life. Until The Flood, it was the Garden of Eden.

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