Archeologists vs Ancient Aliens

Was Gobekli Tepe built by Australian Aboriginals? No but there may be a connection.

I’m no credientialist, but still, most of my research on human origins draws from official sources: linguists, comparative mythologists, geneticists, and archeologists. (And, of course, the ultimate authority, the Bible.) However, if you spend any time in the space, you run into the Ancient Aliens crowd. In this essay and the next, I want to show how biases in academia give air to the Ancient Aliens ecosystem. And, more importantly, that this impedes understanding who we are and where we came from.

Globetrotting Aboriginals

Bruce Fenton’s “A Global Aboriginal Australian Culture? The Proof at Gobekli Tepe”¹ was published in New Dawn, a periodical that advertises itself as the “#1 magazine for people who think for themselves.” His case rests on two similarities he identifies between the cultures. The first is a symbol marking an Aboriginal shaman:

A shaman or medicine man with extensive body painting, Worgaia, Central Australia. (Part of the Wellcome Collection)

Fenton points to a similar inscription at Gobekli Tepe, carved into stone in Turkey 12,000 years ago. For example, see pillar 28 below:

 Pillar 28 from Enclosure C with a symbol resembling the Aboriginal body painting. The outline on the right was added by Jens Notroff.

Shamans are keepers of the mysteries revealed, most importantly, in coming-of-age ceremonies. Initiates are taught about the creation of the world and their place in it. Crucial to the ceremonies and myths of Dreamtime are the sacred Churinga stones, a class of ritual objects said to have been given to the Aboriginals in the beginning. This class of objects includes bullroarers, which are shaped like the stone below but have a string attached and can be spun to produce sound. When whirled around, they buzz with the voice of God. Fenton found an example of a similar symbol appearing on a Churinga stone (left), as well as other locations at Gobekli Tepe (right). 

Left: churinga stone. Right: central pillar in enclosure D at Gobekli Tepe. This is a close-up of the “belt” of the pillar, which represents a man (or god?)

Second, Fenton notes similarities between this female figure at Gobekli Tepe:

And this image of the Great Mother, who was involved with the Australian creation at Dreamtime, and the establishment of the Mysteries (though I have also seen this image identified as a Mimi Spirit or the Djanggawul sisters, other Dreamtime characters who brought civilization: language, ritual, technology, and laws).

Fenton writes: “We recognize similar posture, the same positioning of the legs and breasts, cartoonish exaggeration of the female genitalia, and clearly inhuman heads.” Count it: that’s four claims of similarity that, at first blush, are striking.

From there, the analysis falters. He believes humans are an alien project that came to fruition in Australia. In summarizing his book, Exogenesis: Hybrid Humans – A Scientific History of Extraterrestrial Genetic Manipulation, he writes, “It is my conviction that the original Churinga were a type of Bracewell [alien] probe left here to monitor humanity, perhaps modify our consciousness, and eventually make contact.” Based on our separation from Neanderthals and Denisovans, this contact happened about 800,000 years ago. Once aliens had guided our evolution to sapience, we left our homeland of…Australia. (See his book describing the Out-of-Australia theory.) In the New Dawn article, he writes, “Until very recent historical times, all traffic was one-way, moving out of Australia not inwards. This fact has been well established in multiple genetic studies and indicates that any truly ancient cultural elements are indigenous to Australia.” This is wrong on many fronts, but he really commits, positing that some birds carved at Gobekli Tepe 11,600 years ago may be the Thunder Bird, extinct in Australia for some 30,000 years. Like many others in this space, he theorizes a calamity wiped out an advanced Ice Age civilization. “After the cataclysms, new sprouts of civilisation emerged from cultural seeds planted by a lost Aboriginal Australian global culture.”

The theory of Aboriginals as the Old Guard established by Aliens tickles the imagination. His piece was picked up by alternative archeology sites around the web, rising to the attention of Jens Notroff, one of the archeologists excavating Gobekli Tepe. This should be an easy mop-up for such a scholar, right? And yet, much is left out.

