Gobekli Tepe

Gobekli Tepe occupies a hilltop in southeastern Turkey near the city of Sanliurfa, a complex of circular and oval stone enclosures ringed by massive T-shaped limestone pillars, some carved in relief with foxes, boars, snakes and other animals, dating from roughly the tenth millennium BC. Excavations begun in 1995 by the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt found no evidence of domestic dwellings, leading most researchers to interpret the site as a ritual or ceremonial gathering place built and used by hunter-gatherer communities before the local adoption of farming and settled village life. That sequence made Gobekli Tepe unusually significant for the study of early human religion and social organization, since it suggested that large scale monumental construction and organized labor preceded agriculture rather than following it, reversing an assumption long held about the origins of civilization. At some point in antiquity the enclosures were deliberately buried under backfill, which is part of why they survived in such well preserved condition until their rediscovery. The site was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018.