An Introduction to Göbekli Tepe and the Origins of Civilization

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Historians generally agree that humans have only been practicing agriculture for about 10,000 years, and built the first civilizations just 5 or 6 thousand years ago. However, the monumental complex of Göbekli Tepe in modern-day Turkey has been dated to almost 10,000 BCE, or nearly 12,000 years ago. It’s the world’s first example of a monumental structure built by hunter-gatherers, and features stonework previously thought to be well beyond the capabilities of such a loosely-organized society. The excavation is ongoing, but it’s already rewriting the story on humanity’s transition to agriculture, and the birth of civilization.
The Site
We owe the discovery of Göbekli Tepe to the excavation of Nevalı Çori, a similar Neolithic site in the Urfa region. The city of Urfa, also called Sanliurfa, was a major hub of the Ancient world, having been conquered by numerous civilizations over the years, including the Akkadians, Babylonians, Hittites, Macedonians, Byzantines, and Arabs. However, it’s clear that the site has been inhabited since prehistoric times. It lies in the northern reaches of Mesopotamia, one of the so-called “cradles of civilization,” where most of the events in the Old Testament took place. The Medieval philosopher, Maimonedes, and the Roman historian Josephus, both claimed that Urfa was in fact Ur of the Chaldees, the birthplace of the biblical figure, Abraham.
Nevalı Çori was set to be flooded by the construction of the Atatürk Dam, so the Turkish government hired a team of archaeologists from the University of Heidelberg in Germany to have it excavated in 1983. The team unearthed a large, rectangular outer-structure subdivided into smaller enclosures, one of which was completely unique to archaeologists: it had T-shaped pillars around the walls, all interconnected by a wrap-around “bench,” as it was called, and a pair of T-shaped pillars in the center. Nevalı Çori was flooded in 1991, but one of the archaeologists on the team, Klaus Schmidt, searched for similar settlements in the region.
Göbekli Tepe - meaning potbellied hill, in Turkish - was the name given to a cluster of artificial mounds northeast of Urfa. At 770 meters above sea level, the apex of the site is the highest point in the Germus Mountains. The mounds had long been known to locals, but first came to the attention of the academic community in 1980, when Peter Benedict published a summary of his survey work in Anatolia dating back to the early 1960s.(1) Benedict noted that the hillsides of Göbekli Tepe were covered in flint artefacts, and that there were slabs of limestone protruding from the tops of the hills that he believed were tombstones.(2)
Klaus Schmidt was already working on his own survey of the region when he read Benedict’s report, and visited Göbekli Tepe for himself in 1994. With his knowledge of Nevalı Çori, he was able to identify these so-called “tombstones” as the tops of T-shaped pillars. Schmidt got funding from the German Research Foundation to lead an excavation of the mounds in 1995. His team began a one-acre dig that covers only about 5% of the total site, and continues to this day. In Schmidt’s words, “archaeologists could dig here for another 50 years and barely scratch the surface."(3)
The Excavation
Schmidt’s team divided the site into three different layers based on their stratigraphy, or their relative elevations. Layer I designates the sediment in which the site was buried, which was anomalous in itself, as it was composed of mostly fragments of flint, limestone, and bones, with only a smattering of earth. Stranger still, the ground that covered the site did not get older as the team dug deeper, suggesting that Göbekli Tepe had been suddenly buried - probably deliberately - in up to three meters of sediment between 7 and 8000 BCE, or 9 or 10,000 years ago. So everything at the site is at least that old.
Layer II designates the highest level of the ruins, and the most recently constructed, while Layer III denotes the lowest, oldest structures: four or five mostly ovular enclosures containing large, monolithic pillars. Excavators have so far unearthed eight major enclosures at Göbekli Tepe, each identified by a letter signifying its place in the sequence of discovery. Layer III includes enclosures A - D, located at the main excavation in the southeastern depression, as well as enclosure H, in the northwestern quadrant, and enclosure E on the Western Plateau. Enclosures A - D range from 10 to 20 meters in diameter, and with the possible exception of enclosure A, which so far appears more rectangular, are all ovular in shape. The excavation has not yet reached the floors in enclosures A and H, but the floors in C and D are carved from the bedrock itself, and competently smoothed. The floor in B is a lime and clay terrazzo that’s been artificially burnt and polished.(4)
In the center of enclosures A, B, C, D, and H are two, monolithic limestone pillars, carved in the shape of a T. The largest of these pillars in Enclosure D weigh 8 to 10 metric tons each, and stand about 5.5 meters, or 18 feet tall. The pillars in enclosures C and D stand on pedestals carved from the bedrock floor. Rings of smaller, monolithic, T-shaped pillars line the walls of these enclosures. Each of these pillars weigh several tons, and stand around 4 meters tall. All pillars at the site were quarried from the surrounding plateau and are of a very hard, crystalline limestone. We don’t know how the builders moved the pillars, but they left one at the quarry that weighs an estimated 50 metric tons. Perhaps they couldn’t move it.
Enclosure C has three consecutive walls in places, all of various heights, as well as two rings of pillars. A “bench” runs along the inner mantle of the interior wall, similar to the enclosure at Nevalı Çori. Though there are no walls, benches, or pillars at enclosure E, it’s considered to be contemporaneous with the other Layer III enclosures because of the levelled bedrock floor and pedestals. Geomagnetic surveys including ground-penetrating radar proves that there are as many as 15 or 20 of these ovular, layer-III enclosures still hidden underground.
Layer II features two distinct types of architecture, likely from two different periods. What the excavators have called Layer IIA refers to a network of densely-packed, small, rectangular structures with lime-plaster floors. These structures - some of which are thought to be domiciles - were clearly built many centuries after Layer III, as they sit at a higher level. Some of them also contain a few simple, mostly undecorated pillars that are no taller than 2 meters, and clearly inferior to the ones on Layer III. One of the more puzzling aspects of the site, and something that it shares with many ancient sites around the world, is that the scale, complexity, and workmanship is at its zenith in the oldest layer of the architecture, then deteriorates over time.(5) One would expect the world’s first monumental site to progress in the opposite direction, or towards more developed skills and workmanship.
