Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple? By Andrew Curry
Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in
southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling
archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000
years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed
metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000
years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist
who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it’s the site of the
world’s oldest temple.
“Guten Morgen,” he says at 5:20 a.m. when his van picks me up at my hotel in
Urfa. Thirty minutes later, the van reaches the foot of a grassy hill and parks
next to strands of barbed wire. We follow a knot of workmen up the hill to
rectangular pits shaded by a corrugated steel roof—the main excavation site. In
the pits, standing stones, or pillars, are arranged in circles. Beyond, on the
hillside, are four other rings of partially excavated pillars. Each ring has a
roughly similar layout: in the center are two large stone T-shaped pillars
encircled by slightly smaller stones facing inward. The tallest pillars tower
16 feet and, Schmidt says, weigh between seven and ten tons. As we walk among
them, I see that some are blank, while others are elaborately carved: foxes,
lions, scorpions and vultures abound, twisting and crawling on the pillars’
broad sides... read more:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gobekli-tepe-the-worlds-first-temple-83613665/
