Steady your nerves and light up your torches, because this week we’re clambering into the deep, dark Neolithic underworld with archaeologist Jens Notroff.
Jens, of the German Archaeological Institute, has spent years excavating one of the world’s most fascinating and mysterious prehistoric sites – Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey. This is a series of circular stone enclosures, featuring giant T-shaped figures and carvings of fearsome predators – and possibly also once decorated with human skulls. It’s sometimes described as “the world’s first temple”, and according to conventional thinking, it shouldn’t exist.
That’s because Göbekli Tepe is around 12,000 years old. It was built on the cusp of the most important transition in human history, the Neolithic revolution, just as hunter gatherers were about to start cultivating the species around them, and it’s located in just the region where farming was about to emerge. Before historians realised the significance of Göbekli Tepe, they assumed the invention of agriculture was the flashpoint that led to the other changes of the Neolithic, such as more settled communities, and the ability to build impressive monuments like Stonehenge. But the giant stones of Göbekli Tepe, dating to just before all of that, tell us something else – a dramatic, shocking shift in mindset – was already underway.
With Jens as our guide, let’s travel back 12,000 years. What wild rituals played out at this deathly site? How did humans take that first leap in thinking, that has defined our species perhaps more than any other, of separating ourselves from – and elevating ourselves above – the rest of nature. And how does it feel to put ourselves into the mind of a young hunter, entering these terrifying caverns for the first time…
Jens’ home page
Göbekli Tepe research project blog
https://www.dainst.blog/the-tepe-telegrams/
Taş Tepeler research project
https://tastepeler.org/en
Recommended publications
https://www.dainst.blog/the-tepe-telegrams/publications/
Skull cult at Göbekli Tepe
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.1700564
Göbekli Tepe World Heritage Site
https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1572/
There’s a detailed discussion of Göbekli Tepe and its role in humanity’s split from nature in chapter 2 of my book: The Human Cosmos.
https://jomarchant.com/human-cosmos
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