Göbekli Tepe - Turkey
Göbekli Tepe is located in southeastern Turkey erected at the top of a mountain ridge in southeastern Anatolia, some 15 kilometers (9 mi) northeast of the town of Şanlıurfa (formerly Urfa / Edessa). It is the oldest known human-made religious structure, if carbon dating can be used as a reliable meassure.
Ony approximatley 5% of the entire site has been uncovered in 13 years as German archaeologists carefully expose the age old complex.
It remains a mystery as to the real nature and origins of the site, why it was built and why it appears to have been delibirately covered up with sand and gravel years later.
It is assumed that the site was erected by hunter-gatherers in the 10th millennium BCE
(c. 12,000 years ago) and has been under excavation since 1994 by German and Turkish archaeologists. Together with Nevalı Çori, it has revolutionized understanding of the Eurasian Neolithic.
It was first noted in a survey conducted by Istanbul University and the University of Chicago in 1964, which recognized that the hill could not entirely be a natural feature, but assumed that a Byzantine cemetery lay beneath. The survey noted a large number of flints and the presence of limestone slabs, which were thought to be Byzantine grave markers. In 1994, the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute of Istanbul visited the site, and recognized that it was, in fact, a much more ancient Neolithic site.
Since 1995 excavations have been conducted by the German Archaeological Institute (Istanbul branch) and Şanlıurfa Museum, under the direction of Klaus Schmidt (1995–2000: University of Heidelberg; since 2001: German Archaeological Institute). Prior to excavation, the hill had been under agricultural cultivation; generations of local inhabitants had frequently moved rocks and placed them in clearance piles; much archaeological evidence may have been destroyed in the process.
Scholars from the Hochschule Karlsruhe began documenting the architectural remains. They soon discovered T-shaped pillars, some of which had apparently undergone attempts at smashing, probably by farmers who mistook them for ordinary large rocks.