A zoo in stone
The pillars of Gobekli Tepe are best known for their shape, but they are also covered in images. Animals dominate the carvings, which are done mostly in relief, with the background cut back so the figure stands slightly proud of the surface. Sculptures in the round, including figures of predators, have also been found. The animals are generally shown in profile, in clear and often powerful poses, and they are not copied from a single model: the same species can look quite different on different pillars. The title’s reference to “temples” follows the site’s popular nickname; whether the enclosures were temples is a separate question, which this article does not try to settle.
Very few of the animals are domesticated. Since the site dates to a time before farming and herding as far as the evidence shows, it is not surprising that the images show the wild fauna of the surrounding landscape. What is more telling is the selection: the carvers favoured some creatures and left out others that were hunted and eaten most often.
The creatures represented
The range is broad. The following appear on one or more pillars, though which pillar and which enclosure varies:
- Snakes, frequently shown in lines or in wavy bands running down a pillar, sometimes in groups. They are among the most common images.
- Foxes, both as standing figures and as part of the human-like pillars’ loincloths, which appear to show a fox pelt.
- Wild boar, shown in both relief and as sculpture, and often in an aggressive stance.
- Aurochs, the large wild cattle, depicted with horns.
- Wild asses (onagers) and gazelles, less prominent than the others.
- Birds, including cranes and ducks, and vultures, the best known being on a central pillar in Enclosure D often called the “vulture stone”.
- Spiders, scorpions and insects, mostly small and arranged among larger figures.
- Big cats and other carnivores, which appear mainly as sculpture or relief with open mouths.
Enclosure D, one of the first excavated, is rich in foxes, snakes and birds, while other enclosures show a different mix, with boars and predators prominent in some. Different enclosures seem to favour different animals, which has led to the idea that each one might have a particular theme or have been associated with a different group, although this remains conjecture.
Reading the imagery
Researchers have offered several explanations. None is certain.
Totems or group emblems. One idea is that different communities that came to the site had their own animal symbols, in the manner of clan or lineage emblems recorded in many ethnographic accounts. That could explain why different enclosures concentrate on different animals. There is no direct proof, and comparisons with recent societies are only analogies.
Dangerous and powerful beings. Many of the animals, such as snakes, scorpions, boars, big cats and vultures, are dangerous, and some scholars have suggested that the imagery expresses awe or fear of the wild, or an effort to control it. This might reflect a worldview in which people and animals were in close relationship, but it is an interpretation.
Myth and story. Some groupings may show scenes, for example the vulture stone with a bird, a scorpion and a disc, which has been read as a story or symbolic composition. A few readings tie the vultures to the treatment of the dead, though the evidence is limited, as discussed in the article on the ritual centre debate.
Astronomical readings. A 2017 paper by Martin Sweatman and Dimitrios Tsikritsis proposed that animals on certain pillars correspond to constellations and record a comet event. Most archaeologists have been cautious or sceptical, in part because the match between animals and star patterns depends on how the images are interpreted. It should be treated as a minority hypothesis, not an established result.
Hunting and food. Animal bones in the deposits show what was eaten, mostly gazelle, aurochs and boar. The relief animals do not exactly match the diet, though, and therefore the images appear to have had a purpose beyond a record of the hunt.
Animals and the human-shaped pillars
The animals are not just a separate set of images. They interact with the central T-shaped pillars, which show arms, belts and pelts. The foxes on the loincloths and the animals running down the sides of the shafts suggest a link between the human-like figures and the animal world, perhaps representing people with animal attributes, or masked or costumed performers. Again, this is speculation based on the visible features.
How the picture compares with later art
Animal imagery as a sign of group identity or sacred power appears in many later cultures, and it may be tempting to see Gobekli Tepe as an early example. For example, the Scythian animal style of the steppe, the Pictish symbol stones of Scotland and the Nazca animal figures of Peru all use animals as emblems, though they belong to very different times and places. These similarities are interesting but do not imply any connection or the same meaning. At most they show how widespread the habit of using animals as symbols is.
What is still open
The reliefs are one of the best sources of information about the builders’ world, but they cannot be read like a book. New enclosures and pillars may add to or change the pattern, and some figures are worn or only partly uncovered. A careful reader should treat the explanations above as competing ideas and not as established facts. What is certain is that the people who made these carvings chose their subjects deliberately, in a way that shows a rich symbolic life well before the first farming villages.