First Temple

Göbekli Tepe - the World's First Temple

 Gobekli Tepe (Turkish for "Hill with a potbelly") is a hilltop sanctuary erected on the highest point of an elongated mountain ridge some 15 km northeast of the town of Sanliurfa(formerly Urfa / Edessa) in southeastern Turkey. The site, currently undergoing excavation by German and Turkish archaeologists, was erected by hunter-gatherers in the 10th millennium BC (ca. 11,500 years ago), before the advent of sedentism. Mysteriously, the entire complex of stones, pillars and carvings was then deliberately buried in 8000 BC.  

Extract from Crystalinks.

When archaeologist Klaus Schmidt from the German Archaeological Institute in Istanbul was called out to investigate some strange stones found by a wandering shepherd in Eastern Turkey in 1994, he quickly realised that he was dealing with something of immense importance. He also realised that if he did not turn and walk away at that very moment, he would spend the rest of his life amongst the incredible stones of Göbekli Tepe.

Dr. Schmidt is still excavating Göbekli Tepe, and he has decided to take things very slowly for fear of damaging the site in rushing to find the ancient truth of this special place, as many archaeologists have done at other important sites. Quite what Göbekli Tepe means is still a matter of hot debate in archaeological circles but that it is one of the most important sites in the world is universally agreed. Its discovery forces us to question many of our assumptions about how humans developed and suggests a very real possibility that humans developed religion before agriculture and the end of nomadic ways of life.

Until recently our theories of human evolution suggested that when humans discovered agriculture they were able to settle, and live in larger communities than previously. To keep these communities functioning harmoniously and to instill a sense of common purpose or of belonging to a collective, humans started to conceive of something greater than themselves, and religion, as we know it, was born. Or so we thought. The sheer age of Göbekli Tepe (at over 11,000 years old) suggests that this was not the case, and that religion may have been born before agriculture and settled life. That the site of Göbekli Tepe appears to have no places of residence or certainly not enough for the large community it clearly served, backs up this suggestion. But while we certainly have not answered all of the questions we have about our evolution, and in many ways Göbekli Tepe may have posed as many new questions as it answered, the fact that only a small proportion of the site has been excavated to date means that we may yet answer many of our species' greatest questions.

- David McGuinness (co-Founder, Travel The Unknown)

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