No, the problem at Göbekli Tepe is the pristine, sudden appearance, like Athena springing full-grown and fully armed from the brow of Zeus, of what a… - Graham Hancock

I poured out a libation on the mountain top … I heaped up wood and cane and cedar and myrtle … When the gods smelled the sweet savour they gathered like flies over the sacrifice

The black mat formed on top of the layer of proxies,' Allen replies. 'Down here it has a lot of charcoal in it. But it also has algal remains so it's not just fire. The Younger Dryas changed the climate and made the area much wetter. Algae began to grow along the edges of the lakes.' He puts a hand on the black stripe along the arroyo wall: 'So the remains of about 1,000 years of dead algae, charcoal, and a lot of other stuff are all embedded in here, and at the bottom of it, where the impact happened, we find iridium, platinum, and a layer of melted spherules where the temperatures must have been so high that they would have melted a modern car into a pool of metal.

Our pollution and neglect of the majestic garden of the earth, our rape of its resources, our abuse of the oceans and the rainforests, our fear, hatred and suspicion of one another multiplied by a hundred bitter regional and sectarian conflicts, our consistent track record of standing by and doing nothing while millions suffer, our ignorant, narrow-minded racism, our exclusivist religions, our forgetfulness that we are all brothers and sisters, our bellicose chauvinism, the dreadful cruelties that we indulge in, in the name of nation, or faith, or simple greed, our obsessive, competitive, ego-driven production and consumption of material goods and the growing conviction of many, fuelled by the triumphs of materialist science, that matter