Gobekli Tepe in Turkey is the oldest architectural complex on the planet. Surprisingly, it began to be carefully researched barely 20 years ago.

It can hardly be categorized in any way, for a simple reason: no one has any idea who built it, how – and especially – why. In this article we present some fascinating things about Gobekli Tepe.

As much as we would have liked to come up with answers in this article, the Gobekli Tepe topic actually forced us to ask more questions about the history we learned at school.

In S-E Turkey, a few tens of km from the Syrian border and near a town called Sanliurfa, a hill has attracted archaeologists since the ’70s, mostly by a large amount of limestone found there.

In 1994, when a German archaeologist, Klaus Schmidt was amazed at a large number of pieces of crema found and he realized that in ancient times there were many people working on building something big.

He decided to start digging and the first stone poles with bas-reliefs that showcased different animals: foxes, scorpions, savages, and birds.

From here, a stunning story has begun, and we now know from geomagnetic research that there are 20 circles made up of stone poles that reach more than 5 meters high and 15 tonnes in weight.

The striking aspect is that it all dates from 10,000 to 11,500 years ago, thousands of years before Stonehenge, the Egyptian Pyramids, and the invention of writing.

Schmidt, who discovered the site and supervised the work for nearly 20 years, died in the summer of 2014, but his theories questioned how we see the beginnings of complex civilizations that could have been spurred by religion, and not the economy.

The Official Version of Archeology.

According to the archaeologists, the population of Gobekli Tepe was organized into groups of hundreds of hunters that mainly caught Antilopinae. These people built a monument believed to be 6,500 years older than Stonehenge and about 7,000 years older than the Egyptian pyramids.

Created by unknown builders, Gobekli Tepe is proof of the existence of a sophisticated society on Earth, 12,000 years ago. But how many thousands of years have these people been on the planet when they created Gobekli Tepe? There is still no answer to this question.

Gobekli Tepe is at a distance of nearly 10 kilometers from Urfa, an ancient city in Turkey. It is one of the most important archaeological sites on the planet, in the vicinity of the mythological “Gardens of Eden” and near the parallel of 33 degrees.

Until today, the experts have not discovered who has built this wonderful massive complex, which seems from another world. Gobekli Tepe is considered the first temple on earth. A large part of the complex is still underground.

Gobekli Tepe, a 12,000-year-old riddle

Who built it has made colossal efforts to ensure that the monument will survive for thousands of years. The builders used a simple as an idea method, so exhausting to put into practice. They stamped everything with the ground …

Gobekli Tepe was first researched – and then totally ignored – by anthropologists at the University of Chicago and the University of Istanbul in the 1960s. Researchers thought the mound was just an abandoned medieval cemetery.

Archaeologists have spoken, including the theory that Gobekli Tepe was a place of burial. However, there was no tomb found in the area.

Gobekli Tepe is sometimes called “Stonehenge of the Desert”. The complex consists of a series of oval and circular stone structures built on the top of a hill.

Archaeologists believe that the whole complex was built 12,000 years ago. However, they have no explanation for the existence of an advanced culture in Upper Mesopotamia at the end of the last ice age.

It is supposed that, at that time, the planet was inhabited by hunter-gatherer communities trying to survive in very severe climatic conditions.

Since the rediscovery of the Gobekli Tepe complex (after nearly 50 years of abandonment), the first site excavations were made by Professor Klaus Schmidt of the German Institute of Archeology in 1995.

Until now, excavation and geomagnetic analysis results have shown that there are at least 20 temples – circular structures – in the area.

All stone pillars at Gobekli Tepe are built in the shape of the letter “T”. Monoliths have heights between 3 and 6 meters and weigh 60 tons each.

Even with today’s technology, it would be very difficult to move and assemble these monoliths.

Researchers have calculated that about 500 people would have needed to handle these enormous posts.

But in a world of chaos where every “semi-savage” individual struggled to survive, how – and by whom – were these people organized?

It remains a total mystery as to how the ancient people could carry out such a monumental project with all that this effort implied: carving the stone, finishing the strands, transporting and assembling them, and later closing the complex with the earth.

It seems absurd and frustrating, but we do not know anything else about complexity. We only know: someone from the night of history built it, and then buried it.

