Mother of Invention: Decoding Göbekli Tepe

by Martin Sweatman

Image credit: Teomancimit

In this essay Martin Sweatman reveals how the organized, prehistoric effort to build the sacred megaliths of Göbekli Tepe (pictured above) set the stage for the development of a complex society. This case study suggests it was a belief system (scientific in its time, but religious to modern minds) that led to the earliest glimmerings of civilization, including the development of agricultural technologies. Such a heretical insight overturns the general consensus among scholars that religious temples emerged in Neolithic times only after the establishment of sedentary farming communities and complicated social structures. In other words, Göbekli Tepe demonstrates that technology did not lead to the advent of civilization, but instead, it was a belief system and a desire to live together that engendered the agricultural technology necessary to achieve that cultural goal.

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