ABSTRACT
Around the time when the Great Thaw at the end of the Ice Age happened, and Natufian culture terminally declined, a true ceremonial centre emerged just north of the Natufian areas, on a hilltop now called Gobekli Tepe. In spite of the huge distance, direct connections between Gobekli and the Palaeolithic caves are walking possibilities. The character of the Gobekli site had quite different characteristics from cave paintings. Just as in Palaeolithic cave art, the representation of animals is a central feature in Gobekli Tepe. However, the way animals are depicted is radically different. The graceful beauty dominating cave art is replaced by danger, apprehension and threat. Archaeologists increasingly find little evidence of a 'crisis' at the origin of agriculture. The main problem of Natufian settlement was that the limited, saturated and crowded mode of existence thus created also and in particular short-circuited the living and the dead, leading to a culture of the dead and of death.
