Göbekli Tepe ("Potbelly Hill") is an archaeological site in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey approximately 15 km (9 mi) as the crow flies or 30 km (19 mi) by car, northeast of the city of Sanliurfa. The tell (artificial mound) has a height of 15 m (50 ft) and is about 300 m (1,000 ft) in diameter. It is approximately 760 m (2,500 ft) above sea level.
The site was first noted by a survey conducted by Istanbul University and the University of Chicago in 1964, which recognized that the hill could not entirely be a natural feature, but assumed that a Byzantine cemetery lay beneath. The survey noted a large number of flints and the presence of limestone slabs, which were thought to be Byzantine grave markers. In 1994, the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute of Istanbul visited the site, and recognized that it was, in fact, a much more ancient Neolithic site. Since 1995 excavations have been conducted by the German Archaeological Institute (Istanbul branch) and Sanliurfa Museum, under the direction of Klaus Schmidt (1995-2000: University of Heidelberg; since 2001: German Archaeological Institute). Prior to excavation, the hill had been under agricultural cultivation; generations of local inhabitants had frequently moved rocks and placed them in clearance piles; much archaeological evidence may have been destroyed in the process. Scholars from the Hochschule Karlsruhe began documenting the architectural remains. They soon discovered T-shaped pillars, some of which had apparently undergone attempts at smashing.
Each building has a diameter of 10-30 meters, decorated with massive (mostly) T-shaped limestone pillars that are the most striking feature of the site. Each pillar is around eight feet tall, and weighs up to seven tons. The limestone slabs were quarried from bedrock pits located around 100 meters from the hilltop, with neolithic workers presumably using flint tools to carve the bedrock. However, no tools have been found at the site or the quarry. That neolithic people with such primitive tools quarried, carved, transported uphill, and erected these massive pillars has astonished the archaeological world, and must have required a staggering amount of manpower and labor.
In the structures, two pillars were placed in the center of each circle, possibly to help support the roof, and up to eight pillars were evenly positioned around the walls of the room. The spaces between the pillars were lined with unworked stone, and stone benches were placed between each set of pillars around the edges of the wall.
Most of the pillars are decorated with carved reliefs of animals and of abstract enigmatic pictograms. The pictograms may represent commonly understood sacred symbols, as known from Neolithic cave paintings elsewhere. The carefully carved figurative reliefs depict lions, bulls, boars, foxes, gazelles, asses, snakes and other reptiles, insects, arachnids, and birds, particularly vultures and water fowl. (At the time the shrine was constructed, the surrounding country was much lusher and capable of sustaining this variety of wildlife, before millennia of settlement and cultivation resulted in the near-Dust Bowl conditions prevailing today.)
Few humanoid figures have surfaced at Gobekli Tepe, but they include a bas-relief of a naked woman posed frontally in a crouched position, that Schmidt likens to the Venus accueillante figures found in Neolithic north Africa, and a decapitated corpse surrounded by vultures. Some of the T-shaped pillars picture human arms, which may indicate that they represent stylized humans (or anthropomorphic gods). Another example is decorated with human hands in what could be interpreted as a prayer gesture, with a simple stole or surplice engraved above; this may be intended to represent a temple priest.
The Hd samples used for dating are from charcoal in the lowest levels of the site and would date the active phase of occupation. The Ua samples come from pedogenic carbonate coatings on pillars and only indicate a time after the site was abandoned-the terminus ante quem.
This speculative dating gives rise to many problems. Firstly, Current Biblical chronology dates the creation of Adam and Eve as around 4000BC. Estimates do vary but the fact remains that 80% of the world's religious population is agreed on this approximate timescale. Therefore, if this site is 10,000 years old as sensationally claimed, who built it? Dynasaurs?
Secondly, experts agree that Radio-Carbon dating is notoriously unreliable beyond a few hundred years. It relies totally on climatic and other conditions being identical to those of today - something that archaeologists are quick to tell is is definitely not the case. Also, it relies on the deterioration, or half-life of Carbon 14 being at a steady rate, which often not the case.
Rocks cannot be measured. It has to be something that was once alive. And on this site so far, nothing of this kind has been found. Further excavations are under way and further evidence may be found. But, as of today, we really have no idea of the age of the site, or man other similar sites. There is no doubt the site is very old, perhaps older than any other site. But aging, like much else in archaeology, is at best a relative science.
The structures are round megalithic buildings. The walls are made of unworked dry stone and include numerous T-shaped monolithic pillars of limestone that are up to 3 metres (9.8 ft) high. Another, bigger pair of pillars is placed in the centre of the structures. There is evidence that the structures were roofed; the central pair of pillars may have supported the roof. The floors are made of terrazzo (burnt lime), and there is a low bench running along the whole of the exterior wall.
The reliefs on the pillars include foxes, lions, cattle, wild boars, wild asses, herons, ducks, scorpions, ants, spiders, many snakes, and a very few anthropomorphic figures. Some of the reliefs have been deliberately erased, maybe in preparation for new designs. There are freestanding sculptures as well that may represent wild boars or foxes. As they are heavily encrusted with lime, it is sometimes difficult to tell. Comparable statues have been discovered at Nevali Chori and Nahal Hemar.