Layer IIB refers to two enclosures, called F and G, built well after Layer III, but probably before the rest of Layer II. They are smaller than enclosures A - D, with smaller pillars. The most recent evidence points to yet another potential phase of construction. There are simple C-shaped or ovular enclosures, some subdivided by an interior wall, that lack any of the interior features of the other spaces. These buildings may be contemporary to, or even older than, the monumental structures on Layer III.(6)
Excavators have found a range of other structures and artifacts at the site, including carved channels and cisterns for collecting rainwater, a number of grinding stones, a small totem pole, as it’s been called, and several carved human heads that appear to have once belonged to life-sized statues.(7) The team has also found a few so-called porthole stones, like this 3-meter slab found on the Northwestern hilltop, or this one embedded in the wall at Enclosure B. Strangely, many of the enclosures at Gobekli Tepe have no obvious entrances. The ring around the first wall of Enclosure C, for example, is accessible by a floor-level entrance, but there is no opening to the inner chamber, where the largest pillars are. However, many of the excavators believe that the entrances ran through some kind of a roof that has since been destroyed or removed. It is thought that the porthole stones may have been involved in the original entrances.(8)
Interpretation
Göbekli Tepe was dated primarily by tool typology, or comparing the tools found in the sediment to similar tools at other sites. By this method, the excavators dated the oldest layers of the site to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) A period, which stretches from around 10,000 to 8800 BCE. The exact chronology of the different enclosures is more difficult to determine. Some of the walls’ plaster has allowed for carbon dating, but this can only establish when these walls were plastered last, and not when they were built. Samples of charcoal from between the outer walls of enclosure C were radiocarbon dated to around 9200 BCE.(9) Clay mortar recovered from enclosure D was dated to about 9500 BCE,(10) making the current archeological consensus that the site is between 11,000 to 11,500 years old.(11)
Many of Göbekli Tepe’s pillars, pillar bases, port holes, and gates are decorated with relief carvings of abstract symbols and a variety of animal motifs: boars, aurochs, gazelle, wild ass, sheep, foxes, snakes, lions, lizards, scorpions, and many types of birds. At the time of the site’s founding, the Urfa region was lush and forested, and could have certainly sustained this diversity of wildlife. Some enclosures have clearly anthropomorphic monoliths, with carvings of arms, hands, shoulders, elbows, a belt, and what has been determined to be a loincloth on Pillar 18 in enclosure D. The carvings are believed to be totems: the animals as ancestor spirits who have taken animal form, and the T-shaped pillars as humanoid deities. The team has also suggested that the abundance of carved images, something shared among all PPN sites in Upper Mesopotamia, are part of a “system of symbolic communication” that preceded writing but still allowed for a “highly complicated mythology.”(12)
The only human remains found at the site so far are several skull fragments with purpose-cut grooves in them. The poor condition of the skull fragments has made radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis impossible, but they’re believed to be evidence of an unknown variant of an Early Neolithic skull cult, which were known to have re-plastered and decorated human skulls. A small tablet with a carving of a flightless bird - possibly a Great Auk or a penguin - raises the possibility that the builders of the site had recently migrated from another region.(13)
All of the animal bones found at the site were clearly from wild animals, not domesticated ones, indicating that the builders did not keep livestock. Some of the most common bones at the site were those of hooded vultures and Ravens, leading scholars to suggest that Göbekli Tepe could have been a site for sky burials. In a sky burial, the deceased is cut up and left in the mountains to be eaten by scavenging birds, which were believed to carry peoples’ flesh up to the heavens. Jens Notroff, an archeologist at the site, has remarked on the frequency with which headless humans or severed heads appear at the site, often in combination with vultures. Danielle Stordeur, an archaeologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in France has found similar symbols at contemporaneous sites just 80 km away in Syria, suggesting that they were both established by the same culture. There are also several other sites with T-shaped pillars in the area, but none with pillars so large as Göbekli Tepe’s.
Manu Seyfzadeh and Robert Schoch have pointed out that the “H” on pillar 18 bracketed by two semi-circles appears in the hieroglyphic language of the Bronze Age Luwians of Anatolia as the word for “god.” The same symbol appears on several other Luwian artefacts. In this language, an “H” alone meant “gate.” The Luwians also used currently untranslated symbols that resemble the T-shaped pillars of Göbekli Tepe. Seyfzadeh and Schoch concluded that the pillars were representations of a god that guarded entry to the afterlife.(14) According to archaeologists Gil Haklay and Avi Gopher, there are a number of important geometric relationships between the Layer III enclosures, including an exact equilateral triangle formed by the central pillars in enclosures B, C, and D.(15)
One intriguing feature of the site are the three “handbags” or purses lining the top of Pillar 43. Similar handbags can be seen at many ancient sites in Mesopotamia and the Americas, often depicted in the hands of Gods. There is no consensus in mainstream academia regarding what the handbag represents, but some have said that it denotes a standard weight, or is a symbol for the seeds of knowledge.
Researchers with the Super Brain Research Group, or SBRG, searched Gobëkli Tepe for resonant structures. A little known fact is that many types of rock actually “ring” out in a clear tone when struck or vibrated. Even when struck by hand, Pillar 18 resonated so strongly that researchers believed it must be hollow. The team believes that something underground had once vibrated these pillars to make them ring at certain tones. The team suggested that these tones may have been important to the site, noting that certain frequency ranges - even those that we can’t hear - can have profound effects on our health and consciousness. Unfortunately, the team lost all access to the site after the death of Klaus Schmidt in 2014, and their research was suspended.(16)
Still other researchers, including Robert Schoch, Giulio Magli, and Andrew Collins, have explored astrological connections, and proposed that various pillars in the largest enclosures aligned with certain stars and constellations.(17)
Implications
According to our current understanding of history, the Early Neolithic age saw humans transition from nomadic hunter-gatherers to settled agriculturalists in a process referred to as the Neolithic Revolution. Only after this process were humans thought to build monumental stone structures, and specialize in certain forms of labor. The founders of Göbekli Tepe lived in largely unorganized societies, with minimal centralized leadership and no dedicated labor force. Before the excavation of Göbekli Tepe, a society like this was believed to be incapable of erecting such a complex.
