Could Masonic Secrets Lead to a Deeper Understanding of Gobekli Tepe?

Revising: Can Gobekli Tepe Reveal Prehistoric Masonic Secrets?

Mapping A Revision

It has been four years since I published an article called Can Gobekli Tepe Reveal Prehistoric Masonic Secrets? on Ancient Origins. I guess I should start by saying that my fundamental opinion on the topic has not changed. Well, at least not that much.

To really get an understanding of the perspective I am putting forward it is worth going back and skimming that article, because it contains a lot of the substance of my intuitions, the sources and a broader context for the possible connections I am trying to point to. But, as I just spoke about, it was not clear and my intuitions were not well enough explained. Considering the many emails and questions and queries that arose as a result of my previous transferral of an idea into bits, I want to clear a few things up. 

Let us start at the top; the title itself is a bit misleading. I can best illustrate this by showing what the title was originally meant to be side-by-side with what the published version became.

The original: 

Could Masonic Secrets Lead to a Deeper Understanding of Gobekli Tepe?

Published/edited version: 

It should be clear from the original title - the title of this article - that we may find out something about Gobekli Tepe from the Masons and not we may find something out about the Masons from Gobekli Tepe. It seems like a small thing but it is important in understanding that Gobekli Tepe is upstream of Masonry, not vice versa. Instead, the published version may jade some to the point I am trying to make.  It may have led some to believe I was saying Freemasonry is a prehistoric tradition who constructed Gobekli Tepe. That is not my opinion. But I see why some caught the wrong end of that stick. Don’t judge a book and all that…

To be explicitly clear from the get-go, put plainly, the assumption is that: 

Descendents of the complex group who constructed megalithic works along the Levant and Anatolia, like Gobekli and the other Tepe’s, may have disseminated information into succeeding cultures, flowing all the way through Egypt, down to the Phoenicians and into Solomon’s Temple. Masonic rituals are a direct lineage from the masons of Byblos and Tyre, who constructed Solomon’s Temple, making it a lineage of Egypt and thus Gobekli Tepe.

As the assumed theory goes, at least.

The Freemasons had nothing to do with this lineage from before the Renaissance. The Canaanite-Phoencian masons passed on the knowledge and skills that they inherited from before their time. Information spreads from culture to culture, and things flow downstream because of the kinetic nature of time pushing things forward. In my original article it may not have been clear that I was putting all the onus on the complex group(s?) behind the 10th millennium architectural masterpieces in Anatolia, not the later masons who became a vessel for this information, acting as a diaspora, wittingly or unwittingly. Like how tiny seedlings attach to a passing deer's fur as they press through the undergrowth, carried away to some other geographical space, destined to lay roots and continue the physical manifestation of that plant's specific informational lineage, could the same not be said for a host of very ancient information aswell? 

It would help if I defined information in this context. Here, by information, in the case of the Anatolia-lineage, I am specifically referring to cosmological knowledge - the movement of celestial objects - and of masonry techniques - working with and manipulating stone. I do, however, also hold the opinion that similar (if not the same) networks existed to transmit information regarding sacred practices revolving around geometry and acoustics. If you pry a little deeper into any one of those informational niches you will notice a small chamber in the back linking one to every other. It is all complementary information, but that is a story for another day.

I do go one step further, but to avoid going one forward for two back I will continue along this path first. And instead of me doing what I did last time and attempting to only use words to navigate my way through the manner in which I intuit this connection, this time I have visually mapped the flow of information from speculated beginning points to the present day:

Updated Version - 30/07/24:

Failing to Orientate the Map

Ignore the rotund elephants in the room for a second. In fact, zoom out so far that we take a 30,000 foot view and the floppy ears and wrinkled trunks become part of the same tiny pin-prick punctured into the historic landscape. Sneaking into the Square and borrowing a leaf out of the Tower, the above framework uses network-style structures to explore the movement of information across time and space.¹ Using a heuristical form of Network Theory we can more easily get a lay of the very ancient and expansive terrain. In this regard, if I was to further boil this theory down, it condenses into the idea that: 

Information flow exists over extremely long periods of time through large networks that bridge together at pivotal contextual moments. Nodes can act as a temporary “storage” space for information. Eventually, when another small group forms more complex clusters of connection, evolving into a more dense set of culture, information resumes its flows across nodal connections. This information took the form of mythology and masonry to encode cosmology and geometry/numerology.

