Throughout history, humans have discovered many fascinating ancient ruins. From the Great Pyramids of Giza, Antija, and Stonehenge, to the Moai of Easter Island.
A relatively recently discovered site changed our understanding of what we thought was possible. Meet Göbeklitepe (gow·beh·klee·teh·puh), the oldest megalithic site ever discovered.
Göbeklitepe is 12000 years old and is located in Şanlıurfa, Turkey. The site consists of concentric rings housing monolithic (a single large block of stone) T-shaped pillars. Some reach as tall as 18 feet and weigh up to 10 tons. Some pillars are blank, while others have inscriptions of foxes, birds, scorpions, humans, and other images.
In total, 43 pillars have been excavated so far. The site consists of four enclosures labeled A–D. The enclosures range from 20 feet to 200 feet across. But this is just the beginning of the story because most of Göbeklitepe is still underground.
As of today, only 5% of Göbeklitepe has been excavated. Recent lidar studies reveal at least 15 to 20 additional structures and enclosures are still underground. Beneath the main site lie more than 200 additional stone pillars. But there is something mind-blowing about the stone pillars: they are astronomically aligned.
Over the years, Göbeklitepe was rebuilt to track the star named “Sirius”, but this isn’t even the strangest part. On pillar 43 in enclosure D, deemed “the vulture stone”, we see asterisms engraved on the pillar. On the pillar there is a drawing of a scorpion, and without a doubt this drawing points to the constellation “Scorpius”. When you line up the drawing of the scorpion with the night sky, all of the other drawings fall into place.
The vulture stone shows the only time this exact night sky could be seen at Göbeklitepe. It was a window of time from 10900 to 10800 BC, and this window was more than 1000 years before Göbeklitepe was built.
This isn’t a random date; this is precisely the date of a worldwide cataclysm termed the younger Dryas that completely changed the face of the earth.
Göbeklitepe is by far one of the most confusing and perspective-changing ancient sites ever discovered. When it was found, archeologists had to say they underestimated the abilities of hunter-gatherers by about 5000 years.
For this structure to be possible, the people responsible for building it had to have an understanding of mathematics, engineering, and astronomy, as well as the ability to community plan and divide labor. The discovery of this site completely changed our understanding of what we thought was possible. This is just one piece of our still-forgotten history.
