Some would argue that human history begins in detail with the Iron Age. Although records survive in some particular locations from the earlier Bronze Age and there is much archaeology to pick over, we can only start to map the general course of our past once we have access to surviving histories, mythologies, and oral traditions. We do know of Bronze Age civilizations, to be sure. But the problem with these is that they are almost all silent, and often disjointed due to the few surviving fragments of that time that remain. The further we go back, the less we can say for certain and the more speculative our conjectures become. Travel back even further, into the Stone Age, and things become looser still. The search for civilization becomes intertwined with the search for the traces of any human occupation: often the “where” and the “how” come to the fore as we try to map the journey which led to the earliest civilizations. But there are traces of complex civilizations even into the Neolithic, strange cults and gathering places which are so few and far between that they ask almost as many questions as they answer. The most famous of these outliers is probably Gobekli Tepe, a stone circle covered with animal carvings, like a smaller Stonehenge but 12,000 years old. But it is with the human remains at Tell Qaramel, in modern-day Syria, that we get perhaps our most personal look into the beliefs of at least one Neolithic people, and their first steps towards creating a culture. This place, with its cult of the human head, offers an understanding into how our ancient ancestors really saw themselves. A Stone Settlement Older than Agriculture Generally it is assumed that humanity first started to build permanent settlements with the Neolithic revolution in agriculture. Once we figured out that food could grow where we wanted, rather than where we found it, everything began to change. A new abundance in cereal crops, alongside the earliest domestication of animals, led to a population boom. We had taken our first steps towards mastery of our environment, and through this towards population centers, artistic expression, and civilization. Not so at Tell Qaramel. This ancient site was occupied for millennia, from what is known as the “Pre-Pottery” period of the Neolithic right up until the Hellenistic period around the second century BC. There were people here before there was the agriculture to support them. This site was obviously of enormous importance to the earliest people, who chose to congregate here before even they knew how to farm. Humanity was still ironing out the kinks of survival, and yet they chose to gather here and to venerate the place. So what can the site itself tell us about the motivations behind this bold step forward? Tell Qaramel offers the first clue through its location: it lies in a river valley along what would have been a major trade route. These people were part of a network of interlocking cultures, dependent upon this interaction in an unexpectedly sophisticated way for the Neolithic. Tell Qaramel itself is a large mound, literally made from the detritus of occupation. Most of the archaeology in the mound itself comes from later phases of occupation, however: the original site, underneath all the subsequent history, covers a much larger area than the mound itself. Although we have known about the site since the 1970s 99% of the site remains unexcavated. Since 2011 the Syrian civil war has seen the site closed, but what we have found to date is fascinating. Five stone structures stand at the heart of the earliest phase of occupation. These were apparently towers, two millennia older than the previous record held by the ancient walled city of Jericho. They vary in size and design, but the oldest appears to have been a gathering place. This most ancient structure of all contains a central hearth flanked by two stone benches. What purpose this gathering place had, or whether the other towers had a similar or auxiliary function is unknown, but it may have something to do with the bodies. Twenty individuals have been found buried at Tell Qaramel, but this is no ordinary cemetery. For a start, all the bodies are those of adults, and nobody knows where the children were buried. Then there is the state of the bodies. Most were found with their heads removed, but this was no site of Neolithic executions. The heads appear to have been removed, carefully and precisely, after the individuals were dead. We know of other such cults from the Neolithic, but none appear to be this old. Could we be looking at the first human inquisitiveness towards the meaning of consciousness, a fascination for the part of the body through which we sense the world around us, and a reverence for those who have died and are no longer “inside”? This is purest speculation, to be sure. We do know some things for certain though: the earliest skulls suggest a diet which predates agriculture, but later ones show that the practice of severing heads was continued beyond the domestication of grain and the abundance that this brought. This was not a cult which changed with agriculture. With so much of the site unexcavated, there is much still to learn about Tel Qaramel. All we can say for now is that it was a ritual center situated advantageously on a trade route. These people carved out their own identity and mythos within the context of a wider world. But the Neolithic site has one more secret to impart. A copper nugget was found in the earliest layers. It appears the copper ore known as malachite is somewhere at the site, and it gave the Stone Age inhabitants a glimpse into their future. They had no idea how to manipulate the metal. Attempts appear to have been made to drill a hole into it with stone tools, but these were abandoned as the
