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00:06High on a hill in Turkey.
00:09One of the most important archaeological discoveries of our time.
00:14We thought these are the ruins of a lost civilization.
00:21An ancient wonder, 12,000 years old,
00:24over 6,000 years older than Stonehenge.
00:31A mysterious collection of circular structures,
00:35lined with massive stone pillars,
00:39adorned with carved creatures.
00:42What were these monuments for?
00:45We never expected monumental architecture.
00:49This was totally new.
00:51Who were the people who gathered here?
00:53Human remains are special.
00:55These are the people that built the site.
00:57These are the people that lived here.
00:58Now, new discoveries are leading some archaeologists...
01:02Wow.
01:03...to rethink their most basic ideas
01:06about the origins of civilization.
01:09It's a very strong indicator that the settlement was permanent.
01:13Stone Age Temple Mystery, right now on NOVA.
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01:36Carlyle is committed to developing a diverse workplace
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01:48Learn more at Carlyle.com.
01:57In southern Turkey, hidden beneath a modern protective canopy,
02:05a mysterious collection of stone structures.
02:10This is Gobekli Tepe, named for the hill it stands upon.
02:18Here, towering stone pillars, some 18 feet tall, stand guard in nine circular enclosures, up to 65 feet across.
02:32Older than the Great Pyramid of Giza.
02:35Older even than Stonehenge.
02:38For over 30 years, archaeologists have been trying to solve the riddle of this enigmatic site.
02:49But now, with new technology, unearthing new discoveries...
02:55Fantastic.
02:55We may finally have answers to the questions scientists have been asking for years.
03:03Who built this place?
03:06For what purpose?
03:08And why was it abandoned,
03:11with all traces of human settlement ending thousands of years ago?
03:29In 1994, archaeologist Michael Morsh was part of a small group who set out across the landscape,
03:37in search of a rumored hilltop site.
03:41Talked of since the 1960s, but never explored.
03:46This is the road we took when we first discovered Gobekli Tepe.
03:53It was the first team to investigate the site.
03:57Led by German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt.
04:02We saw all these masses of flints on the ground.
04:06And we saw these T-shaped pillars.
04:11Knowing they'd come across something special, they returned the following year, to begin the excavation.
04:20Over the next 14 years, one of the most remarkable sites ever discovered slowly emerged from the Earth.
04:30Sweeping curved stone walls, lined with monolithic pillars, some covered in reliefs of animals, and some depicting human figures.
04:44We had the feeling, this is the Neolithic gold mine.
04:49We thought, these are the ruins of a lost civilization.
04:58Using digital technology to remove modern structures,
05:02it's possible to see the hillside as those first archaeologists encountered it.
05:09They uncovered four great circular buildings.
05:14Archaeologists labeled them A, B, C, and D.
05:22Archaeologist and architect, Moritz Kinzel, has studied the site for almost 10 years.
05:29He's trying to piece together a chronology of the structures.
05:33Inside Building B, he has identified layers of walls.
05:38What we have here is the outer wall with this niche feature.
05:43And then we have the second wall.
05:45In front of us, what looks like a bench, but it's actually a wall.
05:49And where we are now actually standing on is the third wall.
05:53And on the other side, we have the fourth wall.
05:58Radiocarbon dating of the mud mortar from the remaining walls has revealed that they were constantly being altered and renovated.
06:06The architecture at Gobekli Tepe was not built at once.
06:10It was growing over time, but inwards.
06:15So what we see here in the background is also the oldest wall of Building B.
06:20And then building faces are built inside the structures, making the buildings over time smaller.
06:29The four circular buildings were reshaped over time.
06:34The team has dated the oldest outer walls to around 9,600 BCE, with three inner walls, each constructed three
06:44to five hundred years apart.
06:49Until building appears to have stopped.
06:52We know that the buildings at Gobekli Tepe had a lifetime over 1,500 years.
07:03The dating places Gobekli Tepe right at the start of a period during the Stone Age known as the Neolithic.
07:14A time of radical change for our ancestors that saw them adapt from living in small nomadic groups and eating
07:24wild plants and animals.
