Göbekli Tepe
A 12,000-year-old megalithic sanctuary that overturned the scientific consensus on the origins of civilisation — built 6,000 years before Stonehenge.
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History & Lore
Discovered in 1994 by Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute, Göbekli Tepe ('Potbelly Hill') consists of at least 20 circular enclosures built between approximately 10,000 and 8,000 BCE. Each enclosure features T-shaped limestone pillars up to 6 metres tall, weighing up to 10 tonnes, carved with bas-reliefs of foxes, serpents, scorpions, boars, vultures, and abstract symbols of unknown meaning.
The site predates writing, the wheel, pottery, and domesticated agriculture — all the things archaeologists assumed were prerequisites for large-scale cooperative construction. Its existence forced a revision of the standard model: rather than agriculture enabling monument-building, the reverse may be true. Schmidt proposed that the effort required to build and feed a workforce at Göbekli Tepe may have been the catalyst for the development of agriculture in this region, which is within 30 kilometres of the wild ancestors of wheat, barley, and lentils.
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