The dig site at Gobekli Tepe felt staged until I saw the real thing

I drove 3 hours from Sanliurfa last month expecting to be impressed, but honestly the reconstruction photos online made it look fake. Standing on the actual mound though, with those T-shaped pillars still buried in the earth, I realized we've been misreading the whole site as a temple when it might just be a settlement. Does anyone else think the excavation team's focus on ritual ignores the basic housing layers underneath?

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taylor66818d ago

My buddy Dave went two years ago and said the exact same thing about the housing layers, he spent an hour just staring at the buried floor stones near the edge of the trench. He talked to one of the local guides who admitted there's a whole section they haven't even touched yet, just because the ritual story brings in more funding. So yeah, the settlement angle feels a lot more real to me too, once you see the actual ground instead of the pictures.