Turkish police officers guard a monolith, found on an open field near Sanliurfa, southeastern Turkey, Sunday, Feb. 7, 2021. The metal block was found by a farmer Friday in Sanliurfa province with old Turkic script that reads "Look at the sky, see the moon." The monolith, 3 meters high (about 10 feet), was discovered near UNESCO World Heritage site Gobeklitepe with its megalithic structures dating back to 10th millennium B.C. Turkish media reported Sunday that gendarmes were looking through CCTV footage and investigating vehicles that may have transported the monolith. Other mysterious monoliths have popped up and some have disappeared in numerous countries since 2020. (Bekir Seyhanli/IHA via AP)
A metal monolith that mysteriously appeared on a field in southeast Turkey has now disappeared, Turkish media reported Tuesday, four days after it was discovered.
The three-meter-high (about 10-foot-high) metal slab bearing an ancient Turkic script, was found Friday by a farmer in Sanliurfa province. It was discovered near the UNESCO World Heritage site of Gobekli Tepe, which is home to megalithic structures dating to the 10th millennium B.C., thousands of years before Stonehenge.
The shiny structure, however, was reported gone Tuesday morning, days after authorities said they were investigating its appearance by looking through closed circuit television footage and searching for vehicles that may have transported it to the site.
It wasn't immediately clear if it had been taken down by the authorities. Officials at the Sanliurfa governor's office weren't immediately available for comment.
The state-run Anadolu Agency quoted the field’s owner as saying he was baffled by both its appearance and disappearance.
“We don’t know if it was placed on my field for marketing purposes or as an advertisement,” Anadolu quoted Fuat Demirdil as saying. “We saw that the metal block was no longer at its place. Residents cannot solve the mystery of the metal block either.”
The agency also quoted local resident Hasan Yildiz as saying the block was still at the field Monday evening but had disappeared by the morning.
The monolith bore an inscription that read: “Look at the sky, you will see the moon” in the ancient Turkic Gokturk alphabet, according to reports.
Other mysterious monoliths have similarly appeared and some have disappeared in numerous countries in recent months.
Gobekli Tepe was the setting of the Turkish Netflix mystery series, “The Gift.”
Ari Redbord, head of legal and government affairs and TRM Labs, joins Cheddar News to discuss why Facebook is ditching its crypto project and what that means for the space.
Natalie Fertig, federal cannabis policy reporter at Politico Pro, joins Cheddar News to discuss a new YouGov poll that looks at how Americans feel about marijuana and politics.
A virtual gathering in the online space, Decentraland, of Elvis Presley impersonators is looking to grab the Guinness World Record for most Elvis impersonators in one place after the record-keeping org recently approved the use of avatars as stand-ins for people.
A powerful winter storm hit the Northeast over the weekend leaving 100,000 New Yorkers in the dark as well as snowfall up to 30.9 inches in parts of Massachusetts. The nor'easter hit with blizzard conditions of wind speed and poor visibility.
After classic rocker Neil Young demanded removal of his music from Spotify over vaccine misinformation coming from The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, the platform made the decision to take down Young's songs and continue supporting Rogan with whom they have an exclusive contract. The move touched off a firestorm of controversy, leading to responses from both the streaming service and the podcasting host. Evan Nierman, CEO of Red Banyan Crisis PR, joined Cheddar to break down the latest on the fracas. "I think when [Spotify] initially said, we're not going to be commenting on that, that was a silly move because guess what? They did end up commenting about it, and nine times out of 10, when an organization says they're not going to be issuing a comment, they ultimately do," Nierman noted.
The 1999 cult classic "Fight Club" has been given a very different ending in China — and this time, the authorities win. Cheddar News speaks with Joan Solsman, senior media reporter at CNET who breaks down how China is using films for political messaging.
NFT art platform TRLab recently raised $4.2 million in funding. TRLab launched just last year but says its platform focused on NFT curation and distribution is growing quickly. The company hopes to bridge traditional and digital art worlds and help artists explore NFTs as an emerging medium. TRLab co-founder and chairwoman Xin Li-Cohen and co-founder and CEO Audrey Ou joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
