Monumental pillar sanctuary
Templo monumental de pilares esculpidos
- Date
- c. 9500 BCE · confidence high
- Place
- Göbekli Tepe, Şanlıurfa, Turkey
- Credited to
- Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) communities of the upper Euphrates
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Circular enclosures with T-shaped pillars up to 5.5 m tall and weighing several tonnes, decorated with animal reliefs, raised by hunter-gatherers before full agriculture. It shows that monumental architecture and organised religion could precede, and perhaps drive, domestication.
Whether it should be interpreted as a temple (Schmidt) or as a settlement with ritual spaces is debated; whether cereal cultivation was associated with the site is also disputed.
What it led to
- Mobilisation of labour from hundreds of people and collective feasting that created demand for grain
- The emergence of ritual specialists and an authority able to coordinate the work
- A precedent for the monumental religious architecture of Mesopotamia and Anatolia
Built on
- Flaked and polished stone tools
- Natufian ceremonial enclosures
Made possible
- Platform temple (proto-ziggurat)c. 5300 BCE
- Megalithic architecture (passage grave and menhir)c. 4800 BCE
- Urban platform temple
- Large-block masonry