If you think about it, this is not an outrageous claim. One look at the Vedic Tradition - essentially one large information-dissemination network spanning anywhere from 3500 to 8000 years - will tell you that vast amounts of knowledge has been, and still is being, passed down across time and over geographical and cultural space. We should not be blown off our chairs learning that information, moreover the explicit ability to turn this into workable knowledge, whether relating to the “outer”- physical world²  - or the “inner” - workings of our minds³ - is encoded through mythology.⁴ Before we unpack this further, let us orientate ourselves. Mainly so I don’t make the same mistake twice.

Each node represents a certain culture or group of people in time. If the node is larger and left “open”, it is can be considered a “main access point” for information flowing through the overall network. These nodes are essential for network integrity. Smaller, shaded nodes work to pass or retain information through the wider network. Due to the vast amounts of time covered by this network map these smaller nodes also serve to make the historical landscape a bit easier to navigate. Each cultural node no doubt contained (thus represents) an information network in and of itself. Nodes become somewhat “cellular” in their structure. You can imagine that if you were to put a single node under the microscope it would contain countless other smaller “inner nodes” (representing the ties between individuals, institutions, local trade networks, social groups etc) all connecting to eachother and the main node in unique ways depending on the culture that the main node represents. It would also contain strands of connection to other “outer nodes” - cultures and groups of people external to the node itself.

Imagined inner workings of a cultural node. To really understand how information may have flowed through various parts of this network structure, later work will focus on each “cellular-like” nodal structure and the connections between its “inner” and “outer” nodes and the impact this has on the larger system of information dissemination.

In terms of “network vs hierarchy” dynamics, as Ferguson demonstrates, even if a culture or state occupies a hierarchical structure (the stereotypical monilithic Tower of centralised control and power) it would still have contained large inner and outer networks of information regarding shared traditions, beliefs, rituals, rites, mythology, technology and history (focussed in and around the Town Square - the market place for both physical goods and ideas). Together these cultural nodes, whether hierarchical or not, cluster to form a larger information network that reaches across and cuts through large swathes of time and space. Just take a gander at Ferguson’s work to get a feel for how prevalent networks have been in shaping our history. They are literally everywhere, and evidently have been for quite some time.

Back on the map above you will notice how some lines connecting the various nodes are broken whilst others remain unbroken. These lines represent the nodal connections across “gaps”. Gaps exist both in terms of geographical space and across time. If a line is broken we have very limited or speculative evidence for the connection between that node (culture or group) and the next. Further, if the line is both broken and highlighted in red then that line represents a “bridging-gap” that has turned into an informational “choke point”. A gap needs to be “bridged” at the point where one network cluster connects to another. This allows information to continue passing through the collection of nodes. The gap turns into a “choke point” when the connection between the two nodes is weak and may suggest no information has passed from one node to the next. As we can see, there are three such choke points that will be addressed in this revision. Last, you will also notice a blue line running from one end of the network map to the other. If we start from the bottom-up, tracing our way backwards through the steep halls of time, we notice a possible (yet clear) line of connection: 

Masonic Tradition → Templars → Solomon → Phoenicians/Canaanites → Egypt → Gobekli Tepe. 

It is only after we pass through Gobekli Tepe/ Northern Anatolia around the time of Earth’s last ice age the Younger Dryas Maximum around 11,600 years ago and reach the most distant nodes of the Swiderians and beyond that the line becomes unavoidably broken.

This brings us to the first of two major points I want to address: 

This straight line of connection between the various “nodes” reaches, somewhat unobstructedly⁵, from the contemporary Masonic tradition to Gobekli Tepe. This line, the possible clear flow of information that runs from one end of the cultural node time scale to the other, is one element of interest I was trying to point to in my last article. I just did not point long enough, or with enough vigour and intention. I had intuited a connection but had not visually mapped it out. It remains an interesting connection that I feel deserves more attention in the future.

So to clear things up, as per my previous article I do speculate that if Masonic ritual was fully opened sourced, and I mean all of it, and examined and analysed, correlated with what we know now and what we infer we may know in the future then perhaps, given a possible line of connection all the way up from 970 BCE through the Master Mason of Solomon’s Temple - Hiram Abif - back through the Canaanites and Egyptians, possibly the Natufians and rolling back into 9,600 BCE Northern Anatolia to the architects of Gobekli Tepe and far beyond the thick sheets of ice that characterises the Younger Dryas period, these secret traditions may reveal more about who these mysterious yet complex groups of builders and astute observers were. What their belief structure looked like. What, how and why their system of ideals, symbology and mastery of their environment shaped into existence what we uncover now.