07:27To settling in larger communities and experimenting with rearing livestock and cultivating crops.
07:40The question is, how does Gobekli Tepe fit into this story?
07:48Archeologist Lee Clare is field director of the excavations.
07:54He believes there are clues in the design of these circular structures and T-pillars.
08:01The T-pillars are depictions of the human form, albeit very stylized.
08:06We have the shaft here, which is the body, and the top of the T, of course, is the head
08:10of the individual.
08:12Without any facial features, we have on this broad side the arm coming down the forearm and, of course, the
08:18hands at the bottom resting on the stomach.
08:21This stripe here is actually the belt of the individual.
08:25And hanging down from the belt buckle, we have the loincloth made from a fox fur.
08:31So it's giving us a good indication of the clothing that was being worn at the time.
08:37Lee believes the design of this space echoes how it was used 12,000 years ago.
08:44We certainly have two very important individuals standing here in the center of the building, depicted at great height, five
08:51and a half meters tall, centrally facing towards the south.
08:56But in the surrounding walls around us, there are a dozen more pillars incorporated into that wall.
09:01And each of these was representing an individual.
09:04What we have here is actually a community sitting down, discussing.
09:08Huge numbers of animal bones found here hinted at feasting.
09:12It's like a piece of animal horn cord, probably a gazelle or something like that.
09:17Leading to the conclusion that these structures were communal ritual spaces.
09:24That led archaeologists to name them special buildings.
09:30But with few obvious signs of living spaces.
09:35And no apparent water supply.
09:39Researchers believed that this was a site built by nomadic hunter-gatherers, who came together here for seasonal feasts.
09:49It was dubbed the cathedral on the hill.
09:54But the radiocarbon dates mean that prehistoric peoples must have constructed this vast ritual site at Gobekli Tepe.
10:02Before pottery.
10:04Before pottery.
10:06Metalworking.
10:07Or even the wheel.
10:10Forcing researchers to rethink what they understood about early Neolithic people.
10:17The assumption is that hunter-gatherer communities were not capable of constructing a site like Gobekli Tepe.
10:26It was thought that first you needed agriculture and organized society to have this sort of building.
10:33The received wisdom about hunters and gatherers was mobile groups.
10:40We expected shamanistic ritual, dances in small groups, but we never expected rituals in sites with monumental architecture.
10:57This was totally new.
11:02Who were the people that built Gobekli Tepe?
11:06The age of the site points to hunter-gatherers.
11:10Yet monumental ritual spaces were thought to be tied to the development of agriculture.
11:18So were these people hunter-gatherers?
11:21Or farmers?
11:23And what did they do here?
11:27What was their purpose?
11:28Were they nomadic?
11:29What kind of lifestyle did they have?
11:31These are the things we are curious about.
11:38In 2012, ground-penetrating radar revealed the Gobekli Tepe site extended beyond these first four special buildings.
11:49Showing more solid structures underground to the north and west.
11:58Lee and his team are exploring this larger plot.
12:02Slowly exposing more stone walls.
12:08Over the past 10 years, dozens of smaller stone structures have been uncovered.
12:17We have a very dense agglomeration of buildings around the slope.
12:22These aren't monumental buildings.
12:23They are much smaller, four or five meters in diameter, sometimes even smaller than that.
12:29Dating these buildings places their construction more than 500 years later than the earliest walls of the special buildings.
12:40Were they simply spaces for preparation for the feasting and rituals that took place in the special buildings?
12:49Or did they have some other purpose?
12:54Let me have a look.
12:56It's like a shallow bowl on the floor, doesn't it?
12:59Yeah.
12:59But that's really fantastic.
13:03In a world before pottery, any kind of containers for storage, cups or bowls, would have been made from wood,
13:12bone, or carved from solid stone.
13:16Now this space is very small, too small to actually use for habitation.
13:20But what we could be looking at here is obviously a storage area.
13:23Even after being buried for more than 10,000 years, the stone vessel could still contain clues as to what
13:31these small walled areas were for.
13:34Inside the bowl, of course, the contents seem to be preserved.
13:37I mean, of course, we'll take the contents here and send it off for analysis for flotation for various things.
