Göbekli Tepe: Is It Really the World's Oldest Temple?

Göbekli Tepe, often written Gobekli Tepe, is a prehistoric site in south-eastern Turkey where people began raising huge carved stone pillars in circular enclosures around 9600 BCE, more than 11,000 years ago. That is more than six thousand years before the first phase of Stonehenge, and before pottery, writing, metal tools or the wheel. Most remarkably, it was built by people who still lived largely by hunting and gathering wild foods.

It is often called "the world's oldest temple". That label captures why the site caused a sensation, but research over the past decade has made the picture more complicated, and more interesting. This article explains what Göbekli Tepe is, who built it, and what it does and does not tell us about the beginnings of farming and religion.

Where Göbekli Tepe is and how it was found

The site sits on a limestone ridge a short drive north-east of the city of Şanlıurfa, in the upper Mesopotamian region not far from the headwaters of the Euphrates and Tigris. Its Turkish name means roughly "potbelly hill", after the rounded mound built up by thousands of years of human activity.

A survey by Istanbul and Chicago universities noted the mound in the 1960s but took its broken slabs for a medieval cemetery. In the mid-1990s the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, of the German Archaeological Institute, recognised that the stones were prehistoric. Excavations began in 1995 with the Şanlıurfa Museum and have continued since, under new leadership after Schmidt's death in 2014. Göbekli Tepe was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018.

The pillars and their animals

The most famous features are large T-shaped limestone pillars set into the walls of round and oval enclosures, with two larger pillars standing in the centre of each. The tallest are around five metres high and weigh several tonnes. They were quarried from the bedrock nearby, shaped and raised without metal tools or draught animals.

Many pillars are carved with animals in relief: foxes, wild boar, snakes, cranes, vultures, scorpions, wild cattle and more. These are mostly dangerous or striking wild creatures, not the domesticated animals of later farming villages. Some of the central pillars clearly represent stylised human or human-like figures: they have carved arms that bend around the sides, hands meeting over the front, belts and what appear to be loincloths made of fox pelts. The T-shape itself seems to be a body, with the top as a head.

Geophysical surveys suggest that many more enclosures lie unexcavated beneath the mound, so what visitors see today is only part of the site.

Who built it, and did it come before farming?

The builders lived in the period archaeologists call the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. The animal bones found at the site come overwhelmingly from wild species, especially gazelle, wild cattle and wild boar, and there is no sign of domesticated animals in its earliest phases. Large numbers of grinding stones show that wild cereals were being processed on a big scale.

That matters because of where Göbekli Tepe is. Genetic studies have linked the domestication of einkorn wheat to the nearby Karacadağ hills, and the wider region is one of the places where farming first began. Schmidt's influential interpretation was that monumental gatherings came first: people drawn together to build and use ritual places needed to feed large groups, and that pressure helped push them towards cultivation. In this view, religion helped create agriculture rather than the other way round.

It is a powerful idea, and it has changed how archaeologists think about the Neolithic. It is not settled. The site shows that hunter-gatherers could organise ambitious collective projects, and that complex symbolism existed before farming. Whether those gatherings drove the shift to agriculture, or developed alongside it, is still debated.

Is Göbekli Tepe really the oldest temple?

Schmidt saw Göbekli Tepe as a sanctuary where no one lived, visited by hunter-gatherers from across the region. More recent excavations have found evidence of everyday life: rectangular buildings that look domestic, rainwater cisterns and channels cut into the rock, and huge numbers of tools for food preparation. Many researchers now think people lived at or around the site, at least for parts of its history, and that the enclosures were special communal buildings within a settlement rather than a temple standing alone in the wilderness.

Schmidt also believed the enclosures were deliberately buried when they went out of use. Later work suggests that at least some of the fill came from slope erosion and repeated rebuilding. And whether the enclosures had roofs is debated.

So "oldest temple" is best read as shorthand. Göbekli Tepe is among the oldest known monumental structures in the world, clearly used for gatherings and symbolic activity. Whether "temple" is the right word depends on definitions we cannot test directly. Claims that the carvings record a comet strike or a lost advanced civilisation have not won support among archaeologists working on the site.

Karahan Tepe and the Taş Tepeler

Göbekli Tepe turns out not to be unique. Turkish and international teams are now investigating a group of related sites across the Şanlıurfa region under a programme called Taş Tepeler, "Stone Hills". The best known, Karahan Tepe, some distance to the east, has T-shaped pillars of its own and a rock-cut chamber with a carved human head projecting from the wall and a row of pillar-like forms. Other sites in the group show human figures carved in relief.

Together they suggest a regional culture of monument-building, shared symbols and gatherings, rather than one extraordinary place. Göbekli Tepe is the most famous, but it was part of a wider world.

On the road through Turkey

Turkey comes late in the walk, where Leon's route turns from western Asia towards Europe. The expedition hopes to make a research trip to Göbekli Tepe if conditions allow, because the site connects directly to the questions the walk has carried from Africa: how people organised, believed and changed the way they lived. Earlier on the route, Africa's deep past appears at places such as Kalambo Falls, with the oldest known wooden structure, and the Cradle of Humankind.

For practical context on that part of the journey, read our guide to walking in Turkey. You can see the full line on the route page, learn more about Leon, and sponsor the walk to help it reach the places where the human story keeps being rewritten. The site's World Heritage listing is on the UNESCO World Heritage Centre website.

Frequently asked questions

How old is Göbekli Tepe?

Its oldest monumental structures date to around 9600 BCE, and the site was used and rebuilt until around 8000 BCE, making it more than 11,000 years old.

Who built Göbekli Tepe?

Communities of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic who lived mostly by hunting wild animals and gathering wild plants, before domesticated animals appear at the site.

Can you visit Göbekli Tepe?

Yes. The site is open to visitors, with a visitor centre and a protective roof over the main enclosures, and is usually reached from Şanlıurfa. Check current official travel advice before planning a trip to the region.

Is Göbekli Tepe older than Stonehenge and the pyramids?

Yes, by a long way. It is more than six thousand years older than the earliest phase of Stonehenge and around seven thousand years older than Egypt's Great Pyramid.