Göbekli Tepe upended decades of archaeological consensus after German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt recognised its significance in 1994 and began excavations the following year. What had long appeared to be an ordinary hilltop in southeastern Turkey gradually revealed itself as a complex of circular enclosures ringed by massive T-shaped limestone pillars — some standing over five metres tall.

Most remarkable of all is who built this place. The communities responsible had not yet developed agriculture or animal domestication. Hunter-gatherer groups, coordinating labour on a scale previously unimagined, dragged and erected blocks of stone weighing many tons. This challenges the long-held assumption that complex social organisation only emerged after — and because of — the agricultural revolution.

The pillars carry vivid reliefs: foxes, snakes, boars, vultures, and humanoid figures. These carvings offer a rare window into a Neolithic symbolic world, though the site's exact function — temple, mortuary complex, gathering place — remains debated among researchers.

Göbekli Tepe was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018, and continues to force us to reconsider the very origins of civilisation.