The mystery of Göbekli Tepe

View overlooking the main excavation area of ​​Göbekli Tepe

 

The first temple of mankind intrigues researchers. The structure was erected about 10,000 years before Christ by nomadic hunter-gatherer societies from the Neolithic period.

Göbekli Tepe ( Turkish: [ɟœbecˈli teˈpe] , [2] "Potbelly Hill"; known as Girê Mirazan or Xirabreşkê in Kurdish ) is a Neolithic archaeological site in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. Dated to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic , between c. 9500 and 8000 BCE, the site comprises a number of large circular structures supported by massive stone pillars – the world's oldest known megaliths . Many of these pillars are richly decorated with figurative anthropomorphic details, clothing, and reliefs of wild animals, providing archaeologists rare insights into prehistoric religion and the particular iconography of the period. The 15 m (50 ft)-high, 8 ha (20-acre) tell also includes many smaller buildings, quarries, and stone-cut cisterns from the Neolithic, as well as some traces of activity from later periods.

The site was first used at the dawn of the Southwest Asian Neolithic period, which marked the appearance of the oldest permanent human settlements anywhere in the world. Prehistorians link this Neolithic Revolution to the advent of agriculture, but disagree on whether farming caused people to settle down or vice versa. Göbekli Tepe, a monumental complex built on top of a rocky mountaintop, with no clear evidence of agricultural cultivation produced to date, has played a prominent role in this debate.

Göbekli Tepe was built and occupied during the earliest part of the Southwest Asian  Neolithic  , known as the  Pre-Pottery Neolithic  (PPN, c. 9600–7000 BCE).   Beginning at the end of the  last Ice Age  , the PPN marks "the beginnings of village life",  [8]  producing the earliest evidence for permanent  human settlements  in the world.  Archaeologists have long associated the appearance of these settlements with the  Neolithic Revolution  —the transition from  hunting and gathering to agriculture—but disagree on whether the adoption of farming caused people to settle down, or settling down caused people to adopt farming.  Elements of village life appeared as early as 10,000 years before the Neolithic in places.