Nothing to see here; move along

Notroff wrote a brief takedown on the official Gobekli Tepe blog: “Making headlines: Was Göbekli Tepe built by Aboriginal Australians?” It starts out by noting that the two cultures are separated by 15,000 kilometers and 12,000 years, so any connections are highly unlikely. Fair enough. It then seeks to show that the similarities are superficial, or otherwise don’t count. Starting with the shaman’s symbol. The image of the pillar above is actually from Notroff’s response. On the right, he highlights the symbol includes vertical bars on either side, so the match isn’t perfect.

That is the entire treatment of the symbol. There are bars on either side, ergo it’s not an exact match. Next question. Notroff then turns his attention to the female figure. She is dissimilar to any other carving or artifact at the site (of which about 5% has been excavated). The interpretation is she was likely added later by a graffiti artist. He seems to say that, given the uncertainty of her relation to the rest of Gobekli Tepe, we can’t make any inferences about the image. I’m not sure why this follows. Gobekli Tepe was built ~11.6 kya and buried ~10 kya. So even late graffiti is at least 10,000 years old and would be an interesting connection. At any rate, Nostroff is confident enough that she cannot be interpreted that he does not bother engaging with any of the similarities presented by Fenton. Without any more argument, he concludes:

“So, to answer the question posed in this headline: No. No, Göbekli Tepe was not built by Aboriginal Australians. The superficial similarities in iconography and art are exceptional coincidences in the best and misinterpretations in the most unfavourable case. With the same line of argument one could think, the early Neolithic hunter-gatherers of Göbekli Tepe were already inventing the letter “T” due to the characteristic shape of these omnipresent pillars.”

This doesn’t give Fenton’s similarities a fair shake. There is no path from the T-shaped pillar to the character “T,” but many anthropologists have argued for a path between ancient Eurasian rock art and shamanism and the religion of the Aboriginal Australians. I’d like to add that to the discussion and explain why neither party did so themselves. 

The Great Mother

First, the image is not a one-off in Australia. Reverse image search leads to dozens more, particularly if you jump over to pinterest.com and get caught in an informative algorithmic groove for Australian art with, as Fenton said:

1. Similar posture,

2. The same positioning of the legs and breasts,

3. Cartoonish exaggeration of the female genitalia, and

4. Clearly inhuman heads.

Rock art is difficult to date, as it typically does not include organic matter, which can be carbon-dated. These specimens are from Arnhem Land, where this “X-ray” style of painting has been dated to 6-9 kya, though it could also be much more recent. 

Drawing breasts like that is a strong artistic choice. I wish Notroff had said whether he believed that to be a superficial similarity. Similarly, the labia were not drawn like that by accident. Or consider:

Or:

Or this mid-20th century bark art by Nadjombolmi Charlie Barramundi:

I don’t want to belabor the point. There are many documented examples (1, 2, 3, 4) of the same posture with non-human heads, breasts poking out sideways, legs splayed, and enlarged genitals. The last point is interesting, as some individuals do have elongated labia (Wiki has a helpful page, though it is NSFW), and the practice of stretching the labia has been documented in many parts of Africa and the South Pacific. So I wonder if, at some point, priestesses did have elongated labia, either as a genetic requirement or by design. The Dreamtime ceremonies are said to have once belonged to women when they were first instituted by the Djanggawul Sisters. As one website puts it: “Originally all religious life was under the control of the Sisters until stolen from Them by their brother, who also shortened Their genitals.” One can imagine that part of the story being added if the symbol of the Sisters remained extended long after men staged their coup and the practice of elongation ended. The story could explain to younger generations why the iconography was beyond every living person’s experience with labia; the meddlesome brothers abridged them ages ago!

Allow me a digression on a dear subject. The Djanggawal Sisters and Great Mother are identified with the Rainbow serpent. The head of the female figure at Gobekli Tepe is described as not quite human. Go back up and take a look. Now look how the heads of snakes are carved at Nevalı Çori, a neighboring site in Turkey:

From National Geographic’s “The Birth of Religion.” More examples of snake head here.

Could her head be a snake? Gobekli Tepe is otherwise covered in snakes, and snake goddesses are a global phenomenon many consider to have diffused. An ancient Medusa would fit nicely.

