By Youssef Kanjou
We don’t know when humankind first developed religious ideas and practices. Nor do we know when the first houses and even temples were built for religious rituals. However, archaeological excavations have uncovered the oldest very large building structures in which people performed rituals related to their beliefs at least 12,000 years ago. One of the most important of these archaeological sites is Göbekli Tepe, near the southeastern Turkish city of Şanlıurfa, close to the Syrian border. This excavation is considered one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of modern times.
Göbekli Tepe, a 12,000-year-old sensation
The Göbekli Tepe site (the Turkish name means bulbous hill) is located at the top of a tall mountain overlooking the surrounding plains. It is characterized by a complex architectural design and huge stone pillars decorated with animal representations and symbols. Archaeological excavations have uncovered six large circular buildings with stone walls that are still preserved, each with a diameter of ten to thirty meters. However, excavations and studies suggest that up to twenty more buildings are buried underground. The excavation site covers an area of about 300 square meters, much of which has yet to be explored. Each building has a row of T-shaped columns. The up to twelve columns are located within the circular walls, with two columns in the middle. These columns are usually decorated with reliefs of wild animals such as snakes, lions, scorpions, birds and deer. The height of the columns is between 2.5 and 4 meters.
Archaeological fieldwork began in 1995 and was carried out in collaboration with the Şanlıurfa Museum and the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) – with Harald Hauptmann as project director and Klaus Schmidt as field director. Klaus Schmidt later became excavation director, a position he held until his death in 2014. After that, management returned to the museum, with Lee Clare of the DAI serving as coordinator for the archaeological research.
First monumental structures, unique for a long time
Göbekli Tepe dates back to the Neolithic Age and was in use for an estimated 1500 years. The inhabitants of the site were hunter-gatherers. In addition to Göbekli, there are other similar archaeological sites in the Urfa region, such as Karahan Tepe and Sayburç. But there is no comparable culture in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world. This culture seems to be unique, because such massive stone structures did not reappear until about five thousand years later. This puts Göbekli Tepe on a par with Stonehenge in England and the Egyptian pyramids, but it is much older.
Religious and social rituals
The most important clues to its status as a religious center are the large round buildings and the T-shaped columns engraved with religious or totemic symbols. There is no evidence of everyday activities in these main buildings, which means that they were not for residential purposes but for rituals. It was therefore a place where people from far-flung areas gathered to perform ceremonies related to death and life. There may have been rituals such as singing, dancing and animal sacrifice. The symbols on the columns have not yet been clarified either, but they could be related to myths and beliefs.
The archaeological finds at Göbekli Tepe show that religion or group rituals preceded the agricultural settlement, which means that it was a religious or ritual center for hunter communities and early human groups. This changes our understanding of the development of civilization: until now, it was assumed that agriculture was the main driving force behind the formation of complex societies, which only emerged in the early 4th millennium BC. However, the monumental design of Göbekli Tepe indicates a high degree of social organization and collective cooperation even in the early days of human history, as hundreds of workers were certainly needed to build the site.
From November 4 to 8, 2024, the International Neolithic Conference took place in Urfa, attended by around 900 researchers from around the world. The main objective was to present the most important results of studies on the Neolithic, in particular the most recent studies in the Urfa region, which focus on the Göbekli Tepe site.
Further information can be found at: https://worldneolithiccongress.org/
Video of the excavation of Göbekli Tepe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAeQcAawVUA
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