13:42And look, if we can perhaps see what was inside it.
13:46Earth from the bowl and from the surrounding space is sent off for analysis.
13:52Anything of archaeological interest can be isolated, using a specially designed flotation tank.
14:01Archaeobotanist Farhan Antalin and PhD student Nuria Moreira Noguer sift through bones, flints, and plant remains.
14:11Loads of flint splitters.
14:14Yeah.
14:15The process will split the sample, washing away sediment and separating what's left by what floats and what sinks.
14:25The light fractions float into the water tank. The heavy fraction stays here with this huge mesh.
14:32And all the other sediment goes down to the bottom of the tank.
14:36There's quite a lot of charred material in the light fraction.
14:41The floating light fraction will contain prehistoric plant remains.
14:47Flints and bones will sink.
14:50Flints and bones.
14:52Flints and bones.
14:53Flints and bones.
14:56Flints and bones.
14:57Flints and bones.
14:57So here is the heavy fraction.
15:00We had this finger bone here, from an animal, possibly a gazelle.
15:07We also find this tarsus, so it's part of the paw of the animal.
15:15it was the discovery of large numbers of animal bones in the special buildings that led to the
15:21ritual feasting theory for the team's zoo archaeologist Stephanie Emra deeper analysis
15:30of bones found across the site can reveal more about what animals were being eaten
15:36so in terms of the number of bones on the site we've probably looked at over a hundred thousand
15:46many of the fragments are poorly preserved and the first challenge is identifying which bones
15:52came from which species I see a lot of gazelle so these little vertebrae gazelle ribs some of
16:03the largest stuff are from cattle to the oryx we found boar sheep while gazelle make up more than
16:12half of the identified bones the presence of what seemed like familiar farm animals such as cattle
16:19and sheep raises the possibility that the people of gobekli tepe were farming their food Stephanie's
16:28research is trying to distinguish whether these bones are from domesticated herds or they're still
16:33wild ancestors in a controlled herding environment you would have more adult females and young males
16:43being killed off and this is not something that we see we would also see a shift in the size
16:48of the
16:48animals so domestic animals tend to be a bit smaller than their wild counterparts early farm animals were
16:56mostly smaller than their wild relatives due to poorer nutrition and being penned into enclosures rather
17:03than running free I have these examples this one is from gobekli and this one is from a medieval site
17:12in
17:13Germany and you can see the massive size difference you can never really say from just one bone whether it's
17:21going to be a wild population a domestic population but having thousands of bone fragments you can then
17:27get an idea of the sort of size of the animals the animal bones found at gobekli tepe suggests the
17:36animals eaten
17:36in here were wild the people here didn't keep livestock but slaughtered wild animals
17:49in addition to the heavier bone evidence the lighter material from the flotation tank is also filled with clues
17:57the flotation process is essential it's the only way we can recover a representative amount of the plant
18:05remains that accumulated in the site Ferran Antolin is an expert in ancient plants most of them are beyond
18:15one millimeter of size very small seeds charcoal fragments allow us to reconstruct both the diet and
18:25the landscape around the settlement the smallest fragments charred by ancient fires hold clues to what
18:33the people who came here ate we are looking for charred seeds and charred pieces of wood because these are
18:41the only
18:41organic plant material that preserves in dry sites among the microscopic blackened plant remains Ferran finds more
18:53fragments of one plant than any other a kind of wheat called einkorn it grew around gobekli tepe it was
19:05probably
19:05intensively harvested by people living at the site since we started the new analysis in 2023 we've been able to
19:15see that
19:15einkorn is the most frequent plant that we are identifying einkorn was one of the world's first domesticated grains
19:28but Ferran's research is revealing something surprising about the einkorn eaten at gobekli tepe
19:35wild plants disperse their seeds on their own that's the goal that their seeds just produce new plants in
19:44wild einkorn those seeds just fall off the ear themselves it's called a shattering ear this
