Created sometime around 9500 BCE and then mysterious buried a thousand years later, the monoliths of Gobekli Tepe sit 15km to the west of the birth place of the Prophet Abraham. Awe inspiring works of art engraved in massive stones six thousand years before the great pyramids in Giza, in the days of the hunter gathers, at the time of the birth of agriculture. Archaeologists have mused that these monoliths may represent the worlds first large scale sanctuary as there are no signs of habitation near by. No where for people to live, to get water. And thus they must have lived 10-15km where the nearest water sources would be found.
“Hidden since near the end of the last ice age, this unassuming mound host to but a few grazing goats gave up its secrets when a German archeologist uncovered what is now considered to be the world’s oldest, confirmed oldest, religious site, we know as Gobekli Tepe or translated from Turkish as potbelly hill. Professor Schmidt had previously excavated Nevali Cori, a pre-pottery Neolithic site dated around 8500 BCE not far to the north of Gobekli Tepe. There he found giant blackened monoliths standing 3 meters high, very similar to the black monolith you and Alexander remembered from 2001 Space Odyssey. Thus, at this older mound sitting 780 meters high only 15km northeast of Sanliurfa, he astutely recognized long stones on the ground as the top of giant monolithic pillars, buried for 12,000 years, much, much older than the Giza pyramids. His team found more than isolated pillars, they uncovered four large ovaloid areas with as many as twelve pillars around two central massive T shaped pillars. The largest, here in Enclosure D, has a height of 5.5 meters, or 18 feet, and 15 metric tonnes weight. Professor Schmidt’s team found fifty of these monolith pillars of various sizes in the areas they had excavated. And hence, thinking like you with your fantasies of a 2001 Space Odyssey type object, Alexander thinks our object might be a monolithic pillar somewhere at this site.” Father Jean-Paul Sobiros, May 2021
9500 BCE was the end of the last ice age. We were hunter-gathers traveling in small bands following game. Experts estimate that it would have taken at least 100 people a year to build these enclosures of such massive carved monoliths. How and why would hunter-gathers band together to construct a site which has no relation to finding and creating food or providing shelter? Was this really a place of worship?
Who were the people who built the ancient temple of Gobekli Tepe? And what is the importance of their words, of their faith, to the future peace of the world in 2021?
“And most importantly, they may have started the first large scale organized religion. This site may very well be where mankind first truly communed with God. Our object may have allowed them to communicate with God.” – Father Jean-Paul Sobiros, May 2021
For twelve thousand years the legend has been passed down through the descendants of the family who founded this temple, their faith, and the words of the originating matriarch who found a sacred object and had heard a voice, the voice.
“The object can destroy. The object can save. But only for the man and woman together. Together, guide the salvation of others.”
A thousand years later, her matriarchal descendants follow the voice’s instruction to bury the object for a man and woman in times to come to find.
And in 2021, as the world teeters on the precipice of war, two vastly different heirs to ancient lore, aided by a former Jesuit priest, race to find an artifact to bring peace to the world, or face its ultimate destruction. Can a Kurdish freedom fighter and a Californian editor defeat a dangerous oligarch and save the world?
The Matriarch Matrix is a speculative fiction epic of the passion, pain, faith, and search for peace of two women separated by twelve millennium. The lessons of the past relearned in the future. A highly interwoven story that spans across time and continents.
“Our present has previously happened in the past from where appears our future. Our lesson learned from the voice of the object.” – Peter Gollinger, June 2021
Photos: Rights purchased from Dreamstime