Potbelly Hill was a settled Neolithic town, not only a shrine
Göbekli Tepe—“Potbelly Hill” in Turkish, also Kurdish Wish Hill—in Upper Mesopotamia’s Turkey was occupied from about 9500 BCE to at least 8000 BCE at the dawn of permanent settlement. 2019 findings stress houses, cereal processing, water supply, and daily tools—not merely a nomad sanctuary.
Prehistorians still argue over whether sites like this followed the invention of farming or helped drive it. A 1963 survey recorded the hill, but Klaus Schmidt recognised its importance in 1994 and excavated from 1995 until his death in 2014; Istanbul University, the Şanlıurfa Museum and partner institutions carried on the work. Findings reported in 2019 of houses, cereal processing, water supply and everyday tools recast the site as a lived-in settlement, not merely a gathering place for nomads.
The mound lies near the village of Örencik in Şanlıurfa Province, in the Taş Tepeler, or Stone Hills, at the foot of the Taurus Mountains. It sits on a flat limestone plateau overlooking the Harran plain and the headwaters of the Balikh, a Euphrates tributary; a narrow spur links it to the mountains in the north, while steep slopes and cliffs fall away elsewhere.
When people lived here, the climate was wetter. Open steppe around the site was rich in wild einkorn, wheat and barley and grazed by wild sheep and goats, gazelles and equids, with large herds of goitered gazelle perhaps passing on seasonal migrations. There were no substantial woods nearby: nine-tenths of the charcoal comes from pistachio or almond.
Like most Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites around Urfa, it occupies a high point with wide views, near soft limestone for building and flint for tools. Carved channels harvested rainwater into rock-cut cisterns holding at least 150 cubic metres, and springs now dry may once have flowed nearby. Excavations have focused on the southern slope near a mulberry tree that marks an Islamic pilgrimage spot, and a small cave on the western edge holds a single relief of a bovid.
Source: Göbekli Tepe