19:53shattering ear allows seeds to spread naturally but domesticated farmed einkorn is different this is the
20:03ear of the ear of domesticated einkorn and all of the spikelets are still attached to the central axis what
20:10we call the
20:11rachis and it means it's a non-shattering rachis
20:16domesticated einkorn rachis are more robust allowing for the ears to be harvested intact
20:24the einkorn seeds ferran is finding at gobekli tepe are all from ears with shattering rachis
20:32this is wild einkorn the fact that we have wild einkorn at gobekli tepe is indicating that people were
20:41not yet cultivating the plant but they were harvesting intensively until archaeologists find clear markers of
20:52early crop cultivation like the presence of certain weeds that thrive in tilled soil the evidence suggests
20:59the einkorn was gathered from the wild not planted fields
21:06when coupled with the wild animal bone evidence it points to the people at gobekli tepe being hunter gatherers
21:14not farmers and looking at the plant remains beyond einkorn reveals something else about the people who came here
21:28we've been able to find different types of plant resources such as wild cereals and legumes which
21:35were harvested mostly in spring and early summer period loads of fruits and nuts that would be most
21:42typically harvested by the end of summer and autumn
21:49the discovery is forcing researchers to rethink the traditional view of the people who visited gobekli tepe
21:57that they were nomadic hunter gatherers who camped across the surrounding plains throughout the year
22:05congregating here for occasional celebrations
22:08we observe a diversification of gathered resources that would be available in different months of the year
22:16so instead of having a mobile camp that would allow a population to follow a resource in the landscape
22:24this population at gobekli tepe benefits from a number of resources that are available in different times of the year
22:31and that can be stored this allows them to actually become sedentary
22:39for decades scientists thought hunter gatherer societies always moved with the seasons following herds of animals
22:48but now the finds at gobekli tepe are telling a story of a settled community
22:55exploiting the abundant wild plant and animal life that surrounded them
23:01this was a place to live
23:06but if hunter gatherers settled at gobekli tepe where are their houses
23:14in one of the structures clustered around the special buildings
23:18Lee is finding evidence of daily life
23:24this rectangular structure features numerous elements which are clearly domestic
23:30this reminds us a bit of some modern home in a way
23:33we have a bench here to my right and in that bench we have actually a grinding stone
23:38whether this was used for actually grinding or whether it contained liquid
23:41perhaps water but very much like a worktop with with a sink if you like
23:47and there's another discovery on the opposite side of the room
23:50we've got this stone age cupboard ideal for storage with this wonderful limestone vessel
23:57so we've got this stone age furniture as it were and very reminiscent of the flint stones in fact
24:02so this would have been a household kitchen situation
24:04perhaps a family unit using this space to prepare meals
24:09all this is pointing to domestic life
24:15Lee believes many of the structures packed on the slopes were homes
24:20covered spaces for permanent residence
24:24huddled around the special buildings at the heart of gobekli tepe
24:29when combined with the bone and seed discoveries the infrastructure here with grand ceremonial buildings
24:37and dedicated living spaces hints at a society in transition
24:43still foraging but now more permanent
24:48we're dealing with a very complex settlement structure very much contrary to what people generally think
24:54when we say neolithic or stone age
24:56at its peak if the entire area were to have been occupied
25:00I wouldn't be surprised if we're looking at anything from 500 to over a thousand people living at gobekli tepe
25:08the scale is surprising stretching over 22 acres
25:1320 monumental buildings and perhaps more yet to be uncovered
25:19a settlement that could have supported more than 1,000 people
25:27it's just one of a handful of early neolithic settlements so far discovered in the region
25:35Jericho was big enough for over 2,000 people
25:40Tel Abu Herrera was home to a few hundred
25:46but if gobekli tepe was a settlement where people lived across 1,500 years
25:53where are there remains?
