The Genesis Secret: Read Free Page A

ancient man. He had a three-hour stopover in Istanbul and then another flight to Sanliurfa, way out in the wild east of Anatolia. Half a day to do some speedreading.
    By the time they arrived in Istanbul, Rob was quite drunk-and fully apprised of the recent archaeological history of Anatolia. Particularly important, it seemed, was a place called Catalhoyuk. Pronounced Chattal Hoy-ukk. Discovered in the 1950s, it was one of the oldest villages in the world ever unearthed-maybe nine thousand years old. The walls of this ancient settlement were covered with pictures of bulls and leopards and buzzards. Lots of buzzards. Very old signs of religion. Very strange images.
    Rob looked at the pictures of Catalhoyuk. He flicked through a few more pages. Then they landed at Istanbul airport and Rob carouselled his bags and threaded his way through the crowds of jowly Turkish businessmen, stopping at a little store where he bought an American newspaperwith one of the latest reports from Gobekli Tepe, and then went straight to the gate to wait for his next flight. Sitting there in the departure lounge he read some more about the dig.
    The modern history of Gobekli Tepe began, it said, in 1964, when a team of American archaeologists were combing a remote province of south-east Turkey. The archaeologists had found several odd-looking hills blanketed with thousands of broken flints: a sure sign of ancient human activity. Yet the US scientists did no excavating. As the newspaper phrased it: ‘these guys must now feel like the publisher that turned down the first Harry Potter manuscript’.
    Ignoring the snoring Turkish lady asleep in the airport seating, right next to him, Rob read on.
    Three decades after the Americans’ near miss, a local shepherd had been tending his flock when he had spotted something odd: a number of strangely-shaped stones in the sunlit dust. They were the stones of Gobekli Tepe.
    Tepp-ay, Rob said to himself, remindingly. Tepp- ay. He wandered over to a machine, bought a Diet Coke, then wandered back and went on reading.
    The ‘rediscovery’ of the site reached the ears of the museum curators, in the city of Sanliurfa, fifty kilometres away. The museum authorities contacted the relevant government ministry, who in turn got in touch with the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul. And so in 1994 ‘experienced German archaeologist FranzBreitner’ was appointed by the Turkish authorities to excavate the site.
    Rob scanned the rest of the article. He tilted the paper to have a better look. There was a picture of Breitner in the American newspaper. And underneath the photo was a direct quote from him: ‘I was intrigued. The site already had emotional significance for the villagers. The solitary tree on the highest hill is sacred. I thought we might be onto something’.
    Armed with this insight Breitner had taken a closer look. ‘Within the first minute I knew that if I didn’t walk away immediately, I would be here the rest of my life.’
    Rob looked at Breitner’s photo. He certainly looked like the cat that had got the double cream. His smile was the smile of a man with a lottery win.
    ‘Turkish Airlines announce the departure of flight TA628 to Sanliurfa…’
    Rob grabbed his passport and boarding card and filed onto the plane. It was half-empty. Obviously not that many people made it out to Sanliurfa. Way out in the savage east of Anatolia. Way out in dangerous, dusty, insurrectionist Kurdistan.
    During the flight Rob read through the rest of the documents and books about Gobekli’s archaeological history. The eerie stones unearthed by the shepherd turned out to be the flat oblong tops of megaliths, big ochre stones which were often carved with bizarre and delicate images-mainlyof animals and birds. Buzzards and vultures, and weird insects. Sinuous serpents were another common motif. The stones themselves seemed to represent men, according to experts-the stones had stylized ‘arms’, which angled down