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Ladies and gentlemen,

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now we are going
a little bit under the surface,

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we are coming to archeology
and to a project

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which is one of the most important
projects of the last years.

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Those are not only my words,
- I am the director of this project -

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but it is internationally told like this.

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It's a project in southeastern Turkey,
the site called Göbekli Tepe.

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Göbekli Tepe means 'mound with belly.'

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It's just its name,
an old name from the map.

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We didn't invent this name, but it shows
a little bit, or it's recognizable -

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we've some natural limestone plateau here

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and all this mound which is not
a natural mound but an artificial mound,

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this is the belly on the mound
explaining the name.

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The project is done
by the German Archeological Institute

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where I come from too,

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but in close cooperation
with the local authorities,

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especially the General Directorate
for Antiquities in Ankara,

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and the University of Sanliurfa,
the Harran University,

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and some other institutions,

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mainly responsible for the conservation
and the restoration of the site.

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For the scientific work, we have financing
mainly from the German Research Foundation

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which is financing the project,
which is a long-term project.

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We are now in the 20th year of work,

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and we hope to continue
for many, many years in the future.

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Okay, that's the framing.
I have to say all this:

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who are the institutions

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and who is giving money
for our work at the site.

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But what is the importance of this site?

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At first, I already
showed you this location.

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It's a huge limestone ridge,

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and this artificial mound is on top of it.

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Such artificial mounds are
very common in the Near East

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They are called 'tell' in Arabic language

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or 'tepe' or 'höyük' in Turkish language.

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I think some will know 'Çatalhöyük, '

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an old Neolithic site in central Anatolia,

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and Göbekli is a site like this,
but it has some specifics,

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it's a unique site because it's much older
than all the other ones.

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It belongs to the 10th
and 9th millennium BC.

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So, it means, roughly spoken,
some monuments there are 12,000 years old,

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12,000 before today, or 10,000,
the 10th millennium BC.

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That's just after the Ice Age.

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Who knows a bit about geology, knows
that the Ice Age was a global phenomenon.

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Now, with the ice corings in Greenland,
we can date it very, very exactly.

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It was not a long process,
the end of the Ice Age.

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It was what we call
a rapid climate change.

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A very rapid development, around 9,600.

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And that's the time when
the building activity at Göbekli started.

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I told you, an artificial mound made
by humans by erecting buildings,

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walls, and other things above each other.

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So, the mound was created.

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This is not so special in the Near East,
but, as I told you, the time frame,

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10th-9th millennium, that's very strange.

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We didn't expect it in this time,

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when all over the world, people
were still hunter-gatherers,

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that they had been able
to produce such buildings,

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to do such huge work and much more.

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We will see some examples
of the world of Göbekli Tepe,

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which is such an unexpected
and unknown world before.

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Many say Göbekli Tepe
is changing the history.

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That's not true,
it's not changing it,

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but it's adding a very important chapter
to the history of humanity,

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a chapter we didn't know
that it existed before.

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And this chapter is about the transition
from hunter-gatherers societies

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to farming, to food-producing societies.

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This is a form of subsistence

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that our basis agrarian societies
are still based on,

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and this was invented
in this region at this time.

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This region is the Near East.

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We will see some maps later.

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And here, about the mound, an aerial view.

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When we started the project in '95,
what we could see

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was nearly nothing,
just trees and fields.

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It was used for agriculture
by the local people,

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but the surface [findings]
had been showing us

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very clearly the importance of the site,

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and the dating by diagnostic
flint tools and other tools.

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Pottery is not existent, not yet invented.

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So, we call this stage in archeology
the pre-pottery Neolithic culture,

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before the invention of pottery,
but it's the beginning of the Neolithic.

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The Neolithic period means
food producing period in our terms.

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To understand the importance
of Göbekli Tepe

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we have to enlarge
our frame to a global view

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On this map in red you see all the regions
in the world where this transition

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from hunter-gatherer cultures
to food-producing cultures

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happened independently from each other.

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We have some regions in Meso-America,
South America, in the South-East,

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and, of course you are right, this are
the numbers BC written about some.

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In Africa very late in comparison
to this core area in the Near East

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where the transition
happened around 9,000,

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or late 10th, early 9th millennium.

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The region, in the long time, we call
the Fertile Crescent of the Near East

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because in the South
we have the Arabian desert,

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to the North the Mountains of the Taurus
and the Zagros Mountains.

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This is the area with
the most favorable climatic conditions,

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the most favorable geographic conditions:
the Fertile Crescent.