The quarries for the statues are located on the plateau itself; some unfinished pillars have been found there in situ. The biggest unfinished pillar is still 6.9 metres (23 ft) long; a length of 9m has been reconstructed. This is much larger than any of the finished pillars found so far. The stone was quarried with stone picks.[citation needed] Bowl-like depressions in the limestone rocks may already have served as mortars or fire-starting bowls in the epipalaeolithic. There are some phalloi and geometric patterns cut into the rock as well; their dating is uncertain.
Recently smaller domestic buildings have been uncovered. Despite this, it is clear that the primary use of the site was not domestic, due to the dwellings at the site being dated at 500 years or more after the construction of the first ring of the temple. Schmidt believes this "cathedral on a hill" was a pilgrimage destination attracting worshipers up to a 100 miles (160 km) distant. Butchered bones found in large numbers from local game such as deer, gazelle, pigs, and geese have been identified as refuse derived from hunting and food prepared for the congregants.
The site was deliberately backfilled sometime later, possibly by the flood of Noah's day: the buildings are covered with sand that must have been carried from elsewhere. The lithic inventory is characterised by Byblos points and numerous Nemrik-points. There are Helwan-points and Aswad-points as well.
While the site formally belongs to the earliest Neolithic, up to now no traces of domesticated plants or animals have been found. The inhabitants are assumed to be hunters and gatherers who nevertheless lived in villages for at least part of the year. Schmidt speculates that the site played a key function in the transition to agriculture; he assumes that the necessary social organization needed for the creation of these structures went hand-in-hand with the organized exploitation of wild crops. For sustenance, wild cereals may have been used more intensively than before; perhaps they were even deliberately cultivated. Recent DNA analysis of modern domesticated wheat compared with wild wheat has shown that its DNA is closest in structure to wild wheat found on Mount Karaca Dag 20 miles (32 km) away from the site, leading one to believe that this is where modern wheat was first domesticated. However, we must remember that Adam and his sons were farmers. There are still nomadic tribes today which could be classed as hunter-gatherers. This does not make such peoples Neolithic any more than people currently living in caves are Paleolithic.
Schmidt considers Gobekli Tepe a central location for a cult of the dead. He suggests that the carved animals are there to protect the dead. Though no tombs or graves have been found so far, Schmidt believes they remain to be discovered beneath the sacred circles' floors. Schmidt also interprets it in connection with the initial stages of an incipient Neolithic. It is one of several neolithic sites in the vicinity of Mount Karaca Dag, an area where geneticists suspect the origins of at least some of our cultivated grains (see Einkorn). Such scholars suggest that the Neolithic revolution, i.e., the beginnings of grain cultivation, took place here. Schmidt and others believe that mobile groups in the area were forced to cooperate with each other to protect early concentrations of wild cereals from wild animals (herds of gazelles and wild donkeys). This would have led to an early social organization of various groups in the area of Gobekli Tepe. Thus, according to Schmidt, the Neolithic did not begin on a small scale in the form of individual instances of garden cultivation, but started immediately as a large-scale social organisation ("a full-scale revolution").
All statements about the site must be considered preliminary, as only a relatively small part of the site's total area has been excavated as yet; floor levels have been reached in only the second complex (complex B), which also contains a terrazzo-like floor. Schmidt believes that the dig could well continue for another fifty years, "and barely scratch the surface." So it's a case of "watch this space".
Thus, the structures not only predate pottery, metallurgy, and the invention of writing or the wheel; they were built before the so-called Neolithic Revolution. But the construction of Gobekli Tepe implies organisation of an order of complexity not hitherto associated with Paleolithic, PPN A, or PPN B societies. The archaeologists estimate that up to 500 persons were required to extract the 10-20 metric ton (9.8-20 long tons; 11-22 short tons) pillars (in fact, some weigh up to 50 metric tons (49 long tons; 55 short tons)) from local quarries and move them 100-500 metres (330-1,600 ft) to the site. It is generally believed that an elite class of religious leaders supervised the work and later controlled whatever ceremonies took place here. If so, this would be the oldest known evidence for a priestly caste-much earlier than such social distinctions developed elsewhere in the Near East. Perhaps we should be considering work done be the Nephillim (Giants) mentioned in Genesis.
Not only its large dimensions, but the side-by-side existence of multiple pillar shrines makes the location unique. There are no comparable monumental complexes from its time. Nevali Chori, a well-known Neolithic settlement also excavated by the German Archaeological Institute, and submerged by the Ataturk Dam since 1992, is 500 years later, its T-shaped pillars are considerably smaller, and its shrine was located inside a village; the roughly contemporary architecture at Jericho is devoid of artistic merit or large-scale sculpture; and Chatalhoyuk, perhaps the most famous of all Anatolian Neolithic villages, is 2,000 years younger.
At present, Gobekli Tepe raises more questions for archaeology and prehistory than it answers. We do not know how a force large enough to construct, augment, and maintain such a substantial complex was mobilized and paid or fed in the conditions of pre-Neolithic society. We cannot "read" the pictograms, and do not know for certain what meaning the animal reliefs had for visitors to the site; the variety of fauna depicted, from lions and boars to birds and insects, makes any single explanation problematic. As there seems to be little or no evidence of habitation, and the animals depicted on the stones are mainly predators, the stones may have been intended to stave off evils through some form of magic representation; it is also possible that they served as totems. It is not known why more and more walls were added to the interiors while the sanctuary was in use, with the result that some of the engraved pillars were obscured from view. Burial may or may not have occurred at the site. The reason the complex was eventually buried remains unexplained. Until more evidence is gathered, it is difficult to deduce anything certain about the originating culture.
