Civilizations desk
Göbekli Tepe site: who built it, and what the carvings record
Its builders left no writing, only carved pillars. An engineer reads a comet strike in them, an author a lost civilization, and the excavators a settlement.
The Göbekli Tepe site is an early Neolithic hilltop near Şanlıurfa, Türkiye, built around carved T-shaped limestone pillars. Who raised it, and why, is still argued. Excavators credit hunter-gatherers who also lived there. Others read a comet strike on Pillar 43, or the work of survivors from a lost Ice Age civilization.
Key takeaways
- Taş Tepeler dates the site to about 9,600 to 7,750 cal. BCE and now says people lived there throughout its existence.
- Martin Sweatman and Dimitrios Tsikritsis read Pillar 43 as a date stamp for a comet strike around 10,950 BC.
- Graham Hancock has argued the site may be the work of survivors of a civilization lost at the start of the Younger Dryas.
- The excavators answer that the buildings were probably roofed, rebuilt over time, and part of a settlement.
- The pillar volume reads the T-shaped pillars as stylized human bodies, and revises earlier animal identifications.
Nobody knows for certain who raised the Göbekli Tepe site, or why. The builders left carved stone pillars on a hilltop in southeastern Türkiye and no writing to explain them. That silence has drawn three very different answers, and each comes with a published case: a record of a comet strike, the work of survivors from a lost civilization, and a village of hunter-gatherers who built big. This explainer from our ancient civilizations desk lays them out side by side, in their proponents' own words.
Who built the Göbekli Tepe site, and why?
The Taş Tepeler research program dates the site to about 9,600 to 7,750 cal. BCE, in the early Neolithic [1]. The tell covers nine hectares on a peak of the Germuş range, some 15 kilometers northeast of Şanlıurfa [1].
The people who carved its pillars are usually described as hunter-gatherers. The editors of the excavators' own 2025 volume on the pillars [4] still find that label strained: "The architectural ensembles are characterised by a cultural complexity not previously expected for early hunter-gatherers" [3]. The complexity and mystery of the site puts the “hunter-gatherer” origin story into question. Klaus Schmidt, who led the dig from 1995, gave the site its most famous reading in his 2006 book Sie bauten die ersten Tempel, roughly "They built the first temples" [3].
Why its builders quarried and carved T-shaped monoliths weighing several tons [2] is the open question. Here are the answers on the table.
Was Pillar 43 a record of a comet strike?
In 2017, Martin Sweatman of the University of Edinburgh's School of Engineering and Dimitrios Tsikritsis argued that the carvings on one pillar record a catastrophe. Their target was Pillar 43 in Enclosure D, the "Vulture Stone" [9]. Its western face is covered with creatures dominated by a great vulture whose outstretched wing is possibly pointing toward a disc [5].
Their method, as the university described it: "By interpreting the animals as astronomical symbols, and using software to match their positions to patterns of stars, researchers dated the event to 10,950BC" [6]. The release adds that this date agrees with a Greenland ice core that places the event at 10,890BC, and that a carving of a headless man "may indicate human disaster and extensive loss of life" [6].
It appears Göbekli Tepe was, among other things, an observatory for monitoring the night sky. One of its pillars seems to have served as a memorial to this devastating event – probably the worst day in history since the end of the ice age.
Sweatman has kept building the case. In a 2020 paper he calls Pillar 43 "like a prehistoric 'Rosetta Stone'" and suggests the impact "motivated the construction of Gobekli Tepe, and therefore perhaps the origin of civilisation in western Eurasia" [7]. His evidence is statistical: he puts the chance that the animal-to-constellation matches arose by accident "in the region of 1 in 140 million for Pillar 43," while noting that this value "is subject to a degree of uncertainty" [7]. He also writes, plainly, "Many of the above statements are controversial" [7].
Could survivors of a lost civilization have built it?
The author Graham Hancock goes further back. In his 1995 book Fingerprints of the Gods, he proposed that "an advanced civilization had been wiped out and lost to history in a global cataclysm at the end of the last Ice Age," with survivors who settled elsewhere [8]. In a 2014 article, after visiting the dig in September 2013, he applied that idea to Göbekli Tepe.
I believe it is possible that Gobekli Tepe may prove to be the work of the survivors of a great civilization lost during the Younger Dryas
The evidence he cites: the site's great age, "with the oldest work being the best"; at least twenty further circles, he writes, identified by ground-penetrating radar and still buried, some of which Schmidt told him are likely to be much older; and the fact that archaeologists trace the origins of agriculture to the same region and period [8]. For Hancock, a site of this scale this early means the standard timeline "can no longer stand" [8].
What do the excavators answer?
The team that digs Göbekli Tepe disputes both readings, and says so in print.
On the comet, archaeologist Jens Notroff of the excavation team argued that the decoding picked the symbols that fit. He pointed to the headless man on Pillar 43, read as a symbol of death in the paper, "however silently omitting the emphasised phallus in the same depiction which somehow contradicts the lifeless notion" [9]. Sweatman's answer, in his 2020 paper, is that the archaeologists "questioned our decoding of the site, but did not challenge the statistical case that supports it" [7].