Archaeologists claim that, in order to complete the Gobekli Tepe project, there were stoned craftsmen, people with knowledge of the transport of heavyweights, planners, and priests, who carried out and supervised rituals.

What kind of rituals? Here’s another unanswered question. This whole system of organization exists 12,000 years ago – proves the Gobekli Tepe complex.

The builders of this magnificent place must have been part of an advanced society with complex hierarchical relationships, but about which we do not know anything today. The theory has been advanced that the “T” -like pillars are stylized human beings, especially since they each depict human extremities (hands, feet).

Besides, there were several strange signs carved on the pillars. These are foxes, snakes, boars, cranes and wild ducks. They appear to be real or mythological animals and stars and planets.

What’s stranger is that some of the artifacts found in the area are very much like ancient objects in South America (Peru, Bolivia), Asia (Indonesia), and Easter Island.

Gobekli Tepe was built very … strange. The first pillars were seated on a straight square platform. A mound of earth was built over them, over which other structures were laid, for two thousand years.

The final layer, which covered everything like a capsule, supports the last stone structures.

These were made more rudimentary than those buried in the earth. As if the first people were more technologically advanced than those who built the last stage of the Gobekli Tepe project.

The irregular, puzzle-shaped walls of blocks weighing more than 20 tons each have a unique style that was thought to be specific to lost civilizations in South America.

The irregular, puzzle-shaped walls of blocks weighing more than 20 tons each have a unique style that was thought to be specific to lost civilizations in South America.

This until similar structures began to be observed in Italy, Easter Island, Egypt, but also in Greece, Albania, Saudi Arabia and Japan.

Even if they were built thousands of years and thousands of miles away, the special architectural pattern that all these walls follow is the same, unmistakable.

It is also the most difficult in the world. And that’s because each stone place has to be carved with great precision so that all the pieces fit perfectly, in an absolutely unique layout.

Laboratory tests have shown that such walls resist even the most powerful earthquakes. Moreover, it has been found that if they are subject to seismic shocks, the walls “gather,” all the pieces behave as a unitary, organic ensemble.

The need to believe in the gods was before anything else

Schmidt’s theory overthrow the rooted theory that first people became sedentary, specialized in agriculture, organized in complex settlements and only then built sanctuaries.

Gobekli Tepe would be a proof that the need to believe in gods and divine them was before agriculture and people with rudimentary means built fantastic efforts on the complex.

An agricultural revolution has changed everything. 10,000 years ago there was a transition from “wild” to “domesticated” cereals, grown in an organized and cared way. In wild cereals, the production was small because the beans shriveled from the spice immediately after baking and the harvest were impossible.

Organically harvested cereals are possible and farmers could take advantage of their work.

After the end of the last ice age, over 11,000 years ago, it is believed that people “domesticated” the animals and plants and settled in villages that had more than 500 inhabitants. After these developments, religion emerged from the need for social cohesion.

Gobekli Tepe proposes a completely different theory: immediately after the climatic conditions improved, people felt the need to create the first forms of spirituality and built sanctuaries.

According to the theory, from the need to nourish the people who came to the sanctuary began to domesticate the animals and create an organized agriculture.

The theory of the first temple built by hunters-martyrs was challenged, the most vocal being a Canadian anthropologist on the E.B. Banning, who says that 11 years ago, Gobekli Tepe was a covered home site where people held magic and religious rituals.

Banning says that the people of those times did not need a special temple because they could combine the sacred and the profane in the place where they took their daily lives. He also says that it is very possible for the inhabitants of Gobekli Tepe to have practiced agriculture at an early stage, so they had a safe source of food.

It is impossible to reconcile the two theories and so few traces of ten millennia ago that certainties cannot be found.

But it is certain that the monumental rings are 6,000 years older than Stonehenge and 7,000 than the pyramids. And although the “father” of the site, Klaus Schmidt, died this summer, digging is continued by Lee Clare, who says the site is more fascinating because it puts more questions than answers. “Some had 30, 40 or 50 tons, probably carrying them on the logs.

Clare says that those who made these constructions were specialists of their time and had to be fed, so domestic animals and the cultivation of cereals must have been a consequence of what is happening in the sanctuary.