Welcome to brainsty a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff. Laurena bolobaum here. It's perhaps obvious to say that eleven thousand years ago the world looked very different. Lush forests existed where there are now deserts, coral reefs where there are now grasslands, and humans hadn't yet the gun building
very many things. Of course, we can't ever really know exactly what our ancestors were up to so long ago, because no one had invented writing yet, but places like the archaeological site Go Beckley Tepe can give us a few clues. Go Beckley Tepe is a monumental site situated in the mountains of southeastern Turkey. It's along the lines of Stonehenge, but about six thousand years older. The name roughly means pop belly hill in Turkish, which is a
pretty good descriptor for the site. It was discovered by a team of American and Turkish archaeologists in the nineteen sixties, but their discovery of limestone slabs and flint artifacts wasn't recognized from what it was until nineteen ninety four, when a German archaeologist by the name of Klaus Schmidt realized its significance. It's a mysterious site to this day, partly because we can make so few assumptions about the people who built it. For the article this episode is based
on How Stuff Works. Spoke via email with Jens Natrov back in twenty twenty. He's an archaeologist who at the time had been working on the go Beckley Tepe project for some fourteen years. He said, monuments, generally speaking, are a particular example of architecture standing out due to their
size and or the effort necessary to create them. Go Beckley Tepe is a noteworthy example in this context, since the monuments there marked the first yet known example of monumental architecture, and that they were constructed in a cultural context of still highly mobile hunter gatherers. The site comprises over twenty limestone structures or buildings, many of which are
round in shape and built with sturdy walls. Inside those walls stand t shaped limestone pillars, usually laid out in a pattern, with two large pillars at the center of the structure, surrounded by smaller ones around the edges. Often built into the walls and incorporated into stone benches. There are some two hundred pillars in total. The tallest are sixteen feet high or about five meters, and they weigh
between seven and ten tons each. The pillars are covered with all manner of engravings, most of which depict animals, though not always the animals that you'd necessarily expect. In addition to game animals like gazelles and boores, the pillars depict foxes, snakes, lions, cranes, vultures, spiders, and square orpians. The pictographs seemed to be dominated by animals that wouldn't
have been particularly good to eat. Some of the pillars themselves seem to represent larger than life anthropomorphic sculptures, with carvings that give them arms, belt with a loincloth, and a head with no face. There are other free standing statues, for example, a life sized one of a wild boar. Some carvings and statues were decorated with pigments. The round buildings that they're in range from about twenty feet across to over sixty five feet that's six to twenty meters.
It's unknown whether they would have had roofs attached. These structures seem to be what's called special purpose communal buildings, structures that were not regularly inhabited, or weren't used for what's considered daily household kind of tasks. Instead, they were perhaps temples, sanctuaries, or other places for dispersed groups to
gather at appointed time times. It seems go Beckley Tepe was a work in process for a couple thousand years, from around nine thousand, five hundred to eight thousand, two hundred BCE. During that time, and especially towards the end of it, people were building settlements, raising animals like goats and sheep, and cultivating crops. But from what archaeologists have been able to surmise from the side itself, the people
who built it were still primarily hunter gatherers. There's no direct evidence that they kept livestock or planted their own food, and their tools and vessels were made of stone but not pottery or metal. When excavations were in their early stages, researchers like Schmidt theorized that it was a monument of religious or other cultural significance used by peoples who never
settled it. It was an astounding discovery because the assumption had always been that people who were scrapping for resources pre agriculture wouldn't have wasted time building monuments. There was even a theory that perhaps religion drove settlement, not the other way around. But in the thirty years since, and even in the past five years since, how stuff works spoke with Noutrough. Given more discoveries and research at the site,
the picture is a little more complicated. Archaeologists at goe Beecley Tepe have found grindstones, mortars, and carved stone vessels that were used to process foods like grains and lagomes, which we know because of residues left on them. One stone vessel that held grain is big enough to have made some forty three gallons of porridge or perhaps beer at a go that's about one hundred and sixty three liters.
Perhaps it was only ever used at infrequent parties, but even if that's the case, it indicates that the cook or brewer had access to a lot of grain. Maybe they were really adept at gathering wild grain, or maybe they were working on cultivating crops that weren't quite genetically domesticated yet. And other structures have been uncovered there too, including lots of smaller rectangular buildings with fireplaces and tools
that indicate that they were probably homes. The teams have recently found other indications of domestic life at the site, including middens and large pieces of carved bedrock that were likely used to collect and store rainwater. If they were collecting rainwater. That clears up one of the original doubts about the site ever being used as a settlement because it is about three miles or five kilometers away from
the nearest stream. A Natroft said, while the early monumentality of the site is definitely impressive to me, it's the social implications at the doorstep of one of the crucial points in the history of our species is what makes this research so fascinating. When go Beckley Tepe was being built and rebuilt over those couple thousand years, humans were in the process of transitioning from hunting and gathering to agriculture and keeping livestock. The site shows what might be
a bridge between the two ways of life. Some researchers even think the site, with all its engravings of wild and dangerous animals, might represent a sort of cultural pushback against encroaching civilization, that it was a monument to the old ways. We may never know what really went on at Goebecley Tepe. One theory goes that it was a human skull cult that's based on fragments of skulls found there that were carved, painted, and otherwise modified after death.
But whatever the case, it seems that this was a place built and maintained by a perhaps transitioning hunter. Gathers society to meet up, trade information and goods, and find romantic partners, share life hacks, and make friends who could help out in a pinch. And if they were performing
skull cults ceremonies, what better way to build community. Today's episode is based on the article go Beckley Tepe the Temple that hints at what humans were up to eleven thousand years ago on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Jesslin Shields. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.