Göbekli Tepe: How Does Humanity's Most Ancient Monument Work?

In Turkey, a set of prehistoric columns rivals Stonehenge -- but they're 6,000 years older. Learn what we know (and don't know) about the hunter-gatherers who built Göbekli Tepe in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://history.howstuffworks.com/european-history/gobekli-tepe.htm

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brainsty a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff.
Laurena bolobaum here. It's perhaps obvious to say that eleven
thousand years ago the world looked very different. Lush forests
existed where there are now deserts, coral reefs where there
are now grasslands, and humans hadn't yet the gun building

(00:25):
very many things. Of course, we can't ever really know
exactly what our ancestors were up to so long ago,
because no one had invented writing yet, but places like
the archaeological site Go Beckley Tepe can give us a
few clues. Go Beckley Tepe is a monumental site situated
in the mountains of southeastern Turkey. It's along the lines

(00:48):
of Stonehenge, but about six thousand years older. The name
roughly means pop belly hill in Turkish, which is a
pretty good descriptor for the site. It was discovered by
a team of American and Turkish archaeologists in the nineteen sixties,
but their discovery of limestone slabs and flint artifacts wasn't
recognized from what it was until nineteen ninety four, when

(01:10):
a German archaeologist by the name of Klaus Schmidt realized
its significance. It's a mysterious site to this day, partly
because we can make so few assumptions about the people
who built it. For the article this episode is based
on How Stuff Works. Spoke via email with Jens Natrov
back in twenty twenty. He's an archaeologist who at the

(01:32):
time had been working on the go Beckley Tepe project
for some fourteen years. He said, monuments, generally speaking, are
a particular example of architecture standing out due to their
size and or the effort necessary to create them. Go
Beckley Tepe is a noteworthy example in this context, since
the monuments there marked the first yet known example of

(01:55):
monumental architecture, and that they were constructed in a cultural
context of still highly mobile hunter gatherers. The site comprises
over twenty limestone structures or buildings, many of which are
round in shape and built with sturdy walls. Inside those
walls stand t shaped limestone pillars, usually laid out in

(02:19):
a pattern, with two large pillars at the center of
the structure, surrounded by smaller ones around the edges. Often
built into the walls and incorporated into stone benches. There
are some two hundred pillars in total. The tallest are
sixteen feet high or about five meters, and they weigh
between seven and ten tons each. The pillars are covered

(02:43):
with all manner of engravings, most of which depict animals,
though not always the animals that you'd necessarily expect. In
addition to game animals like gazelles and boores, the pillars
depict foxes, snakes, lions, cranes, vultures, spiders, and square orpians.
The pictographs seemed to be dominated by animals that wouldn't

(03:05):
have been particularly good to eat. Some of the pillars
themselves seem to represent larger than life anthropomorphic sculptures, with
carvings that give them arms, belt with a loincloth, and
a head with no face. There are other free standing statues,
for example, a life sized one of a wild boar.

(03:25):
Some carvings and statues were decorated with pigments. The round
buildings that they're in range from about twenty feet across
to over sixty five feet that's six to twenty meters.
It's unknown whether they would have had roofs attached. These
structures seem to be what's called special purpose communal buildings,

(03:45):
structures that were not regularly inhabited, or weren't used for
what's considered daily household kind of tasks. Instead, they were
perhaps temples, sanctuaries, or other places for dispersed groups to
gather at appointed time times. It seems go Beckley Tepe
was a work in process for a couple thousand years,

(04:06):
from around nine thousand, five hundred to eight thousand, two
hundred BCE. During that time, and especially towards the end
of it, people were building settlements, raising animals like goats
and sheep, and cultivating crops. But from what archaeologists have
been able to surmise from the side itself, the people
who built it were still primarily hunter gatherers. There's no

(04:30):
direct evidence that they kept livestock or planted their own food,
and their tools and vessels were made of stone but
not pottery or metal. When excavations were in their early stages,
researchers like Schmidt theorized that it was a monument of
religious or other cultural significance used by peoples who never
settled it. It was an astounding discovery because the assumption

(04:53):
had always been that people who were scrapping for resources
pre agriculture wouldn't have wasted time building monuments. There was
even a theory that perhaps religion drove settlement, not the
other way around. But in the thirty years since, and
even in the past five years since, how stuff works
spoke with Noutrough. Given more discoveries and research at the site,

(05:17):
the picture is a little more complicated. Archaeologists at goe
Beecley Tepe have found grindstones, mortars, and carved stone vessels
that were used to process foods like grains and lagomes,
which we know because of residues left on them. One
stone vessel that held grain is big enough to have
made some forty three gallons of porridge or perhaps beer

(05:39):
at a go that's about one hundred and sixty three liters.
Perhaps it was only ever used at infrequent parties, but
even if that's the case, it indicates that the cook
or brewer had access to a lot of grain. Maybe
they were really adept at gathering wild grain, or maybe
they were working on cultivating crops that weren't quite genetically

(06:01):
domesticated yet. And other structures have been uncovered there too,
including lots of smaller rectangular buildings with fireplaces and tools
that indicate that they were probably homes. The teams have
recently found other indications of domestic life at the site,
including middens and large pieces of carved bedrock that were

(06:22):
likely used to collect and store rainwater. If they were
collecting rainwater. That clears up one of the original doubts
about the site ever being used as a settlement because
it is about three miles or five kilometers away from
the nearest stream. A Natroft said, while the early monumentality
of the site is definitely impressive to me, it's the

(06:43):
social implications at the doorstep of one of the crucial
points in the history of our species is what makes
this research so fascinating. When go Beckley Tepe was being
built and rebuilt over those couple thousand years, humans were
in the process of transitioning from hunting and gathering to
agriculture and keeping livestock. The site shows what might be

(07:07):
a bridge between the two ways of life. Some researchers
even think the site, with all its engravings of wild
and dangerous animals, might represent a sort of cultural pushback
against encroaching civilization, that it was a monument to the
old ways. We may never know what really went on

(07:27):
at Goebecley Tepe. One theory goes that it was a
human skull cult that's based on fragments of skulls found
there that were carved, painted, and otherwise modified after death.
But whatever the case, it seems that this was a
place built and maintained by a perhaps transitioning hunter. Gathers
society to meet up, trade information and goods, and find

(07:51):
romantic partners, share life hacks, and make friends who could
help out in a pinch. And if they were performing
skull cults ceremonies, what better way to build community. Today's
episode is based on the article go Beckley Tepe the
Temple that hints at what humans were up to eleven

(08:13):
thousand years ago on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Jesslin Shields.
Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how
stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.