Most archaeologists and anthropologists have theorized that the site was built by hunter-gatherers in the earliest stages of their transition to agriculture. The carvings on the pillars are said to symbolize the builders’ belief systems at the time of their transition to becoming a sedentary, food-producing economy. According to Haklay and Gopher, the depiction of humans at the site marked a departure from the animal art of the previous Paleolithic, intimating a shift in the relationship between humans and nature. They argue that the builders of Göbekli Tepe wished to establish a new natural order with a strict hierarchy, and a more divided society.(18) Klaus Schmidt argued that the eventual burial of Göbekli Tepe marked the death of an old way of life, and the birth of a settled civilization with new religious practices. In his words, “when you have new gods, you have to get rid of the old ones.”(19)
Several of those who worked at the site published a paper in 2009 that supported Jacques Cauvin’s thesis that social systems changed before, and not as a result of, the shift to agriculture.(20) In other words, the worship of gods galvanized nomadic ancestor cults to build Göbekli Tepe. Construction and maintenance of this site drove its builders to seek more consistent access to food, so they started growing crops. The need for farm labor, in turn, led the residents to develop cults, rituals, and feast schedules, as well as processed foods and beer to keep the workers placated.
In 2017, Martin Sweatman and Dimitrios Tsikritsis published a paper arguing that Pillar 43 in enclosure D, better known as the vulture stone, memorializes the start of the Younger Dryas, a turbulent period of earth history at the end of the last ice age. The headless human at the base of the pillar is said to represent catastrophe, and the animals each represent constellations, with the ball above the vulture’s wing identifying the scene as the point at which the sun crossed Saggitarius. The last time the sun passed this point in the sky was around 10,950 BCE, the beginning of the Younger Dryas. The authors believe that the vulture stone is evidence in favor of the comet impact hypothesis, which holds that a large comet struck the glaciers at the end of the ice age, and flooded the world.(21)
Writer Graham Hancock has argued that there was a “lost civilization” at this time, destroyed in this event. Hancock has postulated that Göbekli Tepe was built by the survivors of this civilization, as a means of preserving the knowledge and advances they had made. Hancock suggests that the handbags depicted at the site, and in the iconography of other “civilization bringers” of ancient mythology, represent the survivors of one civilization leading another from a state of ignorance.(22) Schmidt himself recognized the significance of the site emerging at the end of the Younger Dryas.(23) It seems likely that the construction of Göbekli Tepe was related to broader changes on the planet.
Summary
Researchers are undecided if Göbekli Tepe is an early domestic settlement, a skull cult temple, a site for sky burials, an astronomical observatory, or something else entirely. The mystery of the site is shrouded by its staggeringly old age. More than 5000 years have passed since the etching of the first clay tablets in Sumeria, and Göbekli Tepe was built another 6000 years before that. Ultimately, it’s a culture lost to us, and we may never know who erected those monumental pillars, or why.
Notes:
1) Peter Benedict's article, “Survey work in Southeastern Anatolia,” was printed in Halet Cambel and Robert J. Braidwood, Prehistoric Research in Southeastern Anatolia (Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakultesi Basimevi, 1980), 151. This article was an update on work he’d published earlier with Ufuk Esin, “Recent developments in the prehistory of Anatolia : a new branch of anthropology,” Current Anthropology 4 (1963): 339-346.
2) Oliver Dietrich, “Göbekli Tepe: The first 20 Years of Research,” The Tepe Telegrams, June 2, 2016.
3) Andrew Curry, “Göbekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?” Smithsonian Magazine, November, 2008. https://smithsonianmag.com/history/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-first-temple-83613665.
4) Laura Dietrich, Julia Meister, Oliver Dietrich, Jens Notroff, Janika Kiep, Julia Heeb, André Beuger, and Brigitta Schütt, “Cereal Processing at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey,” PLoS ONE 14, no. 5 (2019): e0215214, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215214.
5) Jens Notroff in Stephen Milo, “Göbekli Tepe And The People Who Built It: A Conversation With Archaeologist Jens Notroff,” April 9, 2020, video, 58:41, https://youtu.be/WgwiUkEL4yE.
6) Dietrich et al. “Cereal Processing.”
7) UNESCO World Heritage Center, “Göbekli Tepe: Nomination for Inclusion on the World Heritage List: Nomination Document 1572,” 42nd Session of the World Heritage Committee, January 31, 2017. Available at: https://whc.unesco.org/en/documents/160483.
8) Oliver Dietrich, “Guarded by beasts: a porthole stone from Göbekli Tepe,” The Tepe Telegrams, March 20, 2017, https://tepetelegrams.wordpress.com/tag/architecture.
9) 9261–9139 cal. BCE.
10) to between 9745–9314 cal. BCE.
11) Klaus Schmidt, “Göbekli Tepe – the Stone Age Sanctuaries: New results of ongoing excavations with a special focus on sculptures and high reliefs,” Documenta Praehistorica XXXVII (2010), https://academia.edu/2299088/the_Stone_Age_Sanctuaries_New_results_of_ongoing_excavations_with_a_special_focus_on_sculptures_and_high_reliefs.
12) Dietrich, Oliver, Manfred Heun, Jens Notroff, Klaus Schmidt, and Martin Zarnkow, "The Role of Cult and Feasting In The Emergence of Neolithic Communities: New evidence from Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey," Antiquity 86, no. 333 (2012): 674-695, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00047840.
13) Andrew Collins, “Penguin Or Great Auk? A Newly Unveiled Carving Of A Seabird Found At Göbekli Tepe Opens The Debate Over The Geographical Origins Of Its Power Elite,” 1-9, https://academia.edu/12883576/Penguin_Or_Great_Auk_A_Newly_Unveiled_Carving_Of_A_Seabird_Found_At_G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe_Opens_The_Debate_Over_The_Geographical_Origins_Of_Its_Power_Elite.
14) Manu Seyfzadeh and Robert Schoch, “World’s First Known Written Word at Göbekli Tepe on T-Shaped Pillar 18 Means God,” Archaeological Discovery 7 (2019): 31-53,https://researchgate.net/publication/330759548_World's_First_Known_Written_Word_at_Gobekli_Tepe_on_T-Shaped_Pillar_18_Means_God.
15) Gil Haklay and Avi Gopher, “Geometry and Architectural Planning at Göbekli Tepe, Turkey,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 30, no. 2 (May 2020): 343-357: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774319000660.
16) Paolo Debertolis, Heikki Savolainen, Slobodan Mizdrak, "The Research for An Archaeoacoustic Standard", SB Research Group (December 2-6, 2013), http://sbresearchgroup.eu/Immagini/The_Research_for_an_Archaeoacoustic_Standard.pdf.
