ABSTRACT
History is being rewritten in Southeast Turkey, near the mountains that act as the source of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Not far from the Syrian border, at a site called Göbekli Tepe (“potbelly hill” in Turkish), the work of Klaus Schmidt from the German Archaeological Institute is challenging common views about when, why, and how religion developed. To begin with, the site is old, very old—the twenty-two acre site of about twenty structures was constructed, apparently without wheels or draft animals, some 11,600 years ago, about seven thousand years before the Great Pyramid of Giza. It is the oldest known remains of religious monumental architecture. 1
