Belly Hill
March 7th, 2010
Gobekli Tepe might conceivably be the site of the world's first temple:
Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple. [...]
Be sure to view the photos that accompany the article.
[Via the Long Now Blog, which linked to a rather less satisfactory Newsweek story1 about the temple.]
- It spent too much time on Schmidt's "First the temple, then the city" thesis for my liking. ↩