First Came the Temple: How a Hill in Turkey Rewrote the Origins of Civilization
By Ervin Dhima
At Göbekli Tepe and the cluster of "Stone Hills" sites in southeastern Turkey, hunter-gatherers raised the world's oldest monuments some 11,500 years ago — before farming, pottery, or the wheel. The discoveries overturned a century-old assumption that agriculture had to come first, and suggest civilization may have begun not with the plow, but with the temple.