25:58during over 30 years of excavation only fragments of human bones had been discovered
26:05but more recently that has changed
26:08now in one of the walled structures beyond the special buildings
26:17the researchers have found a burial site with human remains
26:22yeah wow
26:25so what we've got here obviously a bit of skull
26:27a few long bones
26:29yeah
26:30so it's a burial
26:31it's really really exciting to have
26:34so another individual from Gobekli Tepe
26:36it can tell a story
26:38yeah
26:41it's only the third burial to be discovered at the site
26:45human remains are special
26:47I mean these are the people that built the site
26:49these are the people that lived here
26:51and Lee sees something right away
26:53that could make these remains even more special
26:57the bones they're not fused
26:59the skull is quite small
27:01at the moment we're thinking that it's probably the remains of a child
27:06for Lee and Moritz
27:08the placement of the body within a decorated niche
27:11inside a domestic space
27:13gives clues about the belief systems of the people that lived here
27:19by bringing somebody's bones back into the house
27:22because it's somehow claiming ownership
27:24so the dead and the living are living together
27:27they are part of the same cosmos
27:32this new discovery adds to previous analysis of skull fragments found across the site
27:40these pictures are from the first skull I found in Gobekli Tepe
27:461600 miles from the dig
27:48in her lab in Berlin
27:51heliopathologist Julia Greske
27:52has been examining the skull fragments
27:56here we have a lot of wild cut marks
28:01at high magnification
28:03she has identified unnatural markings on the bone fragments
28:08this is something you would expect when deflashing a skull
28:12if you want to cut away the soft tissue
28:16then you would just scrape on the surface
28:19these incisions were done while the bone was still fresh
28:23but you can't say that they were done during life
28:27because there are no signs of healing on this incision
28:33the evidence suggests these skulls were stripped of flesh after death
28:38and there are more markings
28:40this skull has three main carvings on the frontal part
28:45it is several repeated scratches in this big line
28:51Julia believes these and other marks found on the skull
28:55were made intentionally
29:00the reason is a mystery
29:04but another clue has led her to a theory of how the skulls may have been used
29:11we found that one of these skulls had a drilling hole
29:18the hole was bored through the cranium
29:21right at the top of the skull
29:24maybe they were trying to fix things on the skulls
29:27or they wanted to hang them with a cord
29:31red marks found on some bone fragments suggest the skulls could have been decorated and put on display
29:38the markings on these skulls they point to some ritual tradition
29:42so a special focus on the skull of these people
29:47it's possible a so-called skull cult was practiced by the people of Gobekli Tepe
29:55a skull cult is a practice of venerating dead people
29:59or memorizing important people of their own family, of the community in general
30:08the skull from the burial shows no signs of decoration
30:13but the practice of burying bones within living spaces here
30:16and at later Neolithic sites
30:20is a telling clue about how human societies were changing
30:25perhaps the tradition began at Gobekli Tepe
30:30when people build communities
30:32it's very important to have this group feeling
30:35and to belong to somebody
30:38ancestors played a big role in that
30:41this really means that the dead were kept close to the living
30:46and emphasizes the importance of the dead
30:49the ancestors in this community
30:53the settlement structures
30:55the sheer volume of finds
30:57and the burials and skull remains
31:00lead many archaeologists to conclude
31:02this was a place inhabited year-round
31:11yet these people were hunter-gatherers
31:13who were not relying on farmed plants or animals
31:18how were they able to survive year-round in this landscape
31:21which is so dry and challenging today?
31:29the diversity of ancient animal and plant remains discovered here
31:33suggests a different kind of environment
31:3512,000 years ago
31:40the biodiversity of the landscape around Gobekli Tepe
31:44was certainly higher than what it is today
31:49it was wetter and it would even allow
31:52slightly denser forests nearby the settlement
31:56so there would be parts of the landscape
31:59that would be seasonally greener
32:02at the time of Gobekli Tepe
32:04the climate was slightly different
32:06it was a lot wetter, more rainfall
32:09on the hillside
32:11just yards from the Gobekli Tepe site
32:14Lee has found evidence that suggests the people that lived here
32:20may have shaped the hillside to take advantage of that rainfall
32:27so this is not natural, it's artificial
32:30it's carved into the natural plateau
32:32it's a channel, as you can see
32:34and it's directing the runoff rainwater from upslope
32:36down this cliff face
32:41as Lee's team looked further
32:43they found large human-made holes
32:47so as you can see here
32:49we have a shallow pool here
32:50and a channel actually leading down
32:53a rainwater harvesting system
32:56we have a row of water channels
32:59which were carved into the bedrock
33:01which are actually directing the rainwater down
33:03from the site, downslope
33:06into systems like this
33:09if people did settle permanently at Gobekli Tepe
33:13a secure water supply was vital
33:17this system may have helped provide that
33:20these systems are really quite remarkable
33:23I mean it's ingenious in fact
33:25people were harvesting the rainwater here at Gobekli Tepe
33:29this is something which would have been essential
33:31for the people at the time to live at this site
33:37and there are more traces of human activity
33:40that shape the environment for survival
33:42all this landscape you see around us really holds the clues to how hunter-gatherer people lived at Gobekli Tepe
34:01using satellite images
34:02archaeologist Fatma Shahin and her team have identified something she believes
34:07could explain how such a large population fed itself
34:13now we're going to a place we define as an animal trap
34:18on the ground the structures appear as long low stone walls
34:23but their true scale and design becomes clearer
34:30when seen from the air
34:32human nature
34:35because it doesn't matter
34:36so let's go here
34:38oh here
34:38look at this
34:40there in the top of the ring
34:42and there in the water
34:42one place in its left
34:44okay, look
34:45what's that there?