But enough of my hobby horse, let’s consider one more well-attested item of cultural diffusion: x-ray style art. The Wikipedia page on x-ray rock art uses an Australian figure in the same pose as the prime example. Notice the innards—bones or organs—are painted, hence “x-ray”:

The headwear is even the same as the minor figures below the Djanggawul Sister in Fenton’s example. (Though note that this figure is male.) These paintings are religiously significant. In Australia, the style is connected to death rituals and the Rainbow Serpent. It’s a matter of debate whether the x-ray style was invented multiple times or once and diffused. However, there is a sizeable contingent (or was in the 20th century) that considers diffusion the most likely explanation. See, for example, Joseph Campbell’s Historical Atlas of World Mythology, Volume 1. The section “The Migration of X-Ray Style Art” includes specimens from around the world, and additionally, this map of the proposed diffusion:

This is well-known enough to work its way into encyclopedias and even books where it cuts against the author’s conclusions. I have written several times about Witzel’s book The Origin of the World’s Mythologies. One surprising concession is that he writes x-ray style art probably spread into Australia². It’s relevant that, in addition to Fenton, mainstream academics have pointed to this exact image as evidence for a connection between shamanism in Eurasia and Australia. And for completely independent reasons; Gobekli Tepe had not even been excavated when this map was made. Further, all four similarities Fenton proposes are found in many figures spanning thousands of years. They represent a package, at least in Australia.

Bullroarers and the god symbol

The Australian shaman’s symbol also benefits from working it into a larger body of research. Since Notroff’s blog post, Manu Seyfzadeh and Robert Schoch of Boston University have published a paper arguing that the symbol on the pillar became the Luwian word for “god.” Luwian is an Anatolian language spoken during the 1st and 2nd millennium BC. Their cuneiform script has been deciphered, with “god” being written:

So it’s not as if the claim is that the symbol jumped from Anatolia to Australia and was forgotten everywhere else. There’s no way Notroff could have predicted that research, but he could have provided some insight about bullroarers. Recall Fenton argued that the symbol was also found on the Churinga stones, sacred objects used in Dreamtime to create the world. The bullroarer is one of those objects. Fenton believes these were originally left by aliens to keep tabs on us. But back on planet Earth, bullroarers have been studied by anthropologists for more than a century. In 1973, anthropologist Thomas Gregor wrote:

“The puzzling link between the bullroarer and men's cults was first noted by the anthropologist Robert Lowie more than sixty years ago. He, as well as anthropologists of the so-called diffusionist school, such as Otto Zerries, maintained that the wide distribution of the bullroarer was evidence of an ancient common culture based on the separation of the sexes. The bullroarer, according to Zerries, has "its roots in an early cultural stratum of hunting and gathering tribes" (1942,304). And according to Lowie, the associated pattern of men's cults is "an ethnographical feature originating in a single center, and thence transmitted to other regions" (1920,313). Interest has long since waned in "diffusionist” anthropology, but recent evidence is very much in accord with its predictions. Today we know that the bullroarer is a very ancient object, specimens from France (13,000 B.C.) and the Ukraine (17,000 B.C.) dating back well into the Paleolithic period. Moreover, some archeologists-notably, Gordon Willey (1971, 20)-now admit the bullroarer to the kit-bag of artifacts brought by the very earliest migrants to the Americas. Nevertheless, modern anthropology has all but ignored the broad historical implication of the wide distribution and ancient lineage of the bullroarer.” ~Anxious Pleasures: The Sexual Lives of an Amazonian People (1973), bolding my own

I ran into this literature because my theory about the spread of meta-cognition forced me to look for the best evidence of cultural diffusion in general. Bullroarers and the Seven Sisters (a story also connected to initiation rituals and the Dreamtime) are the most compelling examples. The Pleiades represent seven sisters in cultures worldwide, and this myth is widely interpreted to go back to a common root 50-100 kya. This may seem like too long for a story to last, but researchers really hate the idea of Australia being connected to global culture in the last 10,000 years, hence pushing back the common root to before Out of Africa. As for the bullroarer, since 1978, evidence has continued to accumulate for its diffusion, and anthropologists have continued to ignore the possibility, as far as I can tell.

