The ancient site of Gobeklitepe has made the National Geographics list for a ‘must see’ destination in 2020. The historic site is located in the south-eastern province of Sanliurfa and is the worlds oldest temple built around 11,600 years ago.
The site is located in the south-eastern region of Turkey situated at the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent region that had been home to early civilizations.
Gobeklitepe was first discovered back in 1963 by researches from Istanbul and Chicago universities. Primarily circles and rectangles of massive stones where revealed. All stones had been decorated with bas-reliefs of foxes, gazelles and boars.
The temple is much older than the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge in England.
Archaeologists and historians are still to this day trying to solve the puzzle of the Stone Age temples and are trying to understand how people of that time could have built T-shaped pillars weighing between 40 and 60 tons.
In 2019 the site was announced as the ‘Year of Gobeklitepe’ by the Turkish government to promote the UNESCO World Heritage site.
Source: Hurriyet Daily News
