Believed to be more than 11,000 years old, Gobekli Tepe in southern Turkey is currently believed to be the world’s oldest temple. It is also a monument to the extraordinary artistic and engineering skills of its builders.
The Gobekli Tepe site is located near the Turkish city of Urfa. Only a tiny portion of the site has been excavated. So far excavators have found at least 20 stone rings, with one circle built inside another. These rings range from 30 to 100 feet (10 to 30) meters in diameter and are built with carefully carved limestone blocks.
The carving of the T-shaped blocks outlining the circles is strikingly precise, as are the sculptures of people and animals carved on the edges of both the blocks and the two 18-foot (5.5 m) tall pillars located in the center of the rings. So far, at least, no signs of living quarters have been found at Gobekli Tepe, and there are no hearths within the rings. It seems odd that even though there are signs that this structure was a major pilgrimage center, no one seems to have lived near it. Adding to the mystery, buildings dated at 14,000 to 15,000 years old were found at the base of the hill on which Gobekli Tepe is located.
Analysis of obsidian tools found at the site shows that the obsidian came from areas as far as 300 miles (500 km) away from the site. Experts are divided as to whether people actually came from that far away to visit the temple complex, or whether the obsidian was traded from far-away locations.
Gobekli Tepi is well designed and superbly executed. Its design and construction are remarkably advanced considering that it was supposedly constructed by hunter-gatherers. I do not believe that this technology emerged full-blown at Gobekli Tepi. I hope that archaeologists are searching for even earlier temple complexes that might reveal how the technology developed that eventually resulted in Gobekli Tepi. This beautiful and complex temple area is currently believed to be the oldest of its kind, but it seems fairly obvious that there may well be earlier examples still to be found.
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