The excavators' newest building research also bears on the sky-watching idea. The pillar volume says earlier publications used the German term Anlage (enclosure) to avoid suggesting a roof, but that building research results "now strongly favour the existence of roof covers," with strong indications that the pillars served as roof supports [2]. The monumental buildings were used over a long period, changed size several times, and reused their pillars [3].
On lost-civilization readings in general, the volume's editors say the long wait for published results left room for "pseudo-scientific and conspiracy mythological interpretations, whose narratives remained fictitious from an archaeological point of view" [3]. Their own answer to who built it: hunter-gatherer communities, more complex than anyone expected [3].
That is one position in the debate, held by the people with the most excavation data. It has changed before, and it is changing now.
Was Göbekli Tepe a temple, or did people live there?
For years the excavators' own answer was "temple." Taş Tepeler says early research on the monumental buildings "resulted in interpretations of Göbeklitepe as a purely ritual site" [1]. A 2012 World Archaeology feature reported "absolutely no sign of any domestic activity" at the oldest level [5]. Schmidt wrote in 2001 that the site had no parallel, a claim the editors now call no longer valid, citing 12 further similar sites across a 200 km region of Şanlıurfa province [3].
No comparable site is known so far in the Near East in terms of the topographical setting, its megalithic architecture, large scale stone sculptures and several other unusual items
Then the ground shifted. Between 2011 and 2016, pits dug to anchor the protective shelters exposed small buildings in the lowest layers whose finds, including grinding stones, "suggest domestic activities" [3]. Taş Tepeler now says buildings without T-pillars are the most numerous at the site and are interpreted as houses, and that people were living there "throughout its 1.750-year existence" [1]. The pillar volume hedges: "Much hints at seasonality of site occupation," and the big buildings probably never stood in isolation [2].
What do the Göbekli Tepe symbols and animal carvings show?
In the monumental buildings, T-shaped pillars stand in a ring around a taller central pair up to 5.5 m high [2]. The excavators read the T-shape as a stylized human body, supported by low reliefs of arms, hands, belts and hanging loincloths [2].
On Göbekli Tepe animals, the 2012 World Archaeology feature gives a snapshot: wild boar dominate Enclosure C, and Pillar 27 carries a high-relief predator that "cannot be identified" [5]. Enclosure D adds a probable felid and birds such as cranes, storks and ibises [5]. The new pillar volume revises identifications: felines once read as lions are now read as leopards [2].
Excavation history of the Göbekli Tepe site
1963
A University of Chicago and Istanbul University survey first recognized it as an archaeological site.
1995
Klaus Schmidt's excavations began with the Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum.
2014
The excavation directorship passed to the Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum; Lee Clare became DAI field and research director that autumn.
2017
The University of Edinburgh announced the Pillar 43 comet reading.
2018
After two permanent shelters were completed in 2017, the site was inscribed as a World Heritage Site.
2019
The directorship passed to Necmi Karul of Istanbul University.
What would a Göbekli Tepe reconstruction have to explain?
Any Göbekli Tepe reconstruction starts with the stone: outcrops of the surrounding limestone plateau served as the quarries [2]. The buildings' inner diameters run from 10 to 20 m [2].
A reconstruction would also need roofs, if the excavators are right [2], and buildings rebuilt and resized over centuries [3]. If Sweatman is right, it would need sightlines to the sky. Those two pictures pull in different directions.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Göbekli Tepe the world's oldest temple?
That was Klaus Schmidt's reading. His successors no longer present it as unique: the volume editors count 12 further similar sites in the region, and Taş Tepeler now says people lived there too [1][3].
What is the Vulture Stone?
Pillar 43 in Enclosure D. Its western face is covered with carved creatures dominated by a great vulture [5]. Sweatman and Tsikritsis read it as a date stamp for a comet strike around 10,950 BC [6].
Does Graham Hancock say aliens built Göbekli Tepe?
No. His 2014 article proposes that it may be the work of human survivors of a civilization lost during the Younger Dryas [8].
Sources
- Göbeklitepe — Taş Tepeler, Şanlıurfa Neolithic Research Project
- Göbekli Tepe: The Imagery of the Pillars in the Monumental Buildings A–D, F and H, sample chapter 1.1 The site, by Oliver Dietrich and Klaus Schmidt — Reichert Verlag (2025)
- Preface by the volume editors, Ricardo Eichmann and Joris Peters — Reichert Verlag (2025)
- Göbekli Tepe: The Imagery of the Pillars in the Monumental Buildings A–D, F and H — Reichert Verlag
- Turkey: Göbekli Tepe — World Archaeology (28 May 2012)
- Ancient stone carvings confirm date of devastating comet strike — University of Edinburgh news release (21 April 2017)
- Zodiacal Dating Prehistoric Artworks — Martin B. Sweatman, Athens Journal of History (July 2020)
- From Indonesia To Turkey New Archaeological Discoveries Uncover The Mysteries Of A Lost Civilisation — Graham Hancock, grahamhancock.com (16 January 2014)
- Scientists Think These Ancient Carvings Depict an Apocalyptic Comet Impact — Becky Ferreira, VICE (3 May 2017)