A Day in Göbekli Tepe: Eyes Awakening in 9600 BCE

As the first light of day brushed against the stones of the Fertile Crescent, it felt like the touch of a newborn’s skin. Shadows of towering stone circles stretched long across the earth. There were no cities, no writing, no pottery. But here, on the hill we now call Göbekli Tepe, something was happening.

An unnamed stoneworker — his voice swallowed by time — rose with the sun. With a flint tool in hand, he inspected a massive T-shaped pillar he had been carving. Today, he would etch a crane onto its surface. The crane was sacred; a symbol linking the heavens and the earth.

Women passed silently through another stone circle. Built largely by men, these enclosures bore witness to female presence in ways still not fully understood. Perhaps it was they who felt the spirit of stone most intimately. No one knows. Not even the archaeologists.

By midday, a ritual would begin. Some believe animals were sacrificed. Others think they danced. Or perhaps these gatherings celebrated the cycles of nature. But for those present that morning, the meaning lay in understanding the thin line between life and death — and how to cross it.

Thousands of years later, in 1995, a man named Klaus Schmidt looked across this barren hill. What seemed like random stones to others called to him. He dug. He brushed away the soil. And then the pillars, with their carved figures, began to speak:
“We were here. Long before you. And very different from you.”

Today, a visitor walking among those stones may unknowingly tear the fabric of time. Perhaps they will see a bird etched in relief. Perhaps it is the same crane that greeted the sun on that very morning, eleven thousand years ago — still flying, still watching.

Cover Photo: Oğuz Büyükyıldırım