Gbekli Tepe Yields Groundbreaking Insights

“The transition from non-food producing to farming societies first took place during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) of the Near East. It happened immediately after the end of the Pleistocene, between the 10th to the 8th millennium BC. One of the main questions that have exercised the minds of generations of archaeologists is why people first gave up a hunting and gathering way of life and start to domesticate plants and animals. In other words, why did the Neolithic Revolution take place? The new discoveries at Göbekli Tepe have turned up evidence for explanations that differ from the generally accepted wisdom on this issue.”

The excavation of Göbekli Tepe gave Schmidt insight into “one of the most fascinating Neolithic sites in the world;” a hub of sorts in the ancient world where different populations met to “engage in complex rites.”

“Even today, the place has lost nothing of its magic appeal,” he writes. The site is listed as tri-layered (Figure 2), with different eras represented in different eras. But the layers cast a mystical aura on Göbekli Tepe. The lowest level sanctuaries may have been “intentionally and rapidly buried,” whether for a ritual or another reason. The mystery extends to the material used to fill the lowest level; it is of an unknown origin. 

“The material is not sterile soil. It consists mainly of chips and pieces of limestone – usually smaller than fist-size–and many artefacts, mainly of flint, but also fragments of stone vessels, grind stones and other ground stone tools. Beside the stone artefacts, there are many animal bones, mostly broken into small pieces as is usual for waste. The bones are primarily of gazelle,

The architecture of the place, bare of any housing, contains reliefs, a totem pole, portholes, t-shaped pillars, and statues. 

“The reliefs adorning many of the monumental pillars depict a wide range of wild animals such as predatory cats, bulls, wild boar, foxes, ducks, cranes, gazelles, wild asses, snakes, spiders and scorpions (Fig. 10) … . In the back fill material of enclosure D, a decorated pillar fragment was discovered. The object was probably part of the missing twelfth pillar of the enclosure, as there is a gap between pillars 43 and 30 in the northern section of the enclosure (comp. Fig. 2). The depiction shows a vulture and a species as yet unknown among the images at Göbekli Tepe – the long, coarse ridge of mane along the length of the back of the animal indicates that it is a hyena (Fig. 11).

The totem pole is likely related to the well-known skull cult. 

The “unique double porthole is not the only astonishing feature. On the southern rim is a flat relief of a very large snake. On the western rim there are high reliefs of three animals. In a direction from south to north, a bull, a billy-goat and a predator showing its teeth are positioned.

Schmidt ends by noting other settlements dating back to 12,000-10,000 BP are under excavation and “are producing unexpected monumentality and extraordinarily rich symbolism that challenges our ability to interpret.”