News from the ancient world
Carved stone pillars raised around 9500 BC by people who had no pottery, metal or writing.
Göbekli Tepe is a hilltop site of monumental stone enclosures, first built around 9500 BC. Its builders had no pottery, metal or writing. They lived mainly by hunting and gathering. The enclosures are rings of stone walls set with T-shaped limestone pillars, the tallest about 5.5 m high. Many pillars are carved with foxes, boars, snakes, vultures and scorpions.
The site matters because of its age. It shows people organising large building projects as farming was only beginning in the region. Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute led excavations from 1995. He read the site as a sanctuary visited by hunter-gatherers. Later work found cisterns, grinding stones and household debris, so many researchers now think people also lived here. What the enclosures were for is still debated. UNESCO added Göbekli Tepe to the World Heritage List in 2018.
The exhibition and film explain how the enclosures were found and how they are labelled. Note the enclosure letters A to D and the pillar numbers: on the hill, everything is described this way.
Tip Start here. The enclosures are much easier to read once you know the layout.
A raised walkway circles the main excavation, with Enclosures A, B, C and D below you. The hill itself is a tell (a mound built up by human activity), about 15 m high and 300 m across. Most of what you stand on is debris from the Neolithic, not natural rock.
Tip Walk the whole circuit once before stopping. Each side shows different pillar faces.
This is the best preserved enclosure. Its two central pillars, 18 and 31, are about 5.5 m tall and carry carved arms and hands. Pillar 18 also has a belt and a fox-pelt loincloth, which is why many researchers read the pillars as stylised human figures. In the surrounding wall, Pillar 43, the 'Vulture Stone', shows a vulture, a scorpion and other animals.
Tip Binoculars or a zoom lens help: the carvings are small from the walkway.
Enclosure C has concentric rings of stone walls, the clearest of the four. Wild boars appear on several of its pillars. Follow the rings from the outside in to see how the walls nest inside each other.
Enclosure A is known for its many carved snakes. Its Pillar 2 shows a bull, a fox and a crane stacked one above the other. In Enclosure B, each of the two central pillars carries a carved fox.
On the limestone plateau beside the mound lies an unfinished pillar about 7 m long, still attached to the bedrock. It shows that the builders cut their pillars from rock right next to the site. Look also for the cisterns and channels cut into the surrounding bedrock.
Tip This stop is outside the roofed area, so put on a hat before you leave the shade.
Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum, Şanlıurfa. The museum has a full-size replica of Enclosure D and original carved pillars and animal sculptures from Göbekli Tepe. Look also for the Urfa Man, a life-size limestone statue from around 9000 BC found in Şanlıurfa itself.
Facts checked against standard references. Opening times and tickets change: check them locally before you go.
Prehistoryc. 9000 BC · Karahan Tepe, Şanlıurfa province, Turkey
Turkey's culture minister says the 70 cm figure sat on a bench inside a stone-paved circular building at Karahan Tepe, near Göbekli Tepe.
Prehistoryc. 9000 BC · Kızılöz, Samsat, Adıyaman province, Turkey
Researchers think the stone structures near Adıyaman are about 11,000 years old, which would extend the Taş Tepeler building tradition north-west into the Euphrates basin.
