One of the earliest examples of religious architecture—of a structure which appears to have been constructed for religious or ceremonial use—is Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. This is a site which dates to the time just before the development of agriculture and pottery. This is a time when people were engaging in hunting wild animals and gathering wild plants as a way of feeding themselves.
Compared with other sites at this time period and in this region Göbekli Tepe is unusual: it is located on the top of a huge hill which overlooks the surrounding plains. The unique characteristics of the site are its architecture and its art. The art found at Göbekli Tepe includes small stone figurines and statues of both men and animals. It also includes large decorated megaliths.
None of the plant and animal remains analyzed by archaeologists are domesticates. The animal remains include only wild species: gazelle, wild cattle, wild ass, red deer, wild pig, fox, wolf, leopard, and several species of birds.
The megaliths—huge stone monuments—which characterize the architecture of Göbekli Tepe stand several meters high and weigh up to ten tons. The largest of these which has been found so far is about 5 meters (a little more than 16 feet) high. At a nearby quarry (the source of the megaliths) there is an unfinished megalith which is nearly 7 meters (23 feet) in length and which weighs an estimated 50 tons.
Some archaeologists have suggested that the carvings on the megaliths represent stylized humans: with vertical elements showing a pair of arms and hands in low relief and the horizontal and vertical parts representing the head and body. This suggests that these stone pillars were “beings” of some sort.
Many of the megaliths have carvings which clearly show lions, foxes, gazelles, wild boars, wild asses, aurochs (a type of wild cattle), snakes, birds, insects, and spiders. There are also abstract symbols such as circles, spirals, and H-shaped symbols. On top of the wall, there are sculptures of large animals which seem to be guarding the interior.
The pillars were placed to delineate round or oval structures. A single circle might have as many as 12 pillars which were interconnected by stone benches. The central part of each structure is dominated by two pillars which are both larger than those surrounding the structure and of a superior quality.
Using a geomagnetic survey, archaeologists have determined that the site has at least 20 enclosures with more than 200 pillars. Four of these enclosures have been partially excavated by archaeologists.
One of the puzzling things about the site is that the people dumped settlement refuse in the enclosures and sealed them. People seem to have gone to the quarry site, formed and carved the pillars, dragged them to Göbekli Tepe and erected them to form the circular and oval enclosures. Then, sometime after having completed the enclosure, they backfilled it with trash.
It is clear that the construction of Göbekli Tepe required a great deal of labor expended over many decades. Several hundred people must have gathered for a period of several months to construct one of the enclosures. Where did the people live? Where did they come from? How were they fed while constructing the enclosures? Why did they build these structures?
So far, archaeologists have found no evidence that people actually lived at Göbekli Tepe. It appears to have been a purely ceremonial site, perhaps a place of refuge or pilgrimage. One of the archaeologists who worked at the site, Klaus Schmidt, has suggested that Göbekli Tepe is a burial site. He writes:
“Funeral customs could account for the enormous amount of work undertaken for just one enclosure. We haven’t found the burials, but we expect they will be located beneath the benches or behind the walls.”
People may have come to Göbekli Tepe from other villages, such as Nevali Çori, to build the enclosures. Nevali Çori is a residential village that also contained T-shaped megalithic pillars and limestone sculptures of humans and animals. The symbolic language at the two sites is similar.
When I was a graduate student in archaeology, the basic hypothesis was that large megalithic sites were made possible because of food surpluses generated by agriculture. Göbekli Tepe does not support this hypothesis. Klaus Schmidt writes:
“My conjecture is that construction at Göbekli Tepe was accompanied by efforts to develop innovations to provide subsistence for the workmen occupied in the quarries and in building.”
Radiocarbon dating shows that building at this site was underway by 9130 BCE. While agriculture had already started in the Levantine corridor by this time, agriculture would not be widely practiced in Turkey until about 8500 BCE. Comparing Göbekli Tepe with other large megalithic sites around the world: Newgrange in Ireland dates to 3370 BCE; Egypt’s first pyramid dates to about 2667 BCE; and Stonehenge in England dates to about 2200 BCE.
In other words, changes in the social systems and belief systems may actually come before changes in economic systems and may, in fact, be one of the driving forces behind such changes.