About 12,000 years ago, in the Turkish highlands, near the Syrian and Iraqi borders, Göbekli Tepe or Pot Belly Hill, a fantastic temple complex, was constructed. In archaeological terms, this site was said to belong to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period, between 9600–7300 BC).
It was built around 10,000–9,000 BC, while Stonehenge was built in about 2,000–2,500 BC. Before Gobekli Tepe could be discovered, the oldest megalithic temple complex was in Malta, built in about 3,500BC.
In another part of the world around this time, Plato’s Atlantis civilization had already disappeared. Built 5,000 years before the oldest civilization, Sumer is not far south from Göbekli Tepe along the route of the River Euphrates and off Taurus Mountain’s highlands in Turkey.
In 1964, in an American survey, Gobekli Tepe was recognized as containing Byzantine cemetery. In 1994, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt discovered from the fragments of stone on the surface that the site was indeed prehistoric.
Location of Göbekli Tepe:
It is situated at the northernmost tip of a fecund land called Fertile Crescent. Set amid vast forestland, plains and plenty of gazelles and birds, wheat was first sown at a nearby mountain some centuries after Pot Belly Hill was discovered. Pigs were first domesticated nearby in about 8000 B.C. Cattle followed latter in about 6500 B.C .and later, pottery. From here, these discoveries were taken to nearby Çatalhöyük, the oldest recorded Neolithic village, situated over 480 km to the west.
Significance of Göbekli Tepe: This is a historical marvel, an architectural wonder and the most fantastic archaeological discovery of our times since it makes us see a very important stage of the development of ancient human communities differently.
We now know that hunters and gatherers of the times, along with farmers, put together this monumental temple complex before the city was developed. Since then, Göbekli Tepe is civilization’s oldest site to the extent that it came into existence even before human settlements did.
Building Göbekli Tepe: Who built such a large temple and how? Schmidt opines that groups of hunters gathered at the temple site while the construction was underway, lived in animal hide tents and killed game for food. This fact is supported by the many flint arrowheads found near the temple and suggests the temple complex’s age.
It is absolutely amazing to believe that early Neolithic hunters could have the vision to build something so elaborate. It also changes the presumption that agriculture came before settled communities and that arts, architecture and society depended on the food sources available from farming. Gobekli Tepe is proof of the fact that hunters here were far more advanced than we imagine.
Reasons to build: 
The answer to this, says Schmidt, lies in the fact that it was built as a prayer centre and a funeral ground. Evidence of this lies in the human bones found in the soil which were put in the open recesses near the stones. The fact that Gobekli Tepe was entirely religious in purpose is borne out by the fact that it has several rock carvings on its stones which are ritualistic.
Schmidt’s discovered a circular complex with a diameter of 27.4 meters. In fact, the name Pot Belly Hill is derived from its round shape of hill atop the temple complex. So far, Schmidt and his team have discovered 25 pillars containing abstract carvings and symbols, done simply and effectively. They also have bas-reliefs of several animals such as wild boar, cattle, leopards, foxes and lions, insects, reptiles and birds.
Faceless human forms can also be seen on some T-shaped pillars, including human arms, shoulders, fingers and elbows. These human forms refer to deities similar to humans or worship of ancestors.
After over a decade of excavating, Schmidt discovered that Pot Belly Hill was a ceremonial site or a ‘Rome of the Ice Age.’ Here, people congregated to build the temple. The temple had polished stone circles with carvings and terrazzo flooring and double benches.
Vanishing civilization: Nobody could discover why, but eventually, Göbekli Tepe or Pot Belly Hill lost its prime position in the eighth millennium BC. With the coming of agriculture and animal husbandry, it lost its earlier significance and was destroyed by natural calamities and buried under 300-500 cubic meters of soil.