17) For a summary of some of these theories on astronomical connections, see Andrew Collins and Rodney Hale, “Göbekli Tepe and the Rising of Sirius,” AndrewCollins.com, https://andrewcollins.com/page/articles/G%F6bekli_Sirius.htm.
18) Haklay and Gopher, “Geometry and Architectural."
19) Patrick Symmes, "Turkey: Archeological Dig Reshaping Human History," Newsweek, February 18, 2010, https://newsweek.com/turkey-archeological-dig-reshaping-human-history-75101.
20) Dietrich et al., "The Role of Cult”; Jacques Cauvin, The Birth of Gods and The Origins of Agriculture, trans. Trevor Watkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (1994) 2000), https://google.com/books/edition/_/z4epGQpNyucC.
21) Martin B. Sweatman and Dimitrios Tsikritsis, “Decoding Göbekli Tepe with archaeoastronomy: What does the fox say,” Mediterranian Archaeology and Archaeometry 17, 233 (2017), 233 -250, http://omnilogi.com/ancient/deluge/Sweatman-and-Tsikritsis-gobekli-tepe-comet.pdf.
22) Throughout in Graham Hancock, Magicians of the Gods (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2015).
23) Klaus Schmidt in Ozan Guner, “Gobeklitepe Symposium 2nd Lecturer - Mr.Klaus Schmidt,” June 9, 2015, video, 52:48, https://youtu.be/J1PDX0NjwsA.
Sources:
Benedict, Peter. “Survey work in Southeastern Anatolia,” appears in Halet Cambel and Robert J. Braidwood, Prehistoric Research in Southeastern Anatolia. Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakultesi Basimevi, 1980.
Cauvin, Jacques. The Birth of Gods and The Origins of Agriculture. Translated by Trevor Watkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (1994) 2000. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://google.com/books/edition/_/z4epGQpNyucC.
Collins, Andrew. “Penguin Or Great Auk? A Newly Unveiled Carving Of A Seabird Found At Göbekli Tepe Opens The Debate Over The Geographical Origins Of Its Power Elite.” 1-9. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://academia.edu/12883576/Penguin_Or_Great_Auk_A_Newly_Unveiled_Carving_Of_A_Seabird_Found_At_G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe_Opens_The_Debate_Over_The_Geographical_Origins_Of_Its_Power_Elite.
Collins, Andrew and Rodney Hale. “Göbekli Tepe and the Rising of Sirius.” AndrewCollins.com. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://andrewcollins.com/page/articles/G%F6bekli_Sirius.htm.
Curry, Andrew. ”Göbekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?” Smithsonian Magazine. November, 2008. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://smithsonianmag.com/history/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-first-temple-83613665.
Debertolis, Paolo, Heikki Savolainen, Slobodan Mizdrak. "The Research for An Archaeoacoustic Standard." SB Research Group. December 2-6, 2013. Accessed October 2, 2020. http://sbresearchgroup.eu/Immagini/The_Research_for_an_Archaeoacoustic_Standard.pdf.
Dietrich, Laura, Julia Meister, Oliver Dietrich, Jens Notroff, Janika Kiep, Julia Heeb, André Beuger, and Brigitta Schütt. “Cereal Processing at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey.” PLoS ONE 14, no. 5 (May 1, 2019): e0215214. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215214.
Dietrich, Oliver. “Göbekli Tepe: The first 20 Years of Research.” The Tepe Telegrams. June 2, 2016.
Dietrich, Oliver. “Guarded by beasts: a porthole stone from Göbekli Tepe.” The Tepe Telegrams. March 20, 2017. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://tepetelegrams.wordpress.com/tag/architecture.
Dietrich, Oliver, Manfred Heun, Jens Notroff, Klaus Schmidt, and Martin Zarnkow. "The Role of Cult and Feasting In The Emergence of Neolithic Communities: New evidence from Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey." Antiquity 86, no. 333 (September 2012): 674-695. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00047840. https://researchgate.net/publication/235799794_The_role_of_cult_and_feasting_in_the_emergence_of_Neolithic_communities_New_evidence_from_Gobekli_Tepe_south-eastern_Turkey.
Esin, Ufuk. “Recent developments in the prehistory of Anatolia: a new branch of anthropology.” Current Anthropology 4 (1963):339-346.
Haklay, Gil and Avi Gopher. “Geometry and Architectural Planning at Göbekli Tepe, Turkey.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 30, no. 2 (May 2020): 343-357. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774319000660.
Hancock, Graham. Magicians of the Gods. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2015.
Ozan Guner. “Gobeklitepe Symposium 2nd Lecturer - Mr.Klaus Schmidt.” June 9, 2015. YouTube video, 52:48. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://youtu.be/J1PDX0NjwsA.
Schmidt, Klaus. “Göbekli Tepe – the Stone Age Sanctuaries: New results of ongoing excavations with a special focus on sculptures and high reliefs.” Documenta Praehistorica XXXVII (2010). Accessed October 2, 2020. https://academia.edu/2299088/the_Stone_Age_Sanctuaries_New_results_of_ongoing_excavations_with_a_special_focus_on_sculptures_and_high_reliefs.
Seyfzadeh, Manu and Robert Schoch. “World’s First Known Written Word at Göbekli Tepe on T-Shaped Pillar 18 Means God.” Archaeological Discovery 7 (2019): 31-53. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://researchgate.net/publication/330759548_World's_First_Known_Written_Word_at_Gobekli_Tepe_on_T-Shaped_Pillar_18_Means_God.
Stephen Milo. “Göbekli Tepe And The People Who Built It: A Conversation With Archaeologist Jens Notroff.” April 9, 2020. Youtube video, 58:41. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://youtu.be/WgwiUkEL4yE.
Sweatman, Martin B. and Dimitrios Tsikritsis. “Decoding Göbekli Tepe with archaeoastronomy: What does the fox say.” Mediterranian Archaeology and Archaeometry 17, 233 (2017), 233 -250. Accessed October 2, 2020. http://omnilogi.com/ancient/deluge/Sweatman-and-Tsikritsis-gobekli-tepe-comet.pdf. https://zenodo.org/record/400780.
Symmes, Patrick. "Turkey: Archeological Dig Reshaping Human History." Newsweek. February 18, 2010. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://newsweek.com/turkey-archeological-dig-reshaping-human-history-75101.
UNESCO World Heritage Center. “Göbekli Tepe: Nomination for Inclusion on the World Heritage List: Nomination Document 1572.” 42nd Session of the World Heritage Committee. January 31, 2017. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://whc.unesco.org/en/documents/160483.
