Göbekli Tepe
A temple built by hunters, 6,000 years before the pyramids
See it on the timeline →In depth
The site consists of circles of T-shaped limestone pillars up to 5.5 metres tall, raised by communities still living by hunting and gathering. It inverts the classical sequence: the traditional assumption was that agricultural surplus made monumental architecture possible. Klaus Schmidt, who led the excavations, proposed the reverse — that the need to gather and feed large crowds at ritual sites may have been a driver behind cereal domestication. The site lies only tens of kilometres from where wild wheat was first tamed.
For children
On a hilltop in Turkey, people raised huge stone pillars carved with animals long before anyone had invented farming or cities. It must have taken hundreds of people. Perhaps belief and feasting came first — and farming afterwards.
Connects to
Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org