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for a long time, we thought
that the western wing was important

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regarding the development
of earlier agrarian civilizations,

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but now we understand, through research
not only by our team, but by many teams,

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and in the national groups of American,
French, British, Turkish, Italian,

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Japanese, German, and other archaeologists
working in this region,

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we understand that there is

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something like a Golden Triangle
within this Fertile Crescent

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where the most important
things are going on.

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And Göbekli Tepe is located
in the Golden Triangle,

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and it has a very important role.

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We will see some of the monuments
that we are excavating there.

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The other sites marked here in red belong
to this time, to the 10th-9th millennium,

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but these are settlements of this period.

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Settlements of settled hunters-gatherers.

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It was a new discovery of 20-25 years ago,

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that we already have
settled hunters-gatherers.

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We thought that hunters-gatherers
are always nomadic, but in this region

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they changed their life already
before the invention of food-producing.

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Göbekli Tepe is not a settlement.

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It belongs to it, but is only a sanctuary,
or many sanctuaries together.

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We'll see examples.

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Neolithic, just to have an idea
of what it means: from wild to domestic.

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Mainly here from wild to domestic cereals,
they are getting much bigger.

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With animals it's a little more difficult,

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which is the reason why only four animals
had been domesticated.

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That's a beginning:
goat, sheep, cattle, and pig.

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We exclude the dog; it was domesticated
earlier, by the hunters-gatherers already.

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But it's a different story,

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it was domesticated not
for meat production,

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but to be the fellow of the hunters.

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But this means Neolithic societies,
food-producing societies,

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on the base of domesticated species,
plants, and animals.

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Our prediction that this site
of Göbekli Tepe is so important

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was completely fulfilled
during the excavations.

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Here the excavation work in an aerial view
from 2011 with several areas.

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And there are many findings,
like these flint tools; very common.

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Or findings like sculptures.

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The flints are known from everywhere,

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but not such large-scale sculptures

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like these ones or composite monuments

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like this totem pole sculpture
with several elements on top:

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maybe a lion, here an eye, an ear,
and below a human and another human.

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A very exciting composition and an art,
which we didn't know before,

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which is challenging
our ability to interpret.

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And the most important
monumental architecture

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- sorry, I'm mixing here -
monumental architecture:

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mainly ovals or circles with pillars,
delineated by pillars.

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Two of the pillars are very big ones,
always in the center,

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and the pillars always T-shaped.

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This strange T-shape we can understand

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- here another view of these enclosures:
the surrounding oval with some T-shapes

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which are smaller, and the central pillars
here, the T-shapes.

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Fortunately, we can understand
the meaning of these T-shapes,

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which at first seem a little bit strange.

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Highly stylized humans are depicted

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because in some cases
we have arms depicted,

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we have the hands, the fingers,
and some parts of garment are depicted.

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So, the T-shapes are stylized humans,
and very often in Göbekli Tepe

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we have animals depicted
like attributes on the T-shapes.

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The T-shapes are unique in history.

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We don't have T-shapes
in the Palaeolithic period before,

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we don't have them after
the time of Göbekli Tepe,

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which ends with the 9th millennium.

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There are just some very rough comparisons
like the 'taulas' in Menorca,

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but this is a very different function,
a very different meaning.

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It's really a table: 'taula' means table.

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These are tables, no connection
with the T-shapes of Göbekli Tepe.

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These T-shapes are so important

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because looking back
to the upper Palaeolithic art

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like Lascaux, Altamira, or the recently
discovered caves of Chauvet or Cosquer:

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here the animals are always dominant,
the animals are at the center.

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In Göbekli now we have the human form,
being the superior form, and it's clear:

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there is a connection with
the phenomenon of domestication

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because now the human is the boss,

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and the animals are reduced
to attributes of the humans.

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Some impressions of the excavations

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of these circles, of these enclosures,

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here for example with in situ,
in original position, the central pillars

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with a height of 5.50 meters
on top of the original floor.

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We didn't erect anything.
It's all found in its original position.

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We are really very lucky
to have the chance

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to excavate such an exciting,
such an important site like Göbekli Tepe.

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This is unique, there is no parallel,
there is no comparison.

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We have contemporaneous sites
as I told you, but they don't have

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this kind of monumental art
and monumental pillars.

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Very often we have combinations
of motives depicted.

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They are very rich, showing
a narrative character,

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showing that we have
illustrations of stories

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of mythological stories in front of us.

