These are a couple of mosaics in the Mosaic museum in Gaziantep - it is really a wonderful museum and I hope you fall in love with that girl in the second picture like I did. The mosaics are taken from a site a few kilometers away, which were in the floors of villas, but the town was later destroyed by attacks. I sort of wish they had left the mosaics and frescoes there so it would be like Pompeii, an open air museum, but the museum was wonderful nevertheless and you still got the feel of the vastness of the houses and wealth of the people.
The highlight of the day though was the visit to Gobekli Tepe, one of the most important archaeological finds ever. I don't have time to explain it all, check out the article in Newsweek - http://www.newsweek.com/id/233844 and Smithsonian - http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html. Pretty much this site redefines history because it is SO OLD - it dates back to almost 11,000 years ago, which is wayyy before the pyramids and stonehenge. What is so significant about this site is that it was used as a temple, for worship, and that people were a) not nomadic then b)already building pretty sophisticated structures, even if they weren't completely settled yet. The archaeologist says normally civilization was built, and then religious things came along, but this shows it was different. Please please check out the articles, they are fascinating and I am doing a terrible job explaining it! Now some pictures!
That's us with the famous archaeologist - Schmidt!
If you look carefully you can see some carvings.
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