Lost in the Neolithic Weeds Looking for Masons

I mean, of course a powerful, alluring and speculated-upon quote-unquote “secret” society would no doubt want to keep a lot of their tradition and ritual under wraps. I hold this opinion because the Masonic tradition is infamous in maintaining precision and accuracy with regard to the originality of its sources.⁶ On top of this, “Freemasonic ritual claims there was a secret and select group that maintained a secret knowledge of building and astronomy”.⁷ They literally have “mason” - stone workers -in their name. A predominant emblem of theirs is the compass - one of two tools used in sacred geometric practices. The assemblers of Gobekli Tepe were clearly master masons. But this is simple surface level-conjecture for now. Maybe higher ground can be found in cosmological symbology. Clearly modern-day Freemasons maintain a cosmic symbolism in their practice (just have one look at the roof of the London HQ below).

Knight and Lomas, two researchers who ended up joining the Freemasons in order to learn the depths of some of this ritualistic knowledge, sifted through and chronologically ordered countless Masonic traditions to form what they have coined the “Masonic Testament”. This testament has similarities to the Biblical Testament, only with many stranger and more detailed accounts than the wider publicised version. The researchers make clear that Masonic Lore does indeed contain lots of cosmological symbolism. The same as Solomon’s Temple, the same as Egypt, the same as Gobekli Tepe. Perhaps if we could look at this symbology in more detail we may notice similarities in traditions, in information, and trace the linegage in more confidence. There is always the chance when all is said and done none of this may be true. Whilst I like a flare of mystery, I am not a Mason, I would not lose out on anything if it is not true and, honestly, I would be okay with either outcome. I am not married to this idea. Nor many other ideas for that matter. But I think it would be remiss if there exists some beads of knowledge relating to our ancient past gated behind a mahogany door of secrecy. What a shame indeed.But there is some hope. Let us dive into the nodal connections a bit more, and see where I went wrong last time and where we might be better off looking this time.

“The Book of Hiram” is no doubt a gripping read, yet where I went astray in my previous article was following both authors particular lead into Neolithic Europe, placing emphasis on the Grooved Ware People.⁸ Reframed in a network-based scaffolding, looking at the map above we notice how the Grooved Ware People contain the least “solid” connections amongst any part of the total network. It forms our first major set of choke-points, causing rifts in the connections between the Butovo and Kutuvo Cultures in the Black Sea area, early-Levant cultures like Natufians and Harafian’s, the Grooved Ware People, and Neolithic Europe. Information would find it hard to pass through the network from the top-down in this region of the map. 

That being said, the very fact that these two dedicated researchers, whilst sifting through old Masonic tradition intuited a 4000 year plus connection between the Masons lineage (circa 1300 CE) and that of a mid-late Neolithic European culture (around 3000 BCE) and the Phoenician’s of the Levant (around 1500 BCE onwards) speaks to the kind of information that may be sitting waiting to be extracted from analysing these withheld traditions. Where a mistake was made on my end was putting the Grooved Ware People front and centre in my original assumption. I got carried away with the intriguing ideas posed by Knight and Lomas, notably the possible information flow between the Neolithic Levant and Europe. I did not know how to place much weight in these connections in my original article, thus I did not do a good job in doing so. I even went as far as making a very dubious connection between the megalithic yard and the diameter of Gobekli Tepe. Looking back on it I should have left it, but that is life ay? Shoulda-woulda-coulda. Tryna place a square key in a round hole, only to look back and realise you had the key upside-down all along. Perhaps the Grooved Ware People were one element of this network, but even if they were not involved in the slightest it does not matter. These connections do not need to exist for the information dissemination network theory to maintain some of its structural integrity. As mentioned above, a clear (blue) line of connection appears to run from the Masonic Tradition to Gobekli Tepe without passing through the Grooved Ware People. Instead we can go west, through Egypt. I was lost in the Neolithic weeds. I hope to have now paddled back far enough to find the morning star and guide us home to a nice cup of warm cocoa.

