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Examiner The massive limestone monoliths weigh between ten and twenty tons and are weirdly carved with fantastic scorpions, lions, spiders and snakes that testify to the difficult hunter' s life.  Unearthed after thousands of years of deliberate forgetfulness, these silent pillars stand in a circle located only a few miles south of the ancient town of Sanliurfa, Turkey, the legendary birthplace of the prophet Abraham.
Gobekli Tepe may have been accidentally rediscovered by a shepherd, but it' s provenance is no mistake. Carbon dating has estimated the site to have been built in approximately 12,000 B.C., turning prior theories about our Neolithic hunter/gatherer past upside down. Archeology Magazine reports that before the discovery of Gobekli Tepe, experts believed that societies in the early Neolithic were organized into small bands of hunter-gatherers and that the first complex religious practices were developed by groups that had already mastered agriculture. Scholars thought that the earliest monumental architecture was possible only after agriculture provided Neolithic people with food surpluses, freeing them from a constant focus on day-to-day survival. A site of unbelievable artistry and intricate detail, Gobekli Tepe has turned this theory on its head.* In other words, Gobekli Tepe was built before the invention of pottery, Sumerian writing tablets, the wheel, Stonehenge and the Pyramids at Giza. Building such a site is an engineering challenge perhaps greater than the Egyptian pyramids. At least 500 people would be needed to shift these immense pillars from the limestone quarries to the temple site, all without the luxury of rollers. It' s an administrative task requiring operational and organizational skills not something readily believable of people still running around with clubs and communicating by grunts. And why here? Scanning the immediate valley area 1,000 feet below reveals an arid climate. Summer temperatures can easily soar to over 115 degrees Fahrenheit while winters enjoy rainy deluges. However, when speaking with Smithsonian magazine, Klaus Schmidt, an archeologist at the German Archeological Institute in Istanbul, observed: Imagine what the landscape would have looked like 11,000 years ago, before centuries of intensive farming and settlement turned it into the nearly featureless brown expanse it is today. Prehistoric people would have gazed upon herds of gazelle and other wild animals; gently flowing rivers, which attracted migrating geese and ducks; fruit and nut trees; and rippling fields of wild barley and wild wheat varieties such as emmer and einkorn. This area was like a paradise." ** A paradise indeed. Gobekli Tepe is located at the far end of what was once known as the Fertile Crescent, the cradle of ancient agriculture. The world's first farmyard pigs were domesticated at Cayonu, just 60 miles away. Sheep, cattle and goats were also first domesticated in eastern Turkey. Worldwide wheat species descend from einkorn wheat - first cultivated on the hills near Gobekli. Other domestic cereals - such as rye and oats - also started here.*** And according to Schmidt, it was a paradise that was lost. Farming changes the landscape. Trees are cut down, constant plowing leaches away valuable minerals and rivers are dammed, drying up the filtering swamps. Eventually, the soil became overstressed and crop returns were diminished. The once lush climate became the dry, hilly plain now seen today. And what of the temple silently standing watch over the plains? Around 8,000 B.C., for some unknown reason, worshippers buried Gobekli Tepe under tons of earth, deliberately wiping out its existence until a Kurdish shepherd spotted a monolith' s edge peeking out of the ground.
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