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Historians generally agree that humans have only been practicing agriculture for about 10,000 years, and built the first civilizations just 5 or 6 thousand years ago. However, the monumental complex of Göbekli Tepe in modern-day Turkey has been dated to almost 10,000 BCE, or nearly 12,000 years ago. It’s the world’s first example of a monumental structure built by hunter-gatherers, and features stonework previously thought to be well beyond the capabilities of such a loosely-organized society. The excavation is ongoing, but it’s already rewriting the story on humanity’s transition to agriculture, and the birth of civilization.
The Site
We owe the discovery of Göbekli Tepe to the excavation of Nevalı Çori, a similar Neolithic site in the Urfa region. The city of Urfa, also called Sanliurfa, was a major hub of the Ancient world, having been conquered by numerous civilizations over the years, including the Akkadians, Babylonians, Hittites, Macedonians, Byzantines, and Arabs. However, it’s clear that the site has been inhabited since prehistoric times. It lies in the northern reaches of Mesopotamia, one of the so-called “cradles of civilization,” where most of the events in the Old Testament took place. The Medieval philosopher, Maimonedes, and the Roman historian Josephus, both claimed that Urfa was in fact Ur of the Chaldees, the birthplace of the biblical figure, Abraham.
Nevalı Çori was set to be flooded by the construction of the Atatürk Dam, so the Turkish government hired a team of archaeologists from the University of Heidelberg in Germany to have it excavated in 1983. The team unearthed a large, rectangular outer-structure subdivided into smaller enclosures, one of which was completely unique to archaeologists: it had T-shaped pillars around the walls, all interconnected by a wrap-around “bench,” as it was called, and a pair of T-shaped pillars in the center. Nevalı Çori was flooded in 1991, but one of the archaeologists on the team, Klaus Schmidt, searched for similar settlements in the region.
Göbekli Tepe - meaning potbellied hill, in Turkish - was the name given to a cluster of artificial mounds northeast of Urfa. At 770 meters above sea level, the apex of the site is the highest point in the Germus Mountains. The mounds had long been known to locals, but first came to the attention of the academic community in 1980, when Peter Benedict published a summary of his survey work in Anatolia dating back to the early 1960s.(1) Benedict noted that the hillsides of Göbekli Tepe were covered in flint artefacts, and that there were slabs of limestone protruding from the tops of the hills that he believed were tombstones.(2)
Klaus Schmidt was already working on his own survey of the region when he read Benedict’s report, and visited Göbekli Tepe for himself in 1994. With his knowledge of Nevalı Çori, he was able to identify these so-called “tombstones” as the tops of T-shaped pillars. Schmidt got funding from the German Research Foundation to lead an excavation of the mounds in 1995. His team began a one-acre dig that covers only about 5% of the total site, and continues to this day. In Schmidt’s words, “archaeologists could dig here for another 50 years and barely scratch the surface."(3)
The Excavation
Schmidt’s team divided the site into three different layers based on their stratigraphy, or their relative elevations. Layer I designates the sediment in which the site was buried, which was anomalous in itself, as it was composed of mostly fragments of flint, limestone, and bones, with only a smattering of earth. Stranger still, the ground that covered the site did not get older as the team dug deeper, suggesting that Göbekli Tepe had been suddenly buried - probably deliberately - in up to three meters of sediment between 7 and 8000 BCE, or 9 or 10,000 years ago. So everything at the site is at least that old.
Layer II designates the highest level of the ruins, and the most recently constructed, while Layer III denotes the lowest, oldest structures: four or five mostly ovular enclosures containing large, monolithic pillars. Excavators have so far unearthed eight major enclosures at Göbekli Tepe, each identified by a letter signifying its place in the sequence of discovery. Layer III includes enclosures A - D, located at the main excavation in the southeastern depression, as well as enclosure H, in the northwestern quadrant, and enclosure E on the Western Plateau. Enclosures A - D range from 10 to 20 meters in diameter, and with the possible exception of enclosure A, which so far appears more rectangular, are all ovular in shape. The excavation has not yet reached the floors in enclosures A and H, but the floors in C and D are carved from the bedrock itself, and competently smoothed. The floor in B is a lime and clay terrazzo that’s been artificially burnt and polished.(4)
In the center of enclosures A, B, C, D, and H are two, monolithic limestone pillars, carved in the shape of a T. The largest of these pillars in Enclosure D weigh 8 to 10 metric tons each, and stand about 5.5 meters, or 18 feet tall. The pillars in enclosures C and D stand on pedestals carved from the bedrock floor. Rings of smaller, monolithic, T-shaped pillars line the walls of these enclosures. Each of these pillars weigh several tons, and stand around 4 meters tall. All pillars at the site were quarried from the surrounding plateau and are of a very hard, crystalline limestone. We don’t know how the builders moved the pillars, but they left one at the quarry that weighs an estimated 50 metric tons. Perhaps they couldn’t move it.
Enclosure C has three consecutive walls in places, all of various heights, as well as two rings of pillars. A “bench” runs along the inner mantle of the interior wall, similar to the enclosure at Nevalı Çori. Though there are no walls, benches, or pillars at enclosure E, it’s considered to be contemporaneous with the other Layer III enclosures because of the levelled bedrock floor and pedestals. Geomagnetic surveys including ground-penetrating radar proves that there are as many as 15 or 20 of these ovular, layer-III enclosures still hidden underground.
Layer II features two distinct types of architecture, likely from two different periods. What the excavators have called Layer IIA refers to a network of densely-packed, small, rectangular structures with lime-plaster floors. These structures - some of which are thought to be domiciles - were clearly built many centuries after Layer III, as they sit at a higher level. Some of them also contain a few simple, mostly undecorated pillars that are no taller than 2 meters, and clearly inferior to the ones on Layer III. One of the more puzzling aspects of the site, and something that it shares with many ancient sites around the world, is that the scale, complexity, and workmanship is at its zenith in the oldest layer of the architecture, then deteriorates over time.(5) One would expect the world’s first monumental site to progress in the opposite direction, or towards more developed skills and workmanship.