Mythological Information Networks

Many of you, especially if you have not read my first article, are probably wondering why I am making a connection between Gobekli Tepe and Solomon’s Temple in the first place. Many believe the makers of Gobekli Tepe went on to seed their cultural knowledge and information into the Levant region.⁹ Fast forward and Solomon’s temple was built by a collective of stonemason from Byblos under the instruction of a master mason from Tyre called Hiram Abif, placed there by the King from Tyre, also called Hiram. Both of these figures were born in modern day Lebanon, which sits smack bang in the middle of the Levant Region that straddles the Middle East, North Africa and Eurasia. Byblos was the first Pheoncian settlement and, along with Tyre and most of the Phoencian and broader Canaanite cultures, was certainly connected to Egypt. We can gather this given Egypts political, social and military occupation and trade connections in the region between the 3rd and 2nd Millennium BCE¹⁰ following Thutmose I’s campaign of expansion. Information flow from Egypt to Phoenicia and vice versa would no doubt have taken place during this period. Given what we know about our species' innate tendency to spread out, formulate vast land and transoceanic trade networks and spread and merge culture, it would not be surprising if such information sharing also occurred before this official occupation also. According to Biblical accounts Byblos, one of the ancient cities where the master masons who planned and constructed Solomon’s Temple hailed from, appears to be intimately connected to Egypt from its earliest genesis.¹¹ On a timescale, around 8,200 years sat between the creation of Gobekli Tepe and the creation of the Temple of Solomon. That is a very long time. Long enough to witness multiple cultures rise and fall to the machinations of time. But between the Temple of Solomon and the height of the Dynastic Egyptians sits roughly 1900 years. And between the height of the Dynastic Egyptians to their earliest settlements along the Nile in Helwan sits around 4,500 years. Helwan is separated by the Natufians and Gobekli Tepe by less than a 1,000 years. Whilst still vast amounts of time, if we look at the information as being transmitted from “node-to-node” (culture-to-culture), and we begin to factor in how one node can “store” information, awaiting the next culture to assimilate with and transmit it on, then it becomes more tangible. On the face of it I admit it still sounds far-fetched. As we shall see, evidence suggests that this mechanism for transmitting and encoding information may not only span these time scales but, perhaps, even greater ones still.

Andrew Collins, a leading independent researcher pathfinding his way into some fascinating ancient spaces, highlights information flow into Egypt way before their interactions with the Phoencians, or Mesoptamians, or any other overlapping cultures. Collins sees this information flow stemming from none other than the pot-bellied hill makers of Gobekli Tepe and the countless other megalithic sites now being discovered across the Anatolian Region of north-eastern Turkey. The course that this flow of information takes from the Levant into Egypt is also suggested by the statistical analysis of cosmically-derived symbology by Professor Martin Sweatman of Edinburgh University. In his revelatory¹² book Prehistory Decoded, among many other things¹³, Sweatman highlighted the chances of the cosmic symbology at Gobekli Tepe matching the zodiacal celestial patterns in such a coherent and reproduced manner as being a 1 in 100 million coincidence. This convinced the professor of statistical mechanics and chemical engineering that the makers of Gobekli Tepe, the worlds first definitive sign of sophisticated planning and megalithic building work, used a deliberate set of symbols to transmit information across time. Symbology in the form of animal, shapes and patterns were used to encode a date in time, pointing to the end of the Younger Dryas, or the estimated construction date of the site itself.¹⁴

The now pseudo-infamous “Pillar 43 from Enclosure D” - the Vulture Stone shown here, is one such example of the cosmic symbology Sweatman decoded.

Then Sweatman went on to show how the ancient Egyptians may have used this same cosmically-derived symbology too.¹⁵ Sweatman and Collins’ research suggests the information dissemination flow started in Northern Anatolia, converged down through the Levant and emerged in Egypt, either directly through areas like Helwan, or through further dissemination channels carving their way through cultural marvels like Mesopotamia and the various Canaanite groups like the Amorites in Northern Syria.¹⁶ Interestingly, the latter Amorites became progenitors to the Jebusites who settled in the lands surrounding Jerusalem, remaining even after King David entered the scene around 1000 BCE. Jerusalem is where Davids son, Solomon, would later finish constructing what his father started: his famous First Temple. We see from Biblical accounts that Moses led the Israelite tribes out of Egypt around 1400-1300 BCE. By this point the Canaanite-based Israelites had been in Egypt for atleast a few hundred years, at first enjoying a stint of dominance but ending at the point of enslavement under their Egyptian counterparts. All this to say, the levant region, from the time of Gobekli Tepe to the time of Solomon, through Egypt, Syria, modern day Anatolia, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel, was an abundance of information flow. I am not denying there were peaks and troughs. I am not denying there are large periods of time between one culture rising and the next. As the gears of history grind away, ups and downs are expected mechanistic outputs. But could this knowledge have spanned megalithic marvels, symbolic cosmology and mythology, from Gobekli Tepe, down the Levant into Egypt and into Phoenicia, through the master guild of masons, into the Temple of Solomon?  I am asking this, not telling it. I simply say this to suggest, why don’t we combe the stores of information supposedly housed by the Freemasons to see if any of the symbology lines up? Given the intriguing possible connection it seems silly not to.

