Anthropology

By Andrew Curry
Jun. 28, 2017 , 2:00 PM

Archaeologists have made a remarkable find in a 12,000-year-old stone temple in southeastern Turkey. Among tens of thousands of animal bones and a statue that may depict a kneeling figure holding a human head, researchers have uncovered the remains of human skulls that were stripped of their flesh and carved with deep, straight grooves running front to back.

The carvings represent the first evidence of skull decoration in the archaeological record of the region. “This is completely new, and we don’t have a model to go on,” says Gary Rollefson, an archaeologist at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, who was not involved with the work. The purpose of the carvings is unclear, he says, but they may have been part of an ancient religious practice. “There seems to be a focus on ritual reuse after decapitation.”

The site, known as Göbekli Tepe, has already changed the way archaeologists think about the origins of civilization. Located not far from the Syrian border on a hill with a commanding view of the surrounding landscape, it boasts multiple enclosures with tall, T-shaped pillars surrounded by rings of stones, many carved with reliefs. Such structures are unique for humans at this time—a period that predates agriculture or even pottery. Researchers once thought complex religion and society came about only after agriculture guaranteed early societies a food surplus. But Göbekli Tepe’s—which predates most agriculture—suggests it might have been the other way around: Hunter-gatherers might have started domesticating crops in order to have a reliable supply of food for workers at the site where they gathered for ceremonies.

When excavations at the site began in the mid-1990s, archaeologists expected to find human burials. Instead, they found animal bones by the tens of thousands. Mixed in were about 700 fragments of human bone, scattered throughout a loose fill of stones and gravel. “They’re distributed all over the area, in and around structures,” says team member Julia Gresky, an anthropologist at the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. “We can’t put any individuals together.”

More:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/carved-human-skulls-found-ancient-stone-temple