‘The Gift’: Part One (i)Introduction
They say watching TV is ‘passive’, that our brains vegetate as we stare blankly at the screen - but programmes often send me off down rabbit holes of curiosity and research! Join me for a guided tour of a whole warren…(including links to follow to get the full effect)
‘The Gift’ is a Turkish television drama series, originally titled ‘Atiye’, which is the name of the central character and means ‘gift (of god/Allah)’. The series is based on a book, ‘Dünyanın Uyanışı’ (‘The World’s Awakening’) by Şengül Boybaş.
‘Atiye’ is an artist who has drawn and painted the same fertility symbol (see still from the show above) all of her life, but has no idea what it is or what it means — until the same image is discovered by an archaeologist, ‘Erhan’, working on a dig at Göbekli Tepe (‘Potbelly Hill’), a real life, pre-pottery Neolithic archaeological site in south-eastern Anatolia, Turkey. The site’s original excavator, Klaus Schmidt, considered it to be the “world’s first temple”, built by nomadic hunter-gatherers, though…