But why the Freemasons in particular? We know Solomon’s First Temple was flattened in 586 BCE by a Babylonian King, then reconstructed 70 years later by Herod the Great, then levelled again by those pesky Romans in 70 CE. However, we also know that the original substructure of the Temple Mount contained multiple passageways and tunnels that the original Levantine master masons had constructed to protect items of the utmost value. Knowing how Masons work, it would also not be out of the realm of possibility that the measurements of the architecture itself contained valuable information encoded by the Master Masons of Byblos and Tyre. Then the Crusades served as a brutal backdrop for the Knights Templar - the Order of St John - to excavate the grounds for over a decade between 1118-1128 CE.¹⁷ Excavating and doing hands on research in-situ for ten years (that we know about) should not be dismissed lightly. Whatever they found under those ruins, if anything at all, was never officially recorded by the Order. It was noted, however, that the Templars suddenly became very rich and initiated the beginning of complex and “odd” rituals immediately after their excavations of Solomon’s ruins.¹⁸ Odder still that the European-based order claimed a direct lineage from the network of master masons connected to the Phoenician Hiram’s.¹⁹ And who did the Knights Templar become? Yep - none other than the Freemasons. What are the odds of mere random coincidence that the Masonic network, a direct offshoot of the Knights Templar network, still uses information from the original Phoencian masons, including Hiram himself, to conduct their rituals and structure their systems of knowledge and belief? One big coincidence I’d say. And if the Phoenician masons got their knowledge from the Egyptians, also master masons, who got their knowledge from older Levant-based cultural groups, who got their knowledge from the culture(s) behind the many megalithic sites we find in Turkey’s Anatolia region like Gobekli, Karahan Tepe, Boncuklu Tarla, Çemka Höyük, and Körtik Tepe then it begs the question: is this an example of one large informational lineage?

Quickly another more shaky proposition appears: Were the builders of Gobekli Tepe the soul originators of this information? Or was it a mix of them and those that came before, following the pattern of information dissemination from culture to culture, group to group we think we see now? We notice this pattern in modern times. Since the Renaissance period, upgrading what we do based on that which came before. Using prior knowledge to continue innovating. I am not saying Gobekli Tepe or the pyramids were built by anyone other than the local inhabitants. That would be like saying if you live in a semi-detached townhouse the ancient inhabitants of Jericho built it for you.²⁰ I am just pointing to the very real notion that information flows across time between groups vis-à-vis cultures. And parts of such pre-existing information can lead to innovative assemblies when combined with new insights and uses. With evidence that such information streams seem to have circulated through as much of our pre-history as they do in our post-modernity, to understand one mechanism such networks may have used to transmit knowledge across vast amounts of time and space, we look to the “Myth-Drop Model”:

 

I have previously said: 

“This droplet has three interrelated yet distinct layers. The first outermost layer of myth is the surface level. This is the narrative, the story, that makes transmitting the myth across time easy. This is the most relatable part and the most entertaining. Next we have the middle layer. This is the part of the narrative that requires a bit more digging, more thought-processing. This is the vein of analogy, the pulse of metaphor, that studied-readers will be able to tap into, to feel, if they pay enough attention. We are left with the final layer. Here we have an inner, dense bead of pure wisdom. This bead is the real reason the founders of the myth transmitted it in the first place. It is obscure, often hidden deep beneath abstract meaning. This nucleus is the part that requires multiple threads of tacit [and explicit knowledge] to access. But once reached, it is the most fruitful part of the myth and the part that most people tend to miss.”

This is one way information can flow from network to network, node to node, culture to culture, across the erosion of time and the destruction of history. Of course this is simplified and surface-level explanation of mythology. The systems that encode myth are highly complex, yet simple enough in structure and popular enough in message to themselves be carried, perhaps in some cases unknowingly, through a culture or a group of people within the traditions and rituals that they have inherited. 

Language and text helps ensure myth is passed down through time. Another way information can not onlt flow but be stored through various nodes, especially one connected to masonic traditions, is through the encoding of information into stone. Symbolism is one way, which we have seen through the decoding of Gobekli Tepe’s stone pillars and so forth. Another way is through the geometric principles that guide an architectural assemblage. Through specific measurements aligned with certain principles of geometry, those that have the explicit knowledge can deduce meaning from stone cut and placed in certain ways, in measurements upon measurements which can suggest a deeper meaning if understood correctly. In my last article I got carried away with the mysteries of Rosslyn Chapel. Whilst I will avoid repeating the same mistake here, I would be remiss to say Chartres Cathedral in France, somewhere I have personally visited since my original article, may contain more Masonic secrets than we know what to do with. Made even more intriguing when we hear of cosmological symbolism behind this Masonic architecture,²¹ it is a story for another day.