34:47remember
34:48oh my god
34:52We weren't actually sure whether there was a trap area here.
34:55We came to investigate it, but now, when we flew the drone, we can see there really is
35:01a trap site there, we can see it very well preserved.
35:07Sometimes extending more than three miles, these structures are called desert kites,
35:13named for their angular shapes when viewed from above.
35:18This one is some 24 miles from Gobekli Tepe, but structures like this are spread across
35:25the landscape.
35:26The nearest so far discovered is just a couple miles from the site.
35:33Archaeologists have determined that they were most likely made to herd, corral, and ultimately
35:38trap migrating animals.
35:43They were built along animal migration routes by watering spots, stream banks, and on
35:49slopes.
35:50They collected stones from the slopes and from the land all around them.
35:55Using a technique called dry stone walling, they created giant mega structures.
36:05This kite is a new discovery for Fatma, and so needs deeper research.
36:11But from first impressions, examining the flint blades scattered along the walls, and the structure's
36:18similarity to other early Neolithic kites, Fatma believes this could have been constructed
36:25during the ninth millennium BCE, perhaps when Gobekli Tepe was at its height.
36:34The scale is staggering.
36:36The traps can cover an area of 40, 50, even 100 hectares.
36:41By driving animals down the slopes, hunter-gatherers were able to trap them here and pen them in
36:46these structures.
36:50The kites suggest a radical idea.
36:55Look, it's very beautiful.
36:59Hunter-gatherers here were organized on a monumental scale, coordinating over vast landscapes.
37:06And Fatma believes these structures may have played a role in the earliest steps toward animal
37:12management.
37:14Most likely, animals caught here were seen to reproduce.
37:18Their lives were carrying on, and in being confined here, the animals naturally began a process
37:24of domestication.
37:29The people who used these traps understood animals and their environment intimately.
37:36No longer small bands of hunters, but a large, organized group, digging into their landscape.
37:46While the kites themselves do not prove a sedentary population, they might explain the vast numbers
37:53of bones found at Gobekli Tepe.
37:58During hunting season, traps like these could have efficiently caught the large numbers of animals
38:03needed to feed a growing population.
38:08The wide variety of birds and small mammals found at the site, and other seasonal plants,
38:15show that people here were finding other sources of food when the migrating animals had left.
38:23It's quite evident that those communities were fully sedentary and were living full-time at Gobekli Tepe.
38:32Gobekli Tepe appears to have expanded from a place for special buildings to a year-round
38:38hub for sedentary hunter-gatherers surviving on wild crops, rainwater harvesting, and desert
38:47kites for trapping animals.
38:52The question now is, were the people at Gobekli Tepe unique for their time?
38:58Or was this lifestyle common?
39:0518 miles west of Gobekli Tepe is Cybirch.
39:11For the last four years, a team of Turkish archaeologists and students has been excavating amongst the modern
39:19village on this limestone hilltop.
39:23They've unearthed familiar T-pillars, hidden just inches beneath the modern ground level.
