Stone to Silicon

Tools & manufacturing · c. 9,500 BCE

Monumental stone building

Carved pillars weighing tons rise before farming takes hold.

At Gobekli Tepe in Anatolia, people quarried, carved and raised T-shaped limestone pillars up to about 5 m tall around 9500 BCE. It shows organized communal construction at the very dawn of agriculture.

See it in the living treeWikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

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The OLDEST temple in the world 🤯 - BBCBBC · YouTube

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Share of people living in cities Latest: 57.5 % (2025) Source: Our World in Data

World population over a million years Latest: 6.27k million people (2000) Source: DeLong 1998, table 'Total World Population' (Kremer series); Kremer 1993, Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990, QJE 108(3)