A Temple in the Garden of Eden

Since I am not in the field for the next month or so and especially since my stories aren't that interesting anyway, I thought I would start sharing some about discoveries and field work that are interesting - such as the discovery of a temple in the Garden of Eden - or a very likely location for it. This is an extraordinary find in so many ways. It is essentially a megalithic site, like Avebury or Stonehenge in England, but much much earlier, dating to 10,000BC (as opposed to 3000BC for Stonehenge), and the imagery depicts images from a hunter/gather world, like the paintings of Lascaux or Chauvet, which are older than this site. Although, I am annoyed by some of the incorrect assumptions-such as the people 10,000 BC were living in caves, especially out in the plains of Turkey (where the site was found) and the idea that these people were not clever or capable of making homes. They were more capable than we often realize and they probably only worked 20 hours a week on the high end which means they had a lot of time to do other things. This article does illustrate the transition to agriculture was not a smooth one and involved initially a poorer standard of living which Jared Diamond pointed out may have been the world's worst mistake.