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walls (two on each side and one in each corner), with the number increasing to thirteen during the next phase, designated Level III, ca. 8000 BC (see figure 1.3). Like its counterpart at Çayönü, Nevalı Çori’s megalithic structure possessed a terrazzo floor of burnt lime cement, beneath which was a subfloor of huge stone slabs.
    During the Level II building phase, a squared-off niche was constructed into the rear wall of the cult building. Here excavators found an elongated carved head with its face missing. Nicknamed the “skinhead,” it is roughly life size and looks like an egg with ears. On its reverse is a highly unusual sikha, a long ponytail that resembles a wriggling snake with its head shaped like a mushroom cap. The “skinhead” originated, most probably, from a full-size statue, which having become detached from its body, had been hidden away within the building’s north wall.
    THE GREAT MONOLITH
    The item placed within the building’s terrazzo floor, however, was what most compelled the excavators, for standing in the center of the room were the remains of a tall, rectangular pillar bearing an uncanny likeness to the black obsidian monolith that appeared among the apelike creatures at the beginning of Stanley Kubrick’s movie adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (figure 1.4).

    Figure 1.3. Nevalı Çori’s cult building, showing cutaways for Levels II and III, ca. 8400–8000 BC.

    Figure 1.4. Nevalı Çori’s cult building, showing the surviving central monolith still in situ.

    Figure 1.5. One of the stone pillars from Nevalı Çori. Note the stylized arms, hands, stole, and neck pendant.
    The pillar, originally 10 feet (3 meters) high, had been carved to represent an abstract human form. In relief across its two widest faces were thin arms, bent at the elbow, with hands and fingers curling around to its front, narrow edge (see figure 1.5 schematic). Anthropomorphic shaping had previously been noted among the remains of the twelve to thirteen standing pillars that had been erected within the building’s four walls, but that displayed on the central pillar was far more accomplished. Above the figure’s hands were two parallel grooves, or chiseled vertical lines, clearly meant to represent the double hem of a woven garment, open to the waist, which some have seen as a scarflike stole, similar to that worn by a Catholic priest.
    A broken fragment of the same pillar lay nearby. Its base matched the top of the standing remnant, although its upper end was so damaged that no semblance of the individual’s head could be discerned. In spite of this, it was clear from the presence of the other stone pillars in the walls that this much larger monolith would once have had a T-shaped termination, creating a hammerlike head. As such, it constituted one of the world’s oldest known 3-D representations of the human form.
    A hole in the terrazzo floor close to the standing pillar showed that a second monolith must have stood parallel to it, although any trace of its presence had long since disappeared. Like the stone pillars in the walls, the twin pillars perhaps functioned as roof supports, although this is by no means certain. Twin sets of standing pillars had been found in the Flagstone Building and Terrazzo Building at Çayönü. Yet here it was the stone slabs’ wider faces, and not one of their narrow sides, that had greeted the entrant approaching from the south.
    A PERSONAL DIVINITY
    So who or what did the twin pillars represent? Archaeologists at the time suggested they symbolized a “personal divinity.” 10 This might have been so, but it did not explain why there were two monoliths side by side or why they faced out toward the cult building’s southwesterly placed entrance (the building was found to be oriented almost exactly northeast to southwest). Perhaps the pillars were positioned to greet the entrant, like twin genii loci (spirits of the place) guarding the enclosure’s