Level 1 — Absolute Beginner
Gobekli Tepe is a very old place in Turkey. Many people call it the world's oldest temple. It is about 11,000 years old.
For 30 years, scientists found small pieces of human bones there. The bones were spread around the site. No one knew exactly why.
Now, scientists found something new. They found two whole graves under the floor of a building. Inside were the bones of a woman, a man, and a teenage girl.
Scientists think rain and landslides moved the old bone pieces down the hill over thousands of years. The new graves may help explain how people buried their dead long ago.
- archaeologist
- a scientist who studies old objects and places from the past
- temple
- a building used for religious activities
- grave
- a place in the ground where a dead body is buried
- bone
- a hard part inside the body that forms the skeleton
- mystery
- something that is hard to understand or explain
- skeleton
- all the bones in a body
- landslide
- when soil and rocks slide down a hill
- ancient
- very old, from a long time ago
Level 2 — Elementary
Archaeologists working at Gobekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey, widely considered the world's oldest known temple complex, have uncovered the site's first two intact human burials, a find that could finally solve a decades old puzzle.
Since excavations began in 1995, researchers had recovered hundreds of scattered human bone fragments across the site, but never a complete, undisturbed burial. This made it difficult to understand exactly how the people who built Gobekli Tepe treated their dead.
The newly discovered burial pit, found beneath the plaster floor of a rectangular Neolithic building, contained the remains of at least three people: a woman over the age of 35, a man in his twenties, and an adolescent girl between 11 and 14 years old.
A study published in the journal PLOS One proposes that erosion and landslides over thousands of years likely carried many of the older scattered bone fragments down from higher parts of the settlement into the monumental structures found below, explaining why they had never been found alongside a complete burial until now.
- excavation
- the process of carefully digging up an archaeological site
- intact
- complete and not damaged or disturbed
- fragment
- a small piece broken off from something larger
- burial pit
- a hole dug in the ground for burying a body
- Neolithic
- relating to the later part of the Stone Age, when farming began
- adolescent
- a young person who is developing from a child into an adult
- erosion
- the gradual wearing away of soil or rock by wind, water, or ice
- monumental
- very large and impressive, often built to be long lasting
Level 3 — Intermediate
Archaeologists at Gobekli Tepe, the roughly 11,000 year old site in southeastern Turkey widely regarded as humanity's oldest known monumental temple complex, have unearthed the site's first fully intact burials, a discovery that may resolve a puzzle that has persisted since excavations began three decades ago.
Since 1995, researchers had recovered hundreds of disarticulated human bone fragments scattered throughout the site's monumental enclosures, but the absence of any complete, undisturbed burial left open the question of how the community that built these structures actually interred its dead.
The newly excavated burial pit, discovered beneath the plaster floor of a rectangular Pre Pottery Neolithic B building and dated to between roughly 8,700 and 8,000 BCE, held the deliberately rearranged remains of at least three individuals: a woman over 35, a man in his twenties or thirties, and an adolescent girl.
According to a study published in PLOS One, the pattern of scattered bones found elsewhere at the site is best explained by erosion and periodic landslides, which over millennia carried loose remains from higher, less protected areas of the settlement down into the monumental buildings where excavators later found them, a hypothesis this intact burial helps to substantiate.
- monumental
- large in scale and built to endure, often for ceremonial or symbolic purposes
- disarticulated
- having the joints or connected parts separated, as with a skeleton
- enclosure
- an area surrounded by a wall or barrier, often for a specific purpose
- inter
- to bury a dead body in the ground
- Pre Pottery Neolithic
- an early phase of the Neolithic period before the widespread use of pottery
- deliberately
- done intentionally rather than by accident
- periodic
- occurring at regular or repeated intervals
- substantiate
- to provide evidence to support or prove a claim
Level 4 — Advanced
At Gobekli Tepe, the roughly eleven millennia old Anatolian complex whose monumental enclosures have long anchored debates over the origins of organized religion and settled society, archaeologists have unearthed the site's first fully intact interments, a discovery that promises to resolve an interpretive puzzle that has vexed the excavation since its inception three decades ago.
From the outset of fieldwork in 1995, researchers catalogued hundreds of disarticulated human skeletal fragments dispersed throughout the site's enclosures, yet the conspicuous absence of any undisturbed primary burial left the community's mortuary practices frustratingly opaque, fueling speculation ranging from excarnation rituals to skull veneration.
The newly documented burial pit, sealed beneath the plaster floor of a rectangular Pre Pottery Neolithic B structure and radiocarbon dated to approximately 8,700 to 8,000 BCE, preserved the deliberately curated remains of at least three individuals, an adult woman, a young adult man, and an adolescent girl, arranged in a manner suggesting secondary manipulation rather than simple primary deposition.
A study published in PLOS One advances a taphonomic explanation for the site's longstanding bone scatter: cumulative erosional processes and episodic slope failure, operating across millennia, likely transported loosely interred or exposed remains from the settlement's upper terraces into the monumental structures below, a hypothesis this intact assemblage lends considerable empirical weight to, even as it leaves unresolved precisely why this particular burial escaped the same fate.
- interment
- the act of burying a dead body
- mortuary
- relating to the burial or commemoration of the dead
- excarnation
- the practice of removing flesh from a body before burial, often through exposure
- veneration
- deep respect or reverence, especially in a religious context
- radiocarbon dated
- dated using the measurement of radioactive carbon decay in organic material
- taphonomic
- relating to the processes affecting remains after death, including decay and burial
- episodic
- occurring in irregular or infrequent episodes rather than continuously
- empirical
- based on observation or experience rather than theory alone
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