Hezarfan Ahmed Celebi, the Man who Flew Over the Bosphorus
Almost everyone has heard of Leonardo da Vinci, who is rightly held up as one of the greatest minds in history. Supremely skilled as a painter, inventor, scientist and polymath, his fizzing genius casts a shadow over history few can hope to rival. Most will also know of Daedalus, the ancient Greek analogue of da Vinci. The figure out of Bronze Age myth may be more legend than fact, but like da Vinci he was possessed of a mind filled with invention. And like da Vinci, he wanted to fly. Da Vinci almost certainly never progressed his ideas beyond his sketchbook, his crabbed mirror-writing and meticulously observed sketches theorizing that man could fly on a glider much as a bird does. Other sketches show ideas for something akin to a helicopter, and although these are incomplete in design and could not function they show a colossal leap of imagination by the great man. Daedalus’s story of flight is perhaps the best known fact about him, but also the least likely to be true. We know from the ruins of the great palace of Minos on Crete, for example, that somebody built a grand palace which may well be the “labyrinth” with which Daedalus is credited, but of his aspirations to flight we have nothing. Furthermore there is much to doubt about this latter tale, where Daedalus and his son Icarus craft wings of feathers and wax to escape their imprisonment on Crete. Icarus of course, exhilarated by flight, flew too high and was killed when the wax melted in the heat of the sun. Such a story reeks of earthbound invention. The temperature at altitude is of course much colder than on the ground, but then someone who had never flown might not know that. Nor is it possible for a human to attach feathers to his arms and achieve flight. We are simply too large and our arms too weak for such a feat. So Daedalus and da Vinci may both have dreamed of flight, but neither actually flew. But there was a man who achieved this impossible goal well before the Age of Flight in the early 20th century. His name was Hezarfan Ahmed Celebi, a contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci living in Constantinople, And he flew right over the Bosphorus at the age of 21. A Forbidden Achievement From the achievements attributed to Hezarfan Ahmed Celebi, he certainly seems to have been another da Vinci. A scientist and inventor, he was also a poet, a musician, a chemist and an astronomer. The word “Hezarfan” is itself an honorific, meaning “thousand sciences”: it seems that there was nothing beyond his reach. But it is for his flight across the Bosphorus around 1630 that he is best remembered today. No diagrams or drawings survive of the device he used to achieve this, but we know from descriptions that it was some sort of glider, said to resemble “eagle wings, using the force of the wind.” He would practice using this device in short flights over the neighborhood of Okmeydanı, nowadays a part of modern Istanbul. These brief flights appear to have been short gliding runs from a high vantage point across a “pulpit” to a landing zone on the far side. These experiments attracted interest from the very highest levels of society. The Ottoman Sultan himself, Murad IV, came to hear of Hezarfan Ahmed Celebi and his ability to fly and came to see him try his greatest experiment. With the Sultan watching from a vantage point in the Sinan Pasha mansion at Sarayburnu, the young man mounted the high Galata tower, a Genoese watchtower in the northernmost part of the Golden Horn mouth of old Constantinople. There, aided by a following wind, he flew some 3,500 m across the Bosphorus strait to land in Doğancılar Square in Üsküdar, on the other side. An astonishing achievement. But for those who think this might be too good to be true, it is fair to say that there are questions about the whole thing. Firstly, this astounding example of early unpowered flight is known from a single source: the traveler Evliya Çelebi. Such writings are often exaggerated, if not outright fiction, and while we can be fairly sure that Hezarfan Ahmed Celebi existed, we can be much less sure about his ability to fly. These problems are compounded by the supposed details of the flight itself. The Galata tower itself is only 99 m high, and the entire journey of 3.5 km would have been achieved with a loss in altitude of only some 80 m. This is a glide rate that would turn all but the best modern sports gliders green with envy. The flight itself, despite the supposed practice runs in Okmeydanı, would have been almost impossible to achieve within the limits of 17th century technology. Modern gliders do not rely on the same aerodynamics as eagles, and Celebi would have had to invent sophisticated equipment to achieve such a feat. It is doubtful it could be managed even today. Sultan Murad IV was said to be astonished at the achievement, rewarding him with a sack of gold. However, perhaps with one eye on the defense of his city, the Sultan then promptly exiled Celebi to Ottoman Algeria where he would spend the rest of his life. The Sultan’s concerns and the reason for doing so were recorded by the same man who wrote of the miraculous flight: “This man is uncanny: he is capable of doing anything he wishes. It is not right to surround oneself with such people.” The Sultan did not want anyone with such power to upset the natural order of things anywhere near him. But was any of this true? Ahmed Celebi died, aged around 30, in Ottoman Algeria, so it would seem that he never returned to the city in which he was born. But as to his flight, it may be that his ideas remained as theoretical as those of da
