Göbekli Tepe
The T-shaped megalithic pillars of Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey, raised around 9600 BC — millennia before Stonehenge or the pyramids.
German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt began excavating Göbekli Tepe in 1995 and quickly realized its rings of carved limestone pillars, some over five meters tall and decorated with foxes, scorpions, and vultures, predated Stonehenge by roughly six millennia and writing by even longer. What makes the site so startling is that it was raised by hunter-gatherers who had not yet domesticated plants or animals, overturning the old assumption that farming had to come before monumental architecture and organized religion — some researchers now argue the need to feed and coordinate the workforce building Göbekli Tepe may have helped spur the Neolithic Revolution rather than the other way around. Around 8000 BC its builders deliberately buried the pillars under rubble, for reasons still unknown.
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