Claims › Megalithic construction › Göbekli Tepe's megalithic enclosures are about 11,600 years old

Göbekli Tepe's megalithic enclosures are about 11,600 years old

Status: Mainstream Verdict: Measured: c. 9500 BCE

The claim: The carved T-shaped pillars and stone enclosures at Göbekli Tepe, Turkey, were built by hunter-gatherers about 9500 BCE, before farming, pottery or writing.

Why this label: Radiocarbon dates from the enclosures, including plaster on the wall of Enclosure D, fall around 9700–9300 cal BCE. This was one of the biggest surprises in modern archaeology: monumental building came before, not after, settled farming.

Background

The enclosures date to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, right after the end of the Younger Dryas cold period. The pillars, up to about 5.5 m tall, carry reliefs of foxes, vultures, snakes and human arms and hands. Many other sites of the same age (the Taş Tepeler group, including Karahan Tepe) have since been found nearby. The site's timing is a key anchor for the Younger Dryas question.

What has been measured

Dates, measurements and documented findings, kept separate from interpretation.

Enclosure D wall plaster: 9745–9314 cal BCE; charcoal near its floor: 9664–9311 cal BCE. [1][2]
The enclosures were later deliberately or gradually filled, so fill dates mostly show burial, not construction. [1]

Evidence and arguments for

Multiple radiocarbon dates from different materials and contexts. [2]

Evidence and arguments against, or limits

Excavators note the enclosures may not all be contemporary, and the earliest building phases may lie deeper than excavated. [1]

Open questions & what would change the label

Whether still older layers exist beneath the excavated enclosures, and how many unexcavated enclosures (detected by geophysics) are older.

Sites

Göbekli Tepe · Karahan Tepe

Related claims

Sources

German Archaeological Institute (DAI) blog: How old is it? Dating Göbekli Tepe. https://www.dainst.org/en/blogs/how-old-is-it-dating-goebekli-tepe/625 data
Dietrich, O. et al. (2013). Establishing a radiocarbon sequence for Göbekli Tepe: state of research and new data. Neo-Lithics 1/13 (PDF). https://jensnotroff.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ii-13_15_neolithic… data
Archaeology Magazine (March/April 2024). Discovering a new Neolithic world (Karahan Tepe and the Taş Tepeler sites). https://archaeology.org/issues/march-april-2024/features/discovering-… background

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Sources checked against Crossref and publisher pages on 2026-10-22. Labels describe the claim, not the people who hold it. Methodology.