39:38Archaeologist Eylem Uzduan is the site director.
39:43It's possible to find numerous parallels between the structures at Gobekli Tepe and Cybirch.
39:50The T-shaped pillars appear here within smaller but distinct circular spaces, with the same motifs of wild animals.
40:02But current dating of the site places it much later than the original circular buildings
40:07and T-pillars of Gobekli Tepe.
40:11We are in a place that dates back to roughly the mid-ninth millennium BCE.
40:18The construction of Cybirch appears to overlap with the period when Gobekli Tepe was expanding.
40:26But those early established symbolic ritual elements, the T-pillars, the carvings, and the circular
40:35structures seem to have been transplanted here almost as the heart of the settlement.
40:42Each settlement has its own distinct character, but the cultural environment here seems to be defined
40:48by very deliberate and strict rules, particularly in their art and the construction of the special buildings.
40:59The excavations here have so far uncovered a much larger residential neighborhood.
41:07And as at Gobekli Tepe, analysis of organic remains suggests only wild foods were eaten here.
41:16So much is similar at Cybirch that archaeologists believe there must have been a sharing of ideas,
41:23of ways of life between the two sites.
41:28These were complex communities consciously choosing to live in large, settled groups,
41:33creating their own complex social environment and cultural infrastructure.
41:40And Cybirch is only one of Gobekli Tepe's newfound neighbors.
41:47More than ten T-pillar sites have been discovered in the last few years,
41:53most dating from the period of Gobekli Tepe's expansion in the mid-ninth millennium.
42:01Each with the same animal motifs, the same monumental pillars, the same stories in stone.
42:14And this network even stretched beyond the local hillside.
42:20The early Nidhik throughout the region, all the way from Anatolia down to the southern Levant,
42:27down to Saudi today, had many different unique sites.
42:30But they all shared some aspects of common material culture.
42:34So you have a sense that there's a flow of people and ideas between them,
42:40which is maintaining some degree of cultural cohesion,
42:43while each individual site is also doing its own thing.
42:49Together, these sites form a web of communities stretching across the region.
42:54And at the heart of it, in its time, the largest yet found, Gobekli Tepe.
43:02Gobekli Tepe is having this huge influence throughout the whole landscape of Southwest Asia.
43:09There is a sense of cultural unity.
43:12There was a constant flow of people and ideas and a substantial exchange of gifts.
43:18So it's like a social network on a large scale.
43:23This wasn't just one site isolated in its culture and traditions.
43:30The evidence suggests it was the beginning of something larger,
43:35a regional identity, a shared imagination.
43:39A network of communities bound together by stone, by symbol, and by story.
43:53Traditionally, we've assumed that hunter-gatherers have simple lives,
43:58maybe rather simple minds.
43:59We now know that hunter-gatherers are as sophisticated and as complex
44:03as any modern humans in so many ways.
44:08Dating the buildings and the finds, archaeologists have come to the conclusion
44:12that Gobekli Tepe was at its height during the 9th millennium BCE.
44:20New buildings were erected, old ones reworked.
44:24Then, by around 8,000 BCE, building seems to have stopped.
44:31Fewer archaeological finds from this period suggest much of the population left.
44:37So if the site was booming, why did people leave?
44:46Moritz Kinsel thinks that the size and location of the site led to increasing problems.
44:52When we look at the site, we have this very steep slope, heavy buildings resting on the slope.
44:58Heavy rain and snow in wintertime added a kind of trigger of instability to everything.
45:06These buildings, built on the dip of the hillside, have no real foundations.
45:12Meaning collapse was always a possibility.
45:16The fill of the building is comprised of limestone rubble, large numbers of flint tools, animal bone.
45:24Evidence that the special buildings at the lower part of depression
45:27were actually inundated by collapsed buildings from the slopes.
45:31The buildings were hit over time again and again by landslide events.
45:37But cracks, tilts and fractures in the monolithic pillars are signs that the site was hit by more than just
45:46landslides.
45:48When we excavated this pillar here, we discovered that it is leaning towards the east and shows this severe crack,
45:56which suggests earthquake damage.