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And even more, when we look to this part,

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we have objects of unknown function,

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but we have animals: a bird,
a quadruped, a reptile, a frog.

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And such an association together
with the objects is very similar

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to things we know, for example,

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from old Egypt, 4th millennium
Egypt, on slate palettes.

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So started the Egyptian
hieroglyphic writing in the same way.

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The sign of city and animals added to it,
but in Göbekli Tepe it came to its end.

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There was no continuation.

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Unfortunately, Göbekli
had been completely abandoned

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for unknown reasons so far.

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In Egypt, from these beginnings

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the invention of the hieroglyphic
writing started.

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Göbekli Tepe is part of this story,
but with a big interruption.

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Here we have the image being an image,
we have the transformation into what

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in German we call the Bildzeichen,
and from these Bildzeichen other signs

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are developing, and here
we are coming to our letter alpha or A.

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You can easily understand it.

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But this is a discontinuation
of many thousands years

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between Göbekli Tepe around 9,000

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and the invention
of true writing around 3,000.

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There are at least 6,000 years
of a gap we tried to fill,

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but for the moment,
we don't know how to fill it.

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But we want to continue our work.

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Hopefully young colleagues
will continue the research

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on this very exciting period of mankind.

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One colleague said - it's not from me -

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"Göbekli Tepe seems to be

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the most smoking gun
in archeology at the moment".

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I think it's really true because we have
so many unexpected new results,

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which are changing
our ability to interpret.

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And we can see, reconstruct that there
was something like a cultist community.

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Göbekli Tepe with its sanctuaries
[was] no settlement,

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but [there were] settlements
around Göbekli Tepe.

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And our zoologists can recognize

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from the archaeofauna,
from the animal bones,

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discovered in Göbekli and the other sites,

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that the early domestication of cattle

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was done on the Syrian Euphrates,
sheep on the Turkish Euphrates,

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goat in the Taurus Mountains,
and pig in the Tigris basin.

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Independently from each other,
but very quickly.

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All these discoveries, these inventions
had been brought together

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to what we call the Neolithic package.

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This Neolithic package enables people
to be superior to their neighbours,

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to those neighbors
that are still being hunters-gatherers.

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Now the farming way of life was invented,

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and was spreading all over Europe.

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We saw this map at the beginning

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00:15:11,221 --> 00:15:15,107
with the distribution
of this new way of life.

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00:15:16,544 --> 00:15:19,635
How did people come to Göbekli Tepe?

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00:15:19,636 --> 00:15:21,907
How do you bring a lot of people there

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00:15:21,908 --> 00:15:26,350
to be able to erect
this monumental architecture?

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00:15:26,351 --> 00:15:31,500
Of course not just by saying:
"Hello, come and we work", no.

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Feasting. Big feasting.

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We can expect big feasting
to have happened at the mound,

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00:15:37,002 --> 00:15:42,480
so people came there and so they had
the power for working events on the side.

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00:15:42,501 --> 00:15:46,506
We have a lot of experimental archeology

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00:15:46,507 --> 00:15:49,763
on how to move monoliths,
on how to move big stones.

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00:15:49,764 --> 00:15:53,545
But we fortunately also have
some authentic photos from Indonesia

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00:15:53,546 --> 00:15:55,334
done by European travelers,

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00:15:55,337 --> 00:15:59,680
showing how megaliths
are being actually moved

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00:15:59,681 --> 00:16:04,024
for the construction
of the tomb of a king.

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00:16:04,025 --> 00:16:08,369
We can be very sure
in Göbekli Tepe it was looking similar.

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This in short a story

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00:16:10,057 --> 00:16:15,384
which is just a rough framing
of a story of results.

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Not only my results: this is teamwork.

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Archeology usually is teamwork,

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including local workers
from the nearby villages,

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00:16:26,141 --> 00:16:29,804
including students from Europe and Turkey,

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00:16:29,805 --> 00:16:32,117
including scientists, specialists

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00:16:34,997 --> 00:16:38,028
in archaeofauna, botany, and other things.

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We will try to continue for many years

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00:16:40,884 --> 00:16:46,248
and to answer many
of the still open questions

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00:16:46,249 --> 00:16:51,634
about this unexpected
and exciting world of hunters-gatherers,

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00:16:54,004 --> 00:16:58,201
who changed to become farmers,
and who changed the world history.

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00:16:58,202 --> 00:16:59,612
Thank you.

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00:16:59,613 --> 00:17:00,827
(Applause)