Layer IIB refers to two enclosures, called F and G, built well after Layer III, but probably before the rest of Layer II. They are smaller than enclosures A - D, with smaller pillars. The most recent evidence points to yet another potential phase of construction. There are simple C-shaped or ovular enclosures, some subdivided by an interior wall, that lack any of the interior features of the other spaces. These buildings may be contemporary to, or even older than, the monumental structures on Layer III.(6)
Excavators have found a range of other structures and artifacts at the site, including carved channels and cisterns for collecting rainwater, a number of grinding stones, a small totem pole, as it’s been called, and several carved human heads that appear to have once belonged to life-sized statues.(7) The team has also found a few so-called porthole stones, like this 3-meter slab found on the Northwestern hilltop, or this one embedded in the wall at Enclosure B. Strangely, many of the enclosures at Gobekli Tepe have no obvious entrances. The ring around the first wall of Enclosure C, for example, is accessible by a floor-level entrance, but there is no opening to the inner chamber, where the largest pillars are. However, many of the excavators believe that the entrances ran through some kind of a roof that has since been destroyed or removed. It is thought that the porthole stones may have been involved in the original entrances.(8)
Interpretation
Göbekli Tepe was dated primarily by tool typology, or comparing the tools found in the sediment to similar tools at other sites. By this method, the excavators dated the oldest layers of the site to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) A period, which stretches from around 10,000 to 8800 BCE. The exact chronology of the different enclosures is more difficult to determine. Some of the walls’ plaster has allowed for carbon dating, but this can only establish when these walls were plastered last, and not when they were built. Samples of charcoal from between the outer walls of enclosure C were radiocarbon dated to around 9200 BCE.(9) Clay mortar recovered from enclosure D was dated to about 9500 BCE,(10) making the current archeological consensus that the site is between 11,000 to 11,500 years old.(11)
Many of Göbekli Tepe’s pillars, pillar bases, port holes, and gates are decorated with relief carvings of abstract symbols and a variety of animal motifs: boars, aurochs, gazelle, wild ass, sheep, foxes, snakes, lions, lizards, scorpions, and many types of birds. At the time of the site’s founding, the Urfa region was lush and forested, and could have certainly sustained this diversity of wildlife. Some enclosures have clearly anthropomorphic monoliths, with carvings of arms, hands, shoulders, elbows, a belt, and what has been determined to be a loincloth on Pillar 18 in enclosure D. The carvings are believed to be totems: the animals as ancestor spirits who have taken animal form, and the T-shaped pillars as humanoid deities. The team has also suggested that the abundance of carved images, something shared among all PPN sites in Upper Mesopotamia, are part of a “system of symbolic communication” that preceded writing but still allowed for a “highly complicated mythology.”(12)
The only human remains found at the site so far are several skull fragments with purpose-cut grooves in them. The poor condition of the skull fragments has made radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis impossible, but they’re believed to be evidence of an unknown variant of an Early Neolithic skull cult, which were known to have re-plastered and decorated human skulls. A small tablet with a carving of a flightless bird - possibly a Great Auk or a penguin - raises the possibility that the builders of the site had recently migrated from another region.(13)
All of the animal bones found at the site were clearly from wild animals, not domesticated ones, indicating that the builders did not keep livestock. Some of the most common bones at the site were those of hooded vultures and Ravens, leading scholars to suggest that Göbekli Tepe could have been a site for sky burials. In a sky burial, the deceased is cut up and left in the mountains to be eaten by scavenging birds, which were believed to carry peoples’ flesh up to the heavens. Jens Notroff, an archeologist at the site, has remarked on the frequency with which headless humans or severed heads appear at the site, often in combination with vultures. Danielle Stordeur, an archaeologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in France has found similar symbols at contemporaneous sites just 80 km away in Syria, suggesting that they were both established by the same culture. There are also several other sites with T-shaped pillars in the area, but none with pillars so large as Göbekli Tepe’s.
Manu Seyfzadeh and Robert Schoch have pointed out that the “H” on pillar 18 bracketed by two semi-circles appears in the hieroglyphic language of the Bronze Age Luwians of Anatolia as the word for “god.” The same symbol appears on several other Luwian artefacts. In this language, an “H” alone meant “gate.” The Luwians also used currently untranslated symbols that resemble the T-shaped pillars of Göbekli Tepe. Seyfzadeh and Schoch concluded that the pillars were representations of a god that guarded entry to the afterlife.(14) According to archaeologists Gil Haklay and Avi Gopher, there are a number of important geometric relationships between the Layer III enclosures, including an exact equilateral triangle formed by the central pillars in enclosures B, C, and D.(15)
One intriguing feature of the site are the three “handbags” or purses lining the top of Pillar 43. Similar handbags can be seen at many ancient sites in Mesopotamia and the Americas, often depicted in the hands of Gods. There is no consensus in mainstream academia regarding what the handbag represents, but some have said that it denotes a standard weight, or is a symbol for the seeds of knowledge.
Researchers with the Super Brain Research Group, or SBRG, searched Gobëkli Tepe for resonant structures. A little known fact is that many types of rock actually “ring” out in a clear tone when struck or vibrated. Even when struck by hand, Pillar 18 resonated so strongly that researchers believed it must be hollow. The team believes that something underground had once vibrated these pillars to make them ring at certain tones. The team suggested that these tones may have been important to the site, noting that certain frequency ranges - even those that we can’t hear - can have profound effects on our health and consciousness. Unfortunately, the team lost all access to the site after the death of Klaus Schmidt in 2014, and their research was suspended.(16)
Still other researchers, including Robert Schoch, Giulio Magli, and Andrew Collins, have explored astrological connections, and proposed that various pillars in the largest enclosures aligned with certain stars and constellations.(17)
Implications
According to our current understanding of history, the Early Neolithic age saw humans transition from nomadic hunter-gatherers to settled agriculturalists in a process referred to as the Neolithic Revolution. Only after this process were humans thought to build monumental stone structures, and specialize in certain forms of labor. The founders of Göbekli Tepe lived in largely unorganized societies, with minimal centralized leadership and no dedicated labor force. Before the excavation of Göbekli Tepe, a society like this was believed to be incapable of erecting such a complex.