Whose Steering The Ship?

Going one step further, which I tend to be inclined to do myself, Collins prodded at a tentative but alluring link between the informational node of Gobekli Tepe and an ancient hominin cousin of ours: Homo Denisovans, or Denisovans for short.²² Found in genetic trails that snake across Siberia, Northern Europe, China, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, the Tibetan Plateau, Loas and into the Pacific Islands and Australia, our ancient cousin certainly got about.²³

Back on the map, if you were to continue on the blue line from bottom to top you would cross various bridging gaps, some presenting somewhat nasty choke points. Another such bridging gap sits between Gobekli Tepe and the Swiderians, highlighted by a red demarcation. Bridging the gap between the Swiderians and Gobekli Tepe crosses treacherous, somewhat uncharted water. It is like finding a Piri Reis Map and seeing a bridge marked on it. You would not know if it still exists. If it ever existed. Let us say a prayer and hope it does, because it would connect two massive information-based networks and opens us up a whole new frontier of beautiful discovery. One way to test a bridge is to see what the land around it looks like. Collins supported earlier connections he had intuited between the Denisovans and Neolithic Europeans by pointing to a genetic study released in 2020 that suggested Denisovan genes are found in the land of the native Icelanders. Collins put forward that, 

“The discovery that Icelanders, like the Finns, possess at least some Denisovan ancestry now adds weight to the theory… that the Denisovans’ blade tool technology was carried from Mongolia westwards across the Ural Mountains into northern and central Europe, where it was adopted by Swiderian and Post-Swiderian cultures such as the Kunda and Butovo.”²⁴

Whatsmore, 

“The same blade tool technology that originated in Mongolia and eventually found its way into northern and central Europe… have been found in Anatolia at Pre-Pottery Neolithic cult centers such as Göbekli Tepe, having reached here across the Caucasus Mountains from Russia and Ukraine. Cross-cultural contact has already been proposed between the Mesolithic peoples of the Ural Mountains and the builders of Göbekli Tepe…”²⁵

The “blade technology” being referred to here is “pressure flaking”. Evidence for introduction and use of this stone-working technology is spread across many places that cross-paths with the main nodes within this information network including the Ural Mountains, the Caucasus, and the Levant. Even, hence one of the elephants we have been ignoring this entire time, it points to a tentative connection between the Clovis culture of North America, specifically New Mexico and the early cultures around the Nile Valley, notably Helwan. I mean, geographically, considering the main portion of physical evidence for the Denisovan species has come from Denisova Cave in the Altai region of Siberia, the idea that ancient lineages could have spread this pressure-flaking technology across the tundra and over the then above water Bering Land Bridge pre-Younger Dryas into North America is not massively hard to fathom. Especially with evidence cropping up from all over the Americas that human activity was taking place here “between 13,800 and 15,500 years ago, possibly earlier” - all the way back to 24,000 years before our present.²⁶ This could account for the same pressure flaking technique that appears in both geographical strata from North America and Egypt. Andrew Collins’ Cygnus Key in 2018 points to evidence of the similarity of stone technology and a year later Graham Hancock in America Before pointed to similarities in cosmological systems and mythology. I do not mark the Clovis-Helwan connection as strong, but a connection weak as though it may be is worth noting and thinking about regardless. 

And so we arrive at our second and last major point I wanted (but failed) to make in the original article:

Do all these threads of seemingly disparate evidence point to the role of the Denisovans in propagating a massive informational network that spread out through Northern and Central Europe and across the Caucasus Mountains into Anatolia? Collins posits that such a line connection is observable in the stone technology and cosmic mythology surrounding the importance of Cygnus in Denisovan successor cultures and in Gobekli Tepe and Egypt.²⁷ Hancock and Sweatman, whilst reaching different conclusions about what the symbology actually represents, point to the evidence connecting Gobekli Tepe to Egypt. Professor Sweatman’s analysis not only suggests informational networks can exist in excess of 13,000+ years (from Gobekli Tepe until now) but, when analysing symbolism from Lascaux and Chauvet Caves in France posited that such networks may have spanned as far back as 36,000 and 40,000 years “to the time of the migrations into Europe from east Eurasia”.²⁸ Now it is interesting that this overlap in time, from the earliest information networks, most notably based around cosmic symbology and zodiac signs, also spans the time frame that we have formed around human and Denisovan interactions that we infer from genetic studies and archaeological evidence. Both Sweatman and Collins appear to believe that some form of information network has existed since 30,000 years ago (minimum), spanning through to the time of Gobekli Tepe and eventually reaching into Egypt. Collins simply followed the trail further, up at the edge of a dark wood where Sweatman, with all his institutional accolades to protect, decided to make camp further away. Somewhere in amongst those trees may have sat other hominids. Through the rows of column-like trunks we notice the large, hunched outlines of Denisovans and Neanderthals. Whilst it may be hard for many to swallow the idea that these ancient hominids could have displayed collective intelligence like us Homo Sapiens, there is plenty of evidence to suggest this was in fact the case.²⁹