46:03Modern day Turkey is no stranger to devastating earthquakes.
46:09The telltale scars on the pillars are evidence that Gobekli Tepe suffered the same forces 12,000 years ago.
46:18We see here a sheer crack in the T-shaped pillar shaft that is actually leaning as well to the
46:25east.
46:25We have cracked walls, cracked pillars, leaning pillars, cracks in the floor.
46:32And what is very significant is that they're all leaning in the same direction.
46:37And what we have seen here on this pillar, we actually also see on the other pillars in the building.
46:42There were at least two seismic events, one in the very early phase of the site and one in the
46:49late phase of the site.
46:51For centuries, when disaster struck, the people had rebuilt, reinforcing walls, reshaping the enclosures.
47:00After the final earthquake, the rebuilding seems to have stopped.
47:05What we see over a long time is people moving away after these destructive events.
47:12They lacked the people to reshape certain areas.
47:18The monuments fell silent.
47:20The gathering stopped.
47:24After 15 centuries, a thriving hilltop community came to an end.
47:31But the story continued.
47:37Less than 10 miles from Gobekli Tepe, on the edge of the Haran Plain, lies another ancient site.
47:47Gerju Tepe.
47:49Gerju Tepe holds the key for what came next after Gobekli Tepe.
47:57Archaeologists digging here, uncovered remains dating to the moment Gobekli Tepe was falling silent.
48:06What we find here is change, a change in architecture.
48:13Ritual buildings disappear.
48:16The people were more interested in functional architecture.
48:23Gone are the grand circular enclosures.
48:27In their place, compact homes.
48:31The T-shaped pillars and their animal carvings vanish too.
48:36Monumentality had disappeared, so these age-old hunter-gatherer narratives were being abandoned.
48:45This might mean a shift of the priorities of the society.
48:52And it's not only priorities that are changing.
48:56Stephanie Emra has studied animal bones from the site.
49:00So at Gobekli Tepe, we only find wild animals.
49:03Whereas at Gobekli Tepe, we're finding much, much fewer of those wild species.
49:09And it's almost entirely sheep and goat.
49:13The domestic version.
49:15That, alongside the age profiles of the animals and the sex ratio of the animals,
49:20that's a really clear indication that they're now herding animals.
49:24A new, agreed way of life, primarily dependent on domesticated crops, unherded sheep, goats and cattle,
49:34had become accepted and universal.
49:39While earthquakes and landslides might have been the driver for people to leave Gobekli Tepe,
49:46there may also have been a draw.
49:49It's quite possible that the population living at Gobekli Tepe moved down into the plain
49:54in order to have better conditions for farming.
49:58It was flat.
50:00They had enough water to plant.
50:02They had enough space and fertile land.
50:08This wasn't an isolated change.
50:13Sites across these hills were abandoned as farming on the plains took root.
50:18So what we see is the emergence of an agricultural way of life.
50:28Before the discoveries at Gobekli Tepe,
50:31many archaeologists believed that people first came together in settlements
50:36because they needed to be in one place to farm.
50:41But with the new findings here, scientists now see a different dynamic.
50:48Hunter-gatherers came together in community to express their spiritual beliefs
50:53with monumental architecture and ritual.
50:57And that process led to an entirely new way of life.
51:02The fascinating thing is having these big gatherings, that forced them to harvest wild cereals
51:09in large quantities.
51:10And by doing that, they pushed the domestication of these plants.
51:14It was this religious drive that may have actually led to the emergence of domesticated crops
51:21and ultimately farming.
51:23This was no sudden revolution, but instead a slow transformation that unfolded over millennia.
51:33The creation of a settled society, before farming even began.
51:38Gobekli Tepe is, without doubt, a turning point in human history.
51:43But it is the transition from life as a hunter-gatherer to life as a settled farmer.
51:51As archaeologists continue to make new discoveries at Gobekli Tepe,
51:57the story of our ancestors and how they went from hunter-gatherers to settled farmers
52:04will continue to be rewritten, revealing more about the people who lived here.
52:11They were people like us, but living in a totally different time,
52:15in a totally different culture, but just as ingenious as we are today.
52:27The End
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