Most archaeologists and anthropologists have theorized that the site was built by hunter-gatherers in the earliest stages of their transition to agriculture. The carvings on the pillars are said to symbolize the builders’ belief systems at the time of their transition to becoming a sedentary, food-producing economy. According to Haklay and Gopher, the depiction of humans at the site marked a departure from the animal art of the previous Paleolithic, intimating a shift in the relationship between humans and nature. They argue that the builders of Göbekli Tepe wished to establish a new natural order with a strict hierarchy, and a more divided society.(18) Klaus Schmidt argued that the eventual burial of Göbekli Tepe marked the death of an old way of life, and the birth of a settled civilization with new religious practices. In his words, “when you have new gods, you have to get rid of the old ones.”(19)
Several of those who worked at the site published a paper in 2009 that supported Jacques Cauvin’s thesis that social systems changed before, and not as a result of, the shift to agriculture.(20) In other words, the worship of gods galvanized nomadic ancestor cults to build Göbekli Tepe. Construction and maintenance of this site drove its builders to seek more consistent access to food, so they started growing crops. The need for farm labor, in turn, led the residents to develop cults, rituals, and feast schedules, as well as processed foods and beer to keep the workers placated.
In 2017, Martin Sweatman and Dimitrios Tsikritsis published a paper arguing that Pillar 43 in enclosure D, better known as the vulture stone, memorializes the start of the Younger Dryas, a turbulent period of earth history at the end of the last ice age. The headless human at the base of the pillar is said to represent catastrophe, and the animals each represent constellations, with the ball above the vulture’s wing identifying the scene as the point at which the sun crossed Saggitarius. The last time the sun passed this point in the sky was around 10,950 BCE, the beginning of the Younger Dryas. The authors believe that the vulture stone is evidence in favor of the comet impact hypothesis, which holds that a large comet struck the glaciers at the end of the ice age, and flooded the world.(21)
Writer Graham Hancock has argued that there was a “lost civilization” at this time, destroyed in this event. Hancock has postulated that Göbekli Tepe was built by the survivors of this civilization, as a means of preserving the knowledge and advances they had made. Hancock suggests that the handbags depicted at the site, and in the iconography of other “civilization bringers” of ancient mythology, represent the survivors of one civilization leading another from a state of ignorance.(22) Schmidt himself recognized the significance of the site emerging at the end of the Younger Dryas.(23) It seems likely that the construction of Göbekli Tepe was related to broader changes on the planet.
Summary
Researchers are undecided if Göbekli Tepe is an early domestic settlement, a skull cult temple, a site for sky burials, an astronomical observatory, or something else entirely. The mystery of the site is shrouded by its staggeringly old age. More than 5000 years have passed since the etching of the first clay tablets in Sumeria, and Göbekli Tepe was built another 6000 years before that. Ultimately, it’s a culture lost to us, and we may never know who erected those monumental pillars, or why.
Notes:
1) Peter Benedict's article, “Survey work in Southeastern Anatolia,” was printed in Halet Cambel and Robert J. Braidwood, Prehistoric Research in Southeastern Anatolia (Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakultesi Basimevi, 1980), 151. This article was an update on work he’d published earlier with Ufuk Esin, “Recent developments in the prehistory of Anatolia : a new branch of anthropology,” Current Anthropology 4 (1963): 339-346.
2) Oliver Dietrich, “Göbekli Tepe: The first 20 Years of Research,” The Tepe Telegrams, June 2, 2016.
3) Andrew Curry, “Göbekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?” Smithsonian Magazine, November, 2008. https://smithsonianmag.com/history/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-first-temple-83613665.
4) Laura Dietrich, Julia Meister, Oliver Dietrich, Jens Notroff, Janika Kiep, Julia Heeb, André Beuger, and Brigitta Schütt, “Cereal Processing at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey,” PLoS ONE 14, no. 5 (2019): e0215214, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215214.
5) Jens Notroff in Stephen Milo, “Göbekli Tepe And The People Who Built It: A Conversation With Archaeologist Jens Notroff,” April 9, 2020, video, 58:41, https://youtu.be/WgwiUkEL4yE.
6) Dietrich et al. “Cereal Processing.”
7) UNESCO World Heritage Center, “Göbekli Tepe: Nomination for Inclusion on the World Heritage List: Nomination Document 1572,” 42nd Session of the World Heritage Committee, January 31, 2017. Available at: https://whc.unesco.org/en/documents/160483.
8) Oliver Dietrich, “Guarded by beasts: a porthole stone from Göbekli Tepe,” The Tepe Telegrams, March 20, 2017, https://tepetelegrams.wordpress.com/tag/architecture.
9) 9261–9139 cal. BCE.
10) to between 9745–9314 cal. BCE.
11) Klaus Schmidt, “Göbekli Tepe – the Stone Age Sanctuaries: New results of ongoing excavations with a special focus on sculptures and high reliefs,” Documenta Praehistorica XXXVII (2010), https://academia.edu/2299088/the_Stone_Age_Sanctuaries_New_results_of_ongoing_excavations_with_a_special_focus_on_sculptures_and_high_reliefs.
12) Dietrich, Oliver, Manfred Heun, Jens Notroff, Klaus Schmidt, and Martin Zarnkow, "The Role of Cult and Feasting In The Emergence of Neolithic Communities: New evidence from Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey," Antiquity 86, no. 333 (2012): 674-695, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00047840.
13) Andrew Collins, “Penguin Or Great Auk? A Newly Unveiled Carving Of A Seabird Found At Göbekli Tepe Opens The Debate Over The Geographical Origins Of Its Power Elite,” 1-9, https://academia.edu/12883576/Penguin_Or_Great_Auk_A_Newly_Unveiled_Carving_Of_A_Seabird_Found_At_G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe_Opens_The_Debate_Over_The_Geographical_Origins_Of_Its_Power_Elite.
14) Manu Seyfzadeh and Robert Schoch, “World’s First Known Written Word at Göbekli Tepe on T-Shaped Pillar 18 Means God,” Archaeological Discovery 7 (2019): 31-53,
15) Gil Haklay and Avi Gopher, “Geometry and Architectural Planning at Göbekli Tepe, Turkey,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 30, no. 2 (May 2020): 343-357: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774319000660.
16) Paolo Debertolis, Heikki Savolainen, Slobodan Mizdrak, "The Research for An Archaeoacoustic Standard", SB Research Group (December 2-6, 2013), http://sbresearchgroup.eu/Immagini/The_Research_for_an_Archaeoacoustic_Standard.pdf.
17) For a summary of some of these theories on astronomical connections, see Andrew Collins and Rodney Hale, “Göbekli Tepe and the Rising of Sirius,” AndrewCollins.com, https://andrewcollins.com/page/articles/G%F6bekli_Sirius.htm.
