 I would like to welcome you and invite you in the name of the Gebeklipe excavation team to travel back some 12,000 years to a very critical turning point in the history of civilization. It's a time when permanent villages were established, a new way of living developed on farming, which replaced the conventional subsistence strategies of mobile hunter-gatherers. So it was a time with some more critical turning points in the history of civilization. We're viewing this time period from the groundbreaking found recoveries made at Gebeklipe in southeastern Turkey. Well, when we consider this time period, it is the time when our ancestors went into farming. It lays the foundations of our modern civilization with land ownership, new technologies, and all of these were developing. So this is the time when it started somewhere in the Near East when we call the fertile crescent. Fertile crescent, we always knew that it was the beginning of agriculture, sedentary life began in the fertile crescent. But we always considered that it took place under environmental restrictions with some kind of a stress factor. So we were always considering the semi-arid regions of the southern parts of this fertile crescent. And it was always considered that the earliest farmers were simple villages living under harsh conditions, so they were without any complexity. However, the recent work in southeastern Turkey, especially along the Syrian border, North and Ark of the Fertile Crescent, it became evident that the abundant prosperity, the rich environment of this region, made it possible to establish settlements, permanent settlements, even before the beginning of agriculture. And now we have more than about 12 sites which reveal this fantastic culture, but will be seen by the most glorious one, the most fascinating remains that were recovered at Gebekli Tepe. So it is now we are calling it the Gebekli Tepe culture. What is the monumental architecture we know from other parts of the world, so the Gebekli Tepe is one of the sites which really revealed most fantastic remains. We have established permanent settlements, even at a time of 12,000 years ago, about 10,000 BC, in different environmental conditions, but they are all in the North and Ark of the Fertile Crescent in the southeastern Turkey. It was a period of intense interaction, there was a kind of momentum to change innovations. So one of the things that they really developed in this very early period is architectural practices. People always had dwellings, they were living in dwellings, but at the time with the establishment of settlements of the Gebekli Tepe culture, the dwelling became a house, there was a development in architectural technology, structural developments, then it became a house, and very quickly it became a home, retaining new values. So by the end of the Gebekli Tepe culture, which lasted for 3,000 years, we had all the architectural tradition of Near East had been already established. When we look at why this is important, as we all know, the beginning of our modern civilization, food producing, which we came later in the development with surplus food and with other economical modalities of our later civilization, is based on cultivation of cereals, wheat, barley, and the domestication of sheep, goat, cattle, and other domestic animals. So this is the essence of our present day civilization. And these started in the Fertile Crescent because the wild ancestors of these species are present in that environment. So the Gebekli Tepe people started as a hunter-gazers, they lived in the environment where these wild ancestors of the earliest domesticates were living, they were experimenting, and in 3,000 years, by selective mutation, they were able to develop these into cultivated forms, that were living based on farming, necessitated new technologies, new kind of food processing, food preparation of food, so new tools, new modalities, and the new way of life really completely became changed. But what is really surprising, even to us archaeologists, was the recovers in the settlement sites, they were really dominated by temples, by special buildings, monumental buildings, which were dominating the settlement area. They were in the earlier stages, they were around like the domestic buildings, but they were made to be special buildings, so their sizes vary from a size of about 8 meters to 30 meters, as large as 30 meters, but they all have identical plant types, plant settings. They have revetment walls, which are up to sometimes up to 5 meters high, which niches with buttresses and with monolithic stones, standing stones, set along the walls, and they are in central pillars also. We should consider that we are 4,000 years before the invention of metallurgy, we are still in the pre-pottery and Neolithic period, the construction of such a big, monumental architecture needs a social organization, so it gave us a new picture of a social structuring in the earliest stage of this early sedentaryism, that there was a kind of a domineering group, which were elite group, which were in control of the social process, which were making this organized labor to construct. And this time, with the development of architectural techniques, they developed into rectangular architecture, but against the setup of this culture, with the temples or pristine temples or cult buildings remain the same, they all have impermeable foreings, indicating that whatever ceremony was taking place, it involves some kind of a liquid, I don't want to say which kind of a liquid, but there were also benches along the walls, so that it was, whatever was ritual was taking place, it could be observed by a limited number of spectators. We always had being considering past primitive societies, they are all kind of depictions with kind of subsistence patterns, however those we now see with the Gebekli Tepe culture is completely different. We see a kind of a shamanistic world. Every living, moving creature in their environment, eatable or not, is depicted on the standing stones, lizards, insects, water birds, birds of prey, quadriplets, and every kind of animal, reliance, boars, which has nothing to do with their subsistence patterns, so it gives a kind of a naturalistic view of the world, so it's a very, very spectacular. In this context, I would like to commemorate Klaus Schmitz, excavator of Gebekli Tepe, who unfortunately