Notroff is probably somewhat aware of the debate, given he discovered a bullroarer at Gobekli Tepe. His paper on the find even cites Zerries’ book, which argued for the worldwide diffusion of a bullroarer cult³. Notroff published the paper in 2016, the same year as this blog post.

Now, it’s best not to extrapolate what other people know; often, classic works are cited without being read. What does need explaining is why an archeologist, in general, may not mention the research on bullroarers even after Fenton brought them up. In fact, anthropologists were kind enough to publish why the study of bullroarers has waned: diffusion is not popular in their field. It makes sense why Notroff wouldn’t want to open that can of worms if he knows it exists.

Nevertheless, bullroarers are a very obvious line of inquiry once one engages with Fenton’s claim. Ironically, one of the ancient aliens sites does provide context by linking churingas to Gobekli Tepe.

Their caption for the photo is: “A ‘churinga stone’ was found at Hasankeyf, another 12,000-year-old site in Turkey left by the same vanished people.” Note that churinga is a term used by Aboriginals, and does not apply to bullroarers outside Australia. Though the ancient aliens argument is maybe we’re all Australian, so I suppose it is internally consistent.

That’s being nit-picky, though. It’s good they looked for bullroarers at Gobekli Tepe, actually engaging with the model proposed by Fenton. Archeologists should be embarrassed that a magazine with articles like The First Temple At Gobekli Tepe: Denisovan & Anunnaki Ancient Aliens Origins⁴ does a better job on the bullroarer issue.

The official Gobekli Tepe blog argues that the site was used for male initiation rituals involving death and rebirth⁵. In 1929, anthropologist Edwin M. Loeb proposed male initiation ceremonies featuring the bullroarer, death, and rebirth spread from Eurasia to the rest of the world (Australia inclusive). Even if Notroff personally finds these similarities superficial, they are part of the conversation and have been for a long time. This merits mention.

Evidence of travel

If religious elements spread from Gobekli Tepe (or a related culture) to Australia, then there should be intermediate traces. (Unless, of course, they traveled by starship.) The path this would take is no mystery. At the time of Gobekli Tepe sea levels were lower and Australia was connected to Papua New Guinea. That means Papua New Guinea should show parts of the same proposed package that appears in Anatolia and Australia. The bullroarer is a natural place to look, as it is found worldwide. Do bullroarers in PNG bear other resemblances to the proposed package? If you search “papua new guinea bullroarer” you get many examples of figures in a familiar pose:

Ancient Papuan Gulf Gope Spirit Board Fragment Collected By George Craig in 1950s

This example is called “ancient” but I don’t think it’s been carbon-dated. It was found in the part of Papua New Guinea closest to Australia (a couple hundred miles), further increasing the odds it is culturally related. Here’s another example that can be yours for $300:

The style extends to the Solomon Islands as well:

For more see the 96 Papuan bullroarers on this Pinterest board. Don’t take this part of the essay too seriously. These specific examples shouldn’t distract from the many experts who have looked at bullroarers and said the similarities imply diffusion from a common source. I include examples in part to show how easy this sort of research is in the age of the internet. And also that, fundamentally, similarity is a subjective call. How important is it that these are found on the coast closest to Australia, or that these figures are male, not female?

More context would be helpful in interpreting the bullroarer connection. Notroff would be the perfect person to provide this, given he wrote the paper identifying the bullroarer at Gobekli Tepe. However, there are political concerns that make that discussion unlikely. Other than Fenton, every diffusionist I’ve cited has understood the direction to be from Eurasia to Australia. So in covering that option, Notroff would be saying, “Yes, there’s a chance that Australian religion is derivative of Stone Age shamanism developed in Eurasia.” From a science-comms perspective, this isn’t nearly as snappy as dunking on Ancient Aliens archeological fan-fiction.