18) Haklay and Gopher, “Geometry and Architectural."
19) Patrick Symmes, "Turkey: Archeological Dig Reshaping Human History," Newsweek, February 18, 2010, https://newsweek.com/turkey-archeological-dig-reshaping-human-history-75101.
20) Dietrich et al., "The Role of Cult”; Jacques Cauvin, The Birth of Gods and The Origins of Agriculture, trans. Trevor Watkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (1994) 2000), https://google.com/books/edition/_/z4epGQpNyucC.
21) Martin B. Sweatman and Dimitrios Tsikritsis, “Decoding Göbekli Tepe with archaeoastronomy: What does the fox say,” Mediterranian Archaeology and Archaeometry 17, 233 (2017), 233 -250, http://omnilogi.com/ancient/deluge/Sweatman-and-Tsikritsis-gobekli-tepe-comet.pdf.
22) Throughout in Graham Hancock, Magicians of the Gods (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2015).
23) Klaus Schmidt in Ozan Guner, “Gobeklitepe Symposium 2nd Lecturer - Mr.Klaus Schmidt,” June 9, 2015, video, 52:48, https://youtu.be/J1PDX0NjwsA.
Sources:
Benedict, Peter. “Survey work in Southeastern Anatolia,” appears in Halet Cambel and Robert J. Braidwood, Prehistoric Research in Southeastern Anatolia. Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakultesi Basimevi, 1980.
Cauvin, Jacques. The Birth of Gods and The Origins of Agriculture. Translated by Trevor Watkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (1994) 2000. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://google.com/books/edition/_/z4epGQpNyucC.
Collins, Andrew. “Penguin Or Great Auk? A Newly Unveiled Carving Of A Seabird Found At Göbekli Tepe Opens The Debate Over The Geographical Origins Of Its Power Elite.” 1-9. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://academia.edu/12883576/Penguin_Or_Great_Auk_A_Newly_Unveiled_Carving_Of_A_Seabird_Found_At_G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe_Opens_The_Debate_Over_The_Geographical_Origins_Of_Its_Power_Elite.
Collins, Andrew and Rodney Hale. “Göbekli Tepe and the Rising of Sirius.” AndrewCollins.com. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://andrewcollins.com/page/articles/G%F6bekli_Sirius.htm.
Curry, Andrew. ”Göbekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?” Smithsonian Magazine. November, 2008. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://smithsonianmag.com/history/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-first-temple-83613665.
Debertolis, Paolo, Heikki Savolainen, Slobodan Mizdrak. "The Research for An Archaeoacoustic Standard." SB Research Group. December 2-6, 2013. Accessed October 2, 2020. http://sbresearchgroup.eu/Immagini/The_Research_for_an_Archaeoacoustic_Standard.pdf.
Dietrich, Laura, Julia Meister, Oliver Dietrich, Jens Notroff, Janika Kiep, Julia Heeb, André Beuger, and Brigitta Schütt. “Cereal Processing at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey.” PLoS ONE 14, no. 5 (May 1, 2019): e0215214. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215214.
Dietrich, Oliver. “Göbekli Tepe: The first 20 Years of Research.” The Tepe Telegrams. June 2, 2016.
Dietrich, Oliver. “Guarded by beasts: a porthole stone from Göbekli Tepe.” The Tepe Telegrams. March 20, 2017. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://tepetelegrams.wordpress.com/tag/architecture.
Dietrich, Oliver, Manfred Heun, Jens Notroff, Klaus Schmidt, and Martin Zarnkow. "The Role of Cult and Feasting In The Emergence of Neolithic Communities: New evidence from Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey." Antiquity 86, no. 333 (September 2012): 674-695. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00047840. https://researchgate.net/publication/235799794_The_role_of_cult_and_feasting_in_the_emergence_of_Neolithic_communities_New_evidence_from_Gobekli_Tepe_south-eastern_Turkey.
Esin, Ufuk. “Recent developments in the prehistory of Anatolia: a new branch of anthropology.” Current Anthropology 4 (1963):339-346.
Haklay, Gil and Avi Gopher. “Geometry and Architectural Planning at Göbekli Tepe, Turkey.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 30, no. 2 (May 2020): 343-357. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774319000660.
Hancock, Graham. Magicians of the Gods. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2015.
Ozan Guner. “Gobeklitepe Symposium 2nd Lecturer - Mr.Klaus Schmidt.” June 9, 2015. YouTube video, 52:48. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://youtu.be/J1PDX0NjwsA.
Schmidt, Klaus. “Göbekli Tepe – the Stone Age Sanctuaries: New results of ongoing excavations with a special focus on sculptures and high reliefs.” Documenta Praehistorica XXXVII (2010). Accessed October 2, 2020. https://academia.edu/2299088/the_Stone_Age_Sanctuaries_New_results_of_ongoing_excavations_with_a_special_focus_on_sculptures_and_high_reliefs.
Seyfzadeh, Manu and Robert Schoch. “World’s First Known Written Word at Göbekli Tepe on T-Shaped Pillar 18 Means God.” Archaeological Discovery 7 (2019): 31-53. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://researchgate.net/publication/330759548_World's_First_Known_Written_Word_at_Gobekli_Tepe_on_T-Shaped_Pillar_18_Means_God.
Stephen Milo. “Göbekli Tepe And The People Who Built It: A Conversation With Archaeologist Jens Notroff.” April 9, 2020. Youtube video, 58:41. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://youtu.be/WgwiUkEL4yE.
Sweatman, Martin B. and Dimitrios Tsikritsis. “Decoding Göbekli Tepe with archaeoastronomy: What does the fox say.” Mediterranian Archaeology and Archaeometry 17, 233 (2017), 233 -250. Accessed October 2, 2020. http://omnilogi.com/ancient/deluge/Sweatman-and-Tsikritsis-gobekli-tepe-comet.pdf. https://zenodo.org/record/400780.
Symmes, Patrick. "Turkey: Archeological Dig Reshaping Human History." Newsweek. February 18, 2010. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://newsweek.com/turkey-archeological-dig-reshaping-human-history-75101.
UNESCO World Heritage Center. “Göbekli Tepe: Nomination for Inclusion on the World Heritage List: Nomination Document 1572.” 42nd Session of the World Heritage Committee. January 31, 2017. Accessed October 2, 2020. https://whc.unesco.org/en/documents/160483.
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