lost two years ago, he was excavator of this Gebekli Tepe culture, and you can see it in one of the bore reliefs. And among the symbolism of that period, snake is kind of an important symbolic figure, it appears in the standing stones or in sculptured pieces, as the one in the back of a human bust. And as I mentioned before, all kind of living creature, tortoises, which are sometimes also are telling stories, insects, spiders, scorpions, and all kind of a completely shamanistic word we can see in the symbolism of this period. But what is also much more specific is the humanization of the divinities. All these standing tea-shaped standing floors are anthropomorphic in shape. The upper part represents a head, and they usually have hands folded by it, and so they are all representing some kind of deities of these people. However, in the central monoliths, there are some of them like totem poles, they are sculptured with male figures, sometimes together with other animals, like birds or lizards or bears and other animals, but they are really like the totem poles. But strikingly, we have it all the way, thinking early Neolithic was mother goddess, no, it's a male goddess. They are all male figures in the temple, so it's a male-dominated social system, which is very clearly in that period, in that region. Strangely also, all of the animals depicted as they are also male. And some of them are full-size sculptures, so they are also the earliest full-size sculptures of human beings now in the world. And also what we have been seeing is some busts and some kind of all kind of masks, but they are all male figures. And also what is very important from the Gubeltepe sites, we have a lot of skeletons now recovered, we know the skeleton remains of more than 1,000 individuals. And it gives also gives us a new picture of the social certification we can understand because some of the burials have rich burial goods, some have nothing, some of them are collective burials, but there are also some of them with skulls removed and skulls cached in somewhere else. And we can see that the skulls have been used in ceremonies because there are multiple layers of paint or lime covered, so they must be taken out in ceremonies. But who words that's another question, but now with new developments in the genetic archeology, we are learning much about their nutrition, about the subsistence patterns, about their DNA composition. And some of them have been telling us very tragic stories like this lady here who died when she was giving a birth to a twin, one of the twins is in her hands and the other one is still in the abdomen, but so is that the rich wealth of information we are able to procure from the burials of this period. And also which is was rather difficult for us to accept was the craft specialization. Because previously we always considered that specialized crafts began with a much later complex societies. And in the time of Neolithic era, what was doing whatever they could. But clearly what we have been finding is these Quebec typical sites is high level of craft specialization and not only specialized craftsmen, but also talented artisans. As I mentioned before, we are still in a pre-pottery period. All of these are made out of stone. And the workmanship quality of workmanship is extremely high. And as you can see, some of the artistic depictions indicates that they were really somebody was selecting talented artisans. There's a lot of examples and also especially with ornamental things is a rich variety. Most of them are coming from cemeteries. And also some stone plaques with certain giving us an image of some kind of way, image of that period, which is difficult to interpret, but there are certainly telling some kind of stories which will need some more time for us to really to understand what these stories are. And some of the depictions or the blown plaques is high quality of workmanship here. I think that is also very significant. They are giving all these stories with various ornaments, weeds and or bracelets as a high industry of it. And what is also very important is that some of the raw material which are coming for the manufacturing of these ornaments are coming from 2300 kilometers away. And you should still consider that there's no pack animals domesticated pack animals. So it must be all by walking. But they were interactive with a very large region. They were importing 10 tons of obsidian volcanic glass from over the mountains. And as some of these are really of high craftsmanship. So this Quebec culture began in the southeastern Turkey. It measured there. It developed there. It became an agricultural society somewhere around in the 8th millennium. Then we see that the culture collapsing. Why it collapses another story. I will not go into it. They are different reasons, not one reason. There's an environmental duration. There's a climatic fluctuation. But there's also some kind of a social turbulence. But as the consequence of this collapse is very important because the farmers started moving to other regions with the domesticated plants, domesticated animals bringing this new way of living to other parts of the world. First it went to the central Antolia from the Balkans and through the Mediterranean. And from the Balkans it became a global model laying down the foundation of later civilizations. It is this food producing farming economy that later triggered foundation of cities, city-states, states, empires and eventually the first industrial revolution. And also when these farmers were on move, their symbolisms, their symbolic values also changed. We don't have this male figures. This male data remained in the core area. Then they worked with female goddesses which as you can see, they are all steatopic. They are represent fertility. So subsistence became much more important. So this mother goddess image went with these farmers and the symbol of power became the bull. And in the artistic depictions, there are no more of the shamanistic impacts. We can also see hunting scenes and scenes related to their subsistence. So in this very quick overview of this period, this is how it all began. This is the foundation of our later civilizations. It collapsed. I think we will be speaking about collapse in another perspective. But this is the time when our present day modalities that began. And thank you for your patience.