To the northwest of the Fertile Crescent of ancient Mesopotamia, in the southeast of modern Turkey, lie the ruins of one of the most important archaeological sites in human history: the stone monuments of Göbekli Tepe.
Only discovered in the 1990s (earlier archaeologists has thought the remains medieval), Göbekli Tepe sprawls over twenty acres of land upon — and beneath — a human-made hill. You can see in the first image some of the circular structures and massive stone pillars. The second photo shows one of the most famous columns — a T-shaped monolith known as Pillar 43. You can see it shows carvings of animals like birds (particularly a large vulture), a scorpion, and other symbols — many of the standing stones are also adorned with animals and other images.
What made Göbekli Tepe so extraordinary is that it was built before the development of agriculture. No human lodgings appear to have existed there, and the site is dated about 11,500 years ago — several centuries before inhabitants of the area began domesticating and cultivating grain.
This has fascinating implications: for one, the people who constructed Göbekli Tepe moved tons of stone without pack animals, and built the megaliths without any metal tools. The resources that would have been required were this extraordinary and testify to the high levels of social organization these hunter-gatherers had.
The scholarly consensus is that Göbekli Tepe was created for religious reasons, but many other speculations have been raised. Among some of the less accepted theories is that it somehow commemorated a large asteroid that had hit Greenland, causing climate change. Deliberately carved human skulls found in 2017 have suggested ritual reuse, and have led some to believe that there was a general focus on skulls at the site.
Finding such monumental ruins created centuries before agriculture has made historians reassess the forces that drove humans to act together with increasing complexity: it obviously didn’t only happen after the creation of farming and urbanization.
Sources: _Smithsonian Magazine_, “Göbekli Tepe: the World’s First Temple?” Andrew Curry, Nov 2008. Image fromN. Beke copywriter DAI from UNESCO website and second image from Klaus Schmidt/German Archaeological Institute, as cited in _Astronomy_, “Göbekli Tepe: the World’s First Astronomical Observatory?” Eric Betz, Sept 4, 2020. _All That’s Interesting_, “The mysteries of Göblekli Tepe, the oldest temple in the world,” Mark Oliver, June 17, 2021