Even those who call the underside of a rock a home would have at least heard of Yuval Harari’s Sapiens by now. In it he talks about the Cognitive Revolution as the first of three “uprisings” in our evolutionary status quo. Quite interestingly given our current talking point, this cognitive shift occurred between 70,000 to 40,000 years ago.³⁰ Harari mentions the genetic connection we have to Denisovans, originating from cross-breeding in this period, but brushes past the idea that this could have had anything to do with the cognitive improvements themselves. I will just leave it there as an interesting point to consider. And with that, it becomes less hard to imagine that there could have been a very ancient node, perhaps a key progenitor node in an information network that eventually led the way, from ancient hominin group to group, from culture to culture, to the assembly of Gobekli Tepe. From there this information network spread into the Levant, into Egypt, Phoenicia and eventually into the construction of the Temple of Solomon. Then it was in the hands of the Templars, who became the Masons, able to conceal and store this information in order to maintain this long informational lineage, perhaps unknowingly. Far-fetched? No denying it. But one thing’s for sure, given our genetic history it seems, way back when, we were less afraid of associating with the other hominids than we are now. We were less afraid of being a part of an informational lineage and we were less afraid of admitting when we were wrong.  

Revision Over

When we are talking about information that has possibly existed in some form or another for tens of thousands of years, then we can get a scale of not only how important the messages are, but how strong and resilient the network structures have to be in order to bear the weight of such periodical dissemination. I have not really touched upon the meanings behind the symbolism, the messages transmitted through the information. Many greater minds than me link this message to catastrophism. I will just leave it up to you to decide. At the end of the day I just want to learn more about these ancient cultures. No denying I love the mysterious space because, as its names suggests it is a space for pure, unadulterated mystery. Yet even just attempting to find out what really went down all those tens of thousands of years ago is a marvel in and of itself. What creatures we are. Perhaps we have those that came before us to thank for that. Perhaps we can give ourselves a nice big pat on the back. Whatever you prefer, I am sure we can both admit that the ability to find out about our past should be in reach of us all. History is ours, after all. Gatekept information, centralised into one cluster but not accessible to the adjoining networks, is done for many reasons, a lot of which I see the logical reasoning behind. However, they are our mysteries to solve. And we should not need to join any special club, pay any special fees or sign any binding contracts in order to have access to information that could potentially lead to more future discoveries. It is in the best interest of everyone without an agenda to find out what really could have been going on. And if it is not as mysterious as we intuit, then so be it. But how will we ever find out if the information is not there to see for ourselves?

Appendix A

Appendix A: Just to help visually place our species with our other hominid ancestors. Wikimedia Commons, CCA 3.0

Illustrations

(In order as they appear) 

Image 1: Gobekli Tepe’s Circular Enclosures, Wikimedia Commons, CCA 4.0

Image 2: Gobekli Tepe’s “Vulture Stone”, Wikimedia Commons, CCA 2.0

Image 3: Temple of Solomon Model, Wikimedia Commons, CCA 4.0

Image 4: Masonic Compass, Wikimedia Commons, CCA 4.0

Image 5: Cosmological Symbology, Masonic Hall, London, Wikimedia Commons, CCA 4.0

Image 6: Denisovan Migration, Wikimedia Commons, CCA 3.0

References

Angelucci, D. E., Nabais, M., Zilhão, J. 2023. Formation processes, fire use, and patterns of human occupation across the Middle Palaeolithic (MIS 5a-5b) of Gruta da Oliveira (Almonda karst system, Torres Novas, Portugal). PLoS ONE 18(10): e0292075. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292075

Aubet, M. 2001. The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade. Cambridge University Press.

Brand, C. & Mitchell, E. 2015. Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary.

Campbell, J. 1949. The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Campbell, J. 1960. THE MASKS OF GOD: PRIMITIVE MYTHOLOGY.

Campbell, J. 1988. The Power of Myth.

Campos, R. 2020. Geometry and Numbers. 

Carlin, N. 2017. ‘Getting into the Groove: Exploring the Relationship between Grooved Ware and Developed Passage Tombs in Ireland c. 3000–2700 cal bc’, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 83, pp. 155–188. doi:10.1017/ppr.2017.9.

