It could easily be an aurochs. However, as the head is damaged, this is uncertain. We comment on this in the paper….In this case, I agree, Pillar 38 is so damaged that it is hard to be sure about these symbols. It is rational, though, given our preceding statistical case, which provides the necessary confidence, to interpret it as an aurochs. And, indeed, I personally think the excavators have got this one wrong. It genuinely looks more like an aurochs than a fox to me. Take the aurochs. In the first place, I have already pointed out that his equation of aurochs with Capricornus at GT is baseless. In the second place, a careful analysis of the distribution and treatment of aurochs bones at CH strongly suggests they were the focus of community feasting rather than everyday fare, which was dominated by domesticated sheep and goats. The installations involve wild animals, hunted rather than bred, with actual skulls and horns very likely serving as trophies or memorializations of actual hunts and subsequent communal feasts. In context, there is no reason to think they are references to constellations, and every reason to relate them to cultural practices strongly reflected in the faunal record. Sweatman’s explanation for the heavy dominance of aurochs in the installations—”possibly because of its earlier association with the Taurid meteor stream”—is not only a stretch, it is inconsistent with his claim that the fox was associated with the Taurid meteor stream at GT. M.B. Sweatman, N. Afify, C. Ferriero-Rangel, M. Jorge and J. Sefcik, ‘Molecular dynamics investigation of clustering in aqueous glycine solutions’, J. Phys. Chem. B. 126, 4711 (2022). Sweatman, however, regards his mistakes as irrelevant. I pointed out that up to six of his eight identifications could be second-ranked (i.e., wrong) without affecting his conclusions. He proudly agreed, and claimed that was evidence of the strength of his statistical case; in fact, it’s a red flag that his methodology may be detached from reality. I pointed out that the “aurochs” on Pillar 38 was a fox. His reply: “It is rational…given our preceding statistical case, which provides the necessary confidence, to interpret it as an aurochs.” In other words, damn the facts, we’ve got stats. That is circular reasoning, and it’s also a pretty good summary of this paper’s approach. The event happened on June 29, 10,961 BC, Gregorian calendar,and it is the year marked on the Göbekli Tepe’s Pillar 43. Sweatman’s claim of 10,950 BC +/- 250 a for this I reduced to 10,961 BC +/- 0 years, and I wrote a follow-up paper to MAA journal promptly when Sweatman wrote his paper. I wrote it timely, but it was rejected from publication, because it was a follow-up supportive research, not a knee-jerk critique, like the other 3 submitted articles were.

M.B. Sweatman ‘Survey of classical density functionals for modelling hydrogen physisorption at 77 K’, Phys. Rev. E 77, 026712 (2008). On this basis, Sweatman concludes that snakes in GT art represent meteors/comet fragments, in particular the Taurid meteor stream presumed to be the source of the Younger Dryas Impact bolide (see below). But this is nonsense. We now know what happened to these people. It probably had happened many times before and since, and it could happen again, to us. The conventional view of prehistory is a sham; we have been duped by centuries of misguided scholarship. The world is actually a much more dangerous place than we have been led to believe. The old myths and legends, of cataclysm and conflagration, are surprisingly accurate.The team says further research is needed to shed more light on how it may have affected global climate and associated changes in human populations or animal extinctions. Are comets “certainly dangerous and destructive?” Well, no. Most of them are just transient novel objects in the sky, which many cultures have taken as omens, for good or ill. Nor are meteors usually dangerous and destructive. A tiny proportion result in airbursts or impacts, but the rest are just impressive streaks across the night sky.

At Ancient Origins, we believe that one of the most important fields of knowledge we can pursue as human beings is our beginnings. And while some people may seem content with the story as it stands, our view is that there exist countless mysteries, scientific anomalies and surprising artifacts that have yet to be discovered and explained. The vase on the bottom was recovered from the grave of an important person, perhaps a warrior-king, in ancient Abydos. The animal symbols on this vase, which have some resemblance to an early form of hieroglyphics, have led Egyptologists to interpret it as belonging to the mythical ‘Scorpion King’, one of a succession of warlords thought to be responsible for uniting Upper and Lower pre-dynastic Egypt. This is because the hawk (or Horus) symbol at the top is often found preceding the name of a King, or Pharaoh, in dynastic times. Sweatman’s paper includes five dated figures from this phase of Cosquer Cave, tied to three equinox dates, plus two stags/megaloceros added in a later blog post:M.B. Sweatman ‘New techniques for simulating crystals’, AICHE 2008: Philadelphia, Mol. Sim. 35, 897-909 (2009). M.B. Sweatman, R. Fartaria and L. Lue, ‘Cluster formation in fluids with competing short-range and long-range interactions’, J. Chem. Phys. 140, 124508 (2014). Indeed, through this interpretation, we begin to see how some of the Ancient Egyptian deities were derived; originally, they were zodiacal symbols. For example, Horus, Anubis, Hathor, Set, Thoth and Sekhmet were likely derived from Sagittarius, Lupus, Capricornus or Taurus, Northern Aquarius, Pisces and Leo or Cancer respectively. We have also uncovered another strand to the complex story of the origin of writing—very likely its earliest roots are to be found in astronomical notation. M.B. Sweatman, A.A. Atamas and J.M. Leyssale, ‘The self-referential method combined with thermodynamic integration’, J. Chem. Phys. 128, 064102 (2008). Oh my. There is every reason to assume otherwise. For example, Martin’s statistical analysis of Pillar 43 depends in part on Pisces matching the “bent bird” more closely than any other possible animal figure. But how do the three birds on Pillar 38 (two “tall birds” and one completely different bird) match that asterism, in a context which is also explicitly treated as a sky map? And in what kind of script, proto or otherwise, does A=AAB?