Archeological Wonder Series: Göbekli Tepe

6000 years older than Stonehenge, this Turkish archeological site changed the idea that agriculture and settlement came before the concept of beliefs and spirituality. Göbekli Tepe is 12,000 years old and has been changing archaeological theories since its discovery.

Found in the 1960s, the circular stone structures and enormous and intricately carved stone pillars make up the main part of the sprawling 1000 foot diameter site. It would take almost forty more years after discovery for the impact of what this site said about human history to hit. It became a mind-blowing concept that hunter gatherers from the early stone age could create something this magnificent.

You may be asking yourself how archeologists know what kind of people built this site. The facts are in the science. Not only do the stone tools found there date to a specific time period the site holds no archeological record of farming or animal domestication. Göbekli Tepe lacks some of the tell-tale signs for a settled people.

The two videos above offer more information on the archeaological site with opposing viewpoints to its significance. As you can see, it is still very much up to debate whether this site is enough to say beliefs came before settlement.

For a Neolithic people to create such an architecturally complicated temple was unheard of until Göbekli Tepe. Before, archeologists were under the impression that a people had to be settled farmers before they developed such elaborate religious beliefs.

The organization for Göbekli Tepe alone is a wonder. For one thing, it seems people build smaller versions of the alleged temple over the older ones. Basically, they would build a site, cover it up in earth, then build a smaller version fo that same site on top of it. Geophysical surveys show that there are over two hundred pillars within twenty circles or temples as they are considered to be.

Interesting features of the site are the various carving relief style art pieces on the columns. The style ranges from realistic to artistic renderings of animals of the very real as well as fantastical realm. Usually when it comes to people from this time we get cave drawings that are sophisticated in telling a story of a people but nothing this developed.

When I first learned about this site, I had thought I was looking at a hoax. I studied Anthropology and Archeology in University (which I graduated in 2013!) and had never heard of Göbekli Tepe. Even more startling, I was never taught that there were very clear exceptions to the idea that people needed to be settled first before religion could take root.

This was not just a fault in my professors but an argument in the archaeology field on whether there is enough evidence IN OTHER SITES to support the claims made by Göbekli Tepe. In Göbekli Tepe, there are no signs of people living there. No hearths, no houses, not even a hole dug out for trash (called a refuse pit by fancy archeologists). All bones found on the site were from wild species that hunter-gatherer types would have hunted.

Göbekli Tepe was what is known as a pilgrimage destination. People built it to worship but did not settle their lives around this site. This site fundamentally changes the concept of the developmental path of humanity over the course of history. Or does it? What is known for sure is that it is a completely unique site in terms of history. Perhaps in the future archeologists will be better equipped to understand its secrets.

Sources:

Göbekli Tepe- The world's first temple?

Gobekli Tepe is Rewriting Our Entire Understanding of Human History

6000 years before Stonehenge, there was Göbekli Tepe

Göbekli Tepe: Wikepedia Page