Göbekli Tepe
▶ Explore on the map
Göbekli Tepe, on a hilltop in south-eastern Turkey, is a monumental ritual complex built by hunter-gatherers about 9500 BCE, more than six thousand years before Stonehenge and before pottery, metallurgy or the wheel. Excavations since 1995 by the German Archaeological Institute have uncovered oval enclosures with T-shaped limestone pillars, some over five metres tall and weighing several tonnes, carved with arms, belts and wild animals: foxes, snakes, boars, cranes and vultures. The pillars were quarried nearby without metal tools, shaped and hauled into rings, and the smaller pillars stand in pairs at the centre as if watching. The floors contain evidence of feasting, thousands of animal bones and stone vessels for food and drink, which suggests that the site drew groups from a wide area. The complex was deliberately buried around 8000 BCE, and the reasons are unknown. Its existence overturned the assumption that monumental architecture required settled farming communities, and it has made the region a candidate for the place where wild cereals were first managed, a link that remains debated. Archaeologists have found no houses and no graves at the site, which suggests it was a gathering place rather than a settlement, and people lived in smaller camps around it.