Stonehenge is believed to have been built around 3100 B.C. The Great Pyramids of Egypt are dated 2560 B.C.
Those two renowned examples of monumental architecture may soon be eclipsed by a series of stone pillars being unearthed in southern Turkey.
National Geographic reported in its June issue that Göbekli Tepe (pronounced Guh-behk-LEE TEH-PEH) is the world's oldest known architectural monument, built about 11,600 years ago by hunter-gatherers in southeastern Turkey.
The site is near the Syrian border and by the city of Sanhurfa, where the Prophet Abraham is believed to have been born.
The T-shaped pillars are up to 18 feet tall, weigh as much as 16 tons, and are decorated with ornate bas relief animals. The pillars were carved from limestone quarries in neighboring valleys and lugged, without the aid of wheels or draft animals, to a remote site where they were arranged in circles. Up to 20 such rings have been discovered.
Much is yet to be learned about the people who built these pillars and their intentions. But the monuments, discovered in 1994 by Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute, have caused anthropologists to rethink prevailing theories on the origins of religion.
"Anthropologists have assumed that organized religion began as a way of salving the tensions that inevitably arose when hunter-gatherers settled down, became farmers, and developed large societies," Charles C. Mann wrote in the National Geographic article. But with Göbekli Tepe believed to have been built by nomads, it suggests "the human impulse to gather for sacred rituals" predated the rise of villages and agriculture.
More information is available online at nationalgeographic.com.-David Yonke-.toledoblade
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