Stonehenge was built 5000 years ago in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2500 BC. Carbon dating of organic matter adhering to the megaliths of Gobekli Tepe reveal it to be 12,000 years old.
The strangest part of Gobekli Tepe is its inhabitants entombed their temple under thousands of tons of earth creating the artificial hills on which the unnamed shepherd walked in 1994.
No one knows why Gobekli was buried. Strange indeed.
Gobekli Tepe is the oldest such site in the world, by a mind numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-wheel, pre everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant. - Tom Cox
