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Here, for the first time, we've got a theory, which seems to solve many of the puzzles that've mystified experts in the past. It's a theory based not just on an investigation of the cave art itself, but a scientific understanding, what was going on inside the heads of those who made it.
It explains how we went from a world with no images to one with cave paintings. But it doesn't explain how we got from there to today, the modern world where images dominate our lives. Because about 12,000 years ago, something strange happened. People stopped painting in caves. Archaeologists don't know exactly why it happened. But throughout Europe, wherever they looked, they found little evidence of images being created for many thousands of years.
The prehistoric people who discovered how to create images and then reproduce them for countless generations, seemed to have lost interest in them. It was almost as if rather than being an essential part of human existence, images had been just an optional extra. Imagery seemed to have lost its hold over the human mind. So how did we get from there to today? How did the power of the picture recapture our imaginations and lead to a world so full of images we can't imagine life without them. Well, it's only recently that we've begun to discover the answer.
We've come to Southern Turkey, to the foot of a large hill called Gobekli Tepe. At the top lies something which reveals just what happened to imagery all those thousands of years ago.
Researchers first visited Gobekli Tepe in the 1960s. What they found was a hillside that was carpeted with remains of flint stoneworking. Little pieces like this. But then they assumed that the site itself had no special archaeological significance.
words to remember:
flint:燧石,打火石
stoneworking:The technique or process of working in stone.石艺
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