Collins, A. 2018. The Cygnus Key: The Denisovan Legacy, Gobekli Tepe, and the Birth of Egypt.

Collins, A. 2020. The Far-Reaching Realms of Denisovan Ancestry Stretch to Iceland.  Ancient Origins [online].

Ferguson, N. 2017. The Square and the Tower: Networks, Hierarchies and the Struggle for Global Power.

Hancock, G. 2019. America Before: The Key to Earth's Lost Civilization: A new investigation into the ancient apocalypse.

Herrera, B., Samper, A., Seguí, J. M., & Fosl, P. S. (2019). Justification about the existence and location of Chartres’ cathedral labyrinth based on astronomy and geometry. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2019.1631021

Kenney, S. 2016. Three Uses of Memory in Freemasonry.

Knight, C. & Lomas, R. 2004. The Book of Hiram: Unlocking the Secrets of the Hiram Key.

Markoe, G. 2000. Phoenicians. University California Press. 

McKie, R. 2024. Scientists link elusive human group to 150,000-year-old Chinese ‘dragon man’. Guardian [online].

Pringle, H. 2017. From Vilified to Vindicated: the Story of Jacques Cinq-Mars. Hakai Magazine [online].

Segal, R. 1999. Theorising About Myth. University of Massachusetts Press. 

Sels, N. 2011. MYTH, MIND AND METAPHOR, On the Relation of Mythology and Psychoanalysis.  Journal of the Jan van Eyck Circle for Lacanian Ideology Critique 4: 56-70.

Skov, L., Coll Macià, M., Sveinbjörnsson, G. et al. 2020. The nature of Neanderthal introgression revealed by 27,566 Icelandic genomes. Nature 582, 78–83. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2225-9

Steiner, R. 1922. An Outline of Occult Science.

Sweatman, M. 2019. Prehistory Decoded. 

Thomas, J. 2010. ‘The Return of the Rinyo-Clacton Folk? The Cultural Significance of the Grooved Ware Complex in Later Neolithic Britain’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 20(1), pp. 1–15. doi:10.1017/S0959774310000016.

Thompson, T & Schrempp, G. 2020, The Truth of Myth: World Mythology in Theory and Everyday Life. Oxford University Press.

Harari, Y. 2011. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. 

1.  In The Square and the Tower, Nial Ferguson discusses the historical tension between hierarchical orders (the ruling classes Tower) and distributed networks (the towns Square). Whilst he makes this distinction, I still see either the Square and/or the Tower i.e. the hierarchical order and/or distributed networks, as both being a part of the same cultural nodes represented on this map.

2.  Thompson & Schrempp, 2020.

3.  Segal, 1999, Pp. 68-76; Sels, 2011.

4.  Steiner, 1922; Campbell, 1949, 1960 & 1988, 

5.  I do admit there may be more than one not-minor obstruction along the way. Yet, on paper, mapped out, and supported with published research, the line does appear to connect the nodes in such a fashion as laid out above. 

6. West Lancashire Freemasons Initiate Guide, P. 3 (see also: Kenney, 2016)

7. Knight and Lomas, 2004, P. 117.

8.  (If you can break through the paywall - good luck) see: Thomas, 2010 & Carlin, 2017.

9. Find research about Gobekli Tepe cultural exchange into the Levant.

10. Aubet, 2001,P. 18-21; Markoe, 2000, P.18

11. By genesis I am not inferring religiosity, I am inferring historical start point. Brand & Mitchell, 2015, P. 622

12. Revelatory in the sense that an academic and scientist of his calibre had stuck their reputation on the line and produced a statistical analysis on the likelihood of Gobekli Tepe encoding information based around the Zodiacal constellations.

13.  Including debunking the debunkers of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (see P. 112 onwards)

14. Sweatman, 2019, P. 187.

15. Ibid, Pp. 234-250.

16. British Museum, Khan Academy

17. Knight & Lomas, 2004, P.78

18. Ibid, P.71

19. Ibid,  P.73

20. The City of Jericho in Palestine is one of the first examples of the use of brickwork in the ancient world. (See: The History of Brick and Brick Making)

21.  Herrera et al, 2019. (See also: Campos, 2020).

22. See Apendix A for a hominin family tree.

23.  McKie, 2024 (see also: Skov, et al, 2020)

24.  Collins, 2020.

25. Ibid.

26. Pringle, 2017.

27. Collins, 2018.

28. Sweatman, 2019, P. 282.

29. Angelucci et al, 2023.

30.  Harari, 2011, P. 34.