No need to take my word that this is the reason. Anthropologist Bethe Hagen wrote in 2009:

“The bullroarer and buzzer were once well-known and well-loved by anthropologists. They functioned within the profession as hallmark artifacts that symbolized the cultural relativist commitment to independent invention even as evidence (size, shape, meaning, uses, symbols, ritual) stretching tens of thousands of years across human history pointed to diffusion”

Conclusion

So, was Gobekli Tepe built by Australians? Of course not. But is there a connection between the religion at Gobekli Tepe and Australia? Maybe! Scholars such as Loeb, Lommel, Lowie, Campbell, Witzel, Zerries, Gregor, Hagen, and others have argued that x-ray style art, initiation rituals, and bullroarers diffused. All are directly related to the similarities that Fenton brought as evidence. But that fact is not likely to enter the discourse as long as archeologists are picking fights with card-carrying Ancient Aliens researchers.

Fenton, in fact, shows up in the comments of Notroff’s post. Instead of pointing to the mainstream debate about x-ray style art and bullroarers, he posits that there must have been some Aboriginal-adjacent culture of expert sea-farers who influenced the Near East during the Ice Age. Humans made it to Australia 65,000 years ago, so Australians must have gotten pretty good at sailing in the subsequent 50,000 years. This reasoning could apply to literally any culture (are Egyptians also Australian? The Japanese?) and is contradicted by the fact Aboriginals were not expert sailors when Europeans colonized the continent.

I’m not sure Fenton knows about x-ray style art. As for bullroarers, he thinks they are alien probes. He deserves credit for noting the similarities in the Great Mother and god symbol but isn’t going to steer the debate towards mundane, well-studied diffusion. It is what it is.

The politics distorting this debate are straightforward. Diffusion is unpopular in archeology because it’s seen as undercutting indigenous achievements. The ancient aliens crowd is not interested in earth-bound answers, so ignore such a vanilla explanation. One has to think that this arrangement is not, strictly speaking, bad for either party which both require a foil. However, the truth suffers. Future articles in this series will cover more subtle biases, including why archeologists are uncomfortable with continuity between Gobekli Tepe and historical civilizations in the region like the Hebrews or Sumerians.

What do people think the odds of a Gobekli Tepe → Australia connection are? In my book, anything less than 5%, and it’s reasonable not to bring it up, though one shouldn’t be flippant in dismissing it in that range. If it’s more than 10%, it should definitely be mentioned in a debunking. (Steelmanning is an underrated way to get to the truth.) Is that fair? Let me know in the comments.

1. The original article is difficult to find. It is reproduced on this blog (Wayback Machine link), other than the figures. I read the original by getting a trial subscription to Scribd.

2. Surprising because he is arguing the Dreamtime creation myths share a common root with Eurasian creation myths 100-160 kya. If art associated with Dreamtime figures has significant outside influences in the last 10,000 years, why not the creation myths writ large? The Rainbow Serpent isn’t evidenced before the Holocene either.

3. Das Schwirrholz. Untersuchung über die Verbreitung und Bedeutung der Schwirren i’m Kult. 1942, Zerries

Or in English: The Bullroarer. Study on the Distribution and Significance of Buzzers in Cults. Unfortunately, I can’t find a translation or even a digital copy on which I can use chatGPT.

4. “Without a doubt, the Architects of Gobleki Tepe were of superior intelligence and culture. According to Andrew Collins and Graham Hancock, the Architects were possibly the Denisovans, a now extinct Giant Humanoid hybrid species of superior size and intelligence.

In this view, the builders of Gobleki Tepe may have been the survivors of the great deluge, who established Gobleki Tepe in order to preserve and transmit pre-flood knowledge and culture.

Sitchin’s Ancient Astronaut Theory would also suggest that Gobekli Tepe was a site that was established by the Anunnaki Ancient Aliens after the flood as a means of preserving the pre-flood knowledge.”

5. “Taking into account the fierce and deadly iconography of Göbekli Tepe´s enclosures, male initiation rites including the hunt of fierce animals and the symbolic decent into an otherworld (especially if the enclosures really were roofed), symbolic death and rebirth as an initiate could have been one purpose of rituals at Göbekli Tepe.”