Göbekli Tepe, the oldest stone pillars in the world

On a limestone hill a few kilometres from the Turkish city of Şanlıurfa, in south-eastern Anatolia, lies one of the archaeological sites that has most changed our idea of prehistory. Göbekli Tepe, whose name means potbelly hill, holds large circular enclosures of stone pillars carved between the tenth and ninth millennia BC, when the people of the region were still largely hunter-gatherers. Although it lies outside Europe, the site is now an essential reference for anyone studying humanity's sacred places.

Discovery and excavation

The hill had already been noticed in the 1960s during a survey, but the slabs breaking the surface were mistaken for the remains of a medieval cemetery. It was the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, of the German Archaeological Institute, who grasped its importance and began excavations in 1995, in collaboration with the Şanlıurfa museum. Schmidt led the research until his death in 2014, and his publications made the site famous throughout the world.

Radiocarbon dating places the earliest phases around 9600 BC, at the beginning of the so-called Pre-Pottery Neolithic. This means that the pillars are about six millennia older than Stonehenge. At a later stage the enclosures were filled with debris, rubble and food remains, perhaps intentionally, and this helped to preserve them. In 2018 UNESCO inscribed Göbekli Tepe on the World Heritage List.

T-shaped pillars and carved animals

The enclosures are formed of large T-shaped limestone pillars, arranged in a circle and joined by walls, with two taller pillars at the centre. Some exceed five metres. On their faces are carved in relief foxes, boars, snakes, cranes, vultures and scorpions, often with surprising expressive force. It is a bestiary dominated by wild and dangerous animals, which does not seem to reflect everyday hunting but a world of symbolic meanings.

In the enclosure called D the two central pillars bear arms carved on their sides, hands meeting over the belly, belts and loincloths of fox pelt. They are therefore stylised humanoid figures, perhaps supernatural beings or ancestors. One of the pillars of the same enclosure, known as the vulture stone, has prompted astronomical and catastrophist interpretations that the scientific community regards as unfounded.

Temple or village? An open debate

Schmidt interpreted Göbekli Tepe as a mountain sanctuary, a gathering place for groups of hunters who met there for ceremonies and feasts, and called it humanity's first temple. Later research, carried out after his death, has identified smaller buildings, cisterns for collecting rainwater and tools for processing cereals, suggesting that the site was also permanently inhabited. Many archaeologists now prefer to speak of a settlement with special buildings devoted to communal and ritual activities.

The debate takes nothing away from the exceptional nature of the place; rather, it enriches it. In recent years the exploration of nearby sites with similar pillars, such as Karahan Tepe, has shown that Göbekli Tepe was part of a wider cultural landscape, now referred to as Taş Tepeler, the stone hills. These monuments show that the need to build extraordinary places accompanied, and perhaps preceded, the birth of agriculture.