The Guardian view on the invention of prehistory: telling the story before records began

Judging whether the history of things is more significant than the history of words often ends up in a discussion about objects and monuments. The importance of Scottish stones at Stonehenge or the Babylonian Cyrus cylinder to our remote ancestors plays a part in determining prehistory – the era before records began. Perhaps the greatest challenge to a narrative based on objects alone can be found in the light-coloured limestone structures that climb the hill of Göbekli Tepe, a 45-foot-high rise on a rolling plateau in south-eastern Turkey.
Three decades ago, the late German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt made a discovery in the foothills of the Taurus mountains that rewrote civilisation’s timeline. Schmidt’s team found huge 20-tonne T-shaped pillars of quarried stone carved with stylised depictions of people. The imposing structures were decorated with carvings featuring wild beasts. Rings of these megaliths were found to be 11,000 years old, predating the pyramids by more than 6,000 years, when the region was still inhabited by hunter-gatherers. Schmidt thought he had found the world’s oldest temple. But how could hunter-gatherers build this vast complex? Schmidt argued that Göbekli Tepe – its name translates as potbelly hill – justified a new theory of civilisation.
Scholars have long believed that only after people learned to farm and live in settled communities did they have the time, organisation and resources to construct temples and support complicated social structures. The shift from foraging to farming had been thought to be driven by environmental changes: a gradual warming as the ice age ended. But Schmidt said this was back to front. He argued that the effort needed to build Göbekli Tepe laid the groundwork for later complex societies. The modern world, he heretically proposed, did not begin with farming but religious practice. Schmidt died in 2014, but the dig continued – and as it did, it turned up evidence that called for a yet more nuanced interpretation of prehistory.
The new digs have revealed evidence of houses and year-round settlement, suggesting that Göbekli Tepe wasn’t an isolated temple visited on special religious occasions but rather a thriving village with large, special buildings at its centre. Remarkably, the site was constructed by prehistoric architects, builders and engineers. Lee Clare, Schmidt’s successor, argues that perhaps Göbekli Tepe was a response by hunter-gatherers who were trying to cling to their vanishing way of life while other communities were transitioning to agrarian lifestyles.
Even more mysterious was why the site disappeared from view. It was not hit by a natural catastrophe like a flood or earthquake. Instead, Göbekli Tepe was deliberately buried and entombed, quite possibly by its creators, who thought it had outlived its purpose. Or a civilisation emerged that considered it an affront. Despite being able to tell what its inhabitants ate and the animals they hunted, archeologists can only guess at what they were thinking or what happened to them.
Today the site is a Unesco world heritage site and a global tourist hotspot. Other “mini” Göbekli Tepe’s are being unearthed across Turkey’s Harran plains. The rich archive of things that is slowly being uncovered shows prehistory to be far more than just a plinth for modernity. But discoveries such as Göbekli Tepe demand a courage to continually question the narratives that we currently produce.