Reportage
Göbeklitepe: The oldest resistance
12,000 years ago, the world was changing radically, and with it the way of life that had, for millennia, allowed humans to move freely, gather the fruits of nature and hunt wild animals.
At 6 a.m. on the arid, stony hills of the Şanlıurfa region in southern Turkey, a stream of minibuses transports men and women from the nearby villages. They are the workers heading to Göbeklitepe, Karahantepe, Sefertepe, Cakmatepe, Sayburc – the major Neolithic settlements uncovered in recent years as part of the Taş Tepeler project. Waiting for them are teams of archaeologists, ready for a new day of excavations and research.
At that hour, the thermometer already reads 28°C (82°F), and the summer day is long, with temperatures that can easily reach 40°C (104°F). This impressive operation, which includes plans to open a new research center at Karahantepe next year, beside the already existing ones at Göbeklitepe and Serfertepe, speaks to the exceptional nature of this 12,000-year-old archaeological zone, dating to the very dawn of the Neolithic revolution.
Göbeklitepe is the most famous of the 12 sites included in the project. First excavated in 1995 by the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, who believed he had discovered “the world’s first temple,” it marks a fundamental step in understanding human history, as it calls into question all that we thought we knew.
“These monumental structures, supported and decorated by T-shaped pillars, were built by hunter-gatherer communities who had not adopted agriculture,” explains Lee Clare, the archaeologist who now directs the excavation. “This shows that it was not the invention of agriculture that created a sedentary lifestyle here, but something else entirely: collective rituals, mythological narratives, which are strongly connected with spirituality.”
Since 1995, much progress has been made in understanding the emergence of these settlements, located in the heart of what was the Fertile Crescent, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers originate. Moritz Kinsel, a German archaeologist specializing in ancient architecture, walks on the steep terrain of the Göbeklitepe hill (tepe means “hill” in Turkish), wearing a board around his neck on which he makes pencil sketches.
“After the discovery by Schmidt, who believed that the site was only frequented for collective cults, dozens of domestic residences were later found all around here, inhabited without interruption for 1,600 years,” he says. “The houses transform over time, from an oval shape to a rectangular one. What we still do not understand is the relationship between the dwellings and the collective spaces, which we call special buildings.”
Moritz Kinsel points to one of these monumental structures, which features two 5.5-meter-high T-shaped pillars at its center. Giant totems. All around are limestone benches built into the 3-meter-high perimeter walls. “These structures were covered by wooden roofs,” Kinsel explains, walking inside. Thirty or forty people would enter – we don’t know based on what criteria – and they would sit and listen to stories. “It is very likely that there were storytellers, charismatic leaders, but not actual chiefs, because Neolithic communities were still based on equality.”
To get an idea of what stories were told, one can visit the excavations underway at Sayburc, a town a few kilometers from Şanlıurfa, the regional capital.
About forty people, including workers and archaeologists, are working diligently to clear the buildings of the earth that has accumulated over the millennia, and, in particular, the earth deliberately thrown in by the last inhabitants to cover the communal spaces before abandoning them for good. In one of these, Turkish archaeologist Eylem Özdoğan discovered a bas-relief, about four meters long, depicting two distinct scenes centered on a human figure holding a phallus.
“It is one of the oldest examples of narrative art,” the archaeologist says with a hint of pride. “The scene tells us of a mythical world, inhabited by ferocious animals, which men had to confront to overcome their fears... This bas-relief... is a reflection of a collective memory present in all the sites.”
In oral traditions, stories, rituals, and symbols form the foundation of the values that shape a community. This bas-relief, which clearly had an educational purpose, is a reflection of a collective memory present in all the sites.
To reach Karahantepe, an hour's drive from Şanlıurfa, one must cross the Harran plain, today home to endless fields of cotton and corn, which 12,000 years ago was the site of the first experiments in agriculture. Climbing the tepe, the landscape changes radically. It becomes stony, moon-like.
It was on this hillside that hunter-gatherers built their village, intentionally keeping their distance from what was happening in the valley below. The world was changing radically, and with it the way of life that had, for millennia, allowed humans to move freely, gather the fruits of nature and hunt wild animals.
Turkish archeologist Necmi Karul has been excavating the Karahantepe site since 2019, uncovering an impressive and complex human settlement. “What we have found,” Karul explains, “are domestic structures that transform over the centuries, and special, collective buildings of various sizes, with anthropomorphic sculptures and depictions of the animal world ... When they abandoned the village ... they completely covered the collective buildings, where their identity is preserved, with earth, as if to bury their world, which was destined to disappear anyway.”
Archeologists and researchers analyzing the material samples agree on one decisive aspect that emerged from the investigation: the hunter-gatherer communities that settled 12,000 years ago on the stone hills accepted a sedentary lifestyle as an irreversible process, but they rejected agriculture and animal husbandry because this would have meant a breakdown of their social structure. In other nearby communities where cultivation was underway, the first inequalities were already appearing, with the appropriation of land by some and the formation of a ruling class.
“The people of Göbeklitepe and the other neighboring settlements,” concludes archaeologist Lee Clare, “wanted to erect these extraordinary monumental spaces, these gigantic pillars on which they engraved their mythology, as a kind of ‘petrified memory’ – as a sign of rejection of the ‘Neolithic revolution’ that was looming.”
Thus, the major Taş Tepeler research project underway in the province of Şanlıurfa tells us another story: a true act of resistance that took place right in the center of what was once the Fertile Crescent, highlighting that human history was not guided by just one single, inevitable destiny.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/la-resistenza-piu-antica on 2025-11-06