The T-shaped pillars, or megaliths of Gobekli Tepe, Turkey, date back 12,000 years. They are around 2.7 metres tall and depict sophisticated images cut into stone of wild game: boars, lions, serpents and so on.
These standing stones, set out in circles, with floors of beaten limestone and remnant clay walls, (roofs once covered the pillars) represent the "oldest man-made place of worship ever found".
A place of worship – what does that term signify? Perhaps a place of commemoration and celebration. Ancestor worship, certainly.
We, as a reflective species, commemorate, and in doing so, preserve a record of achievement and triumph in those activities which define our culture. We pay homage to our heroes and to our gods – in so doing preserve memory of them in architecture and image, in song and dance.
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