Original subtitles

(dramatic music) (birds chirping)

Mastrelli: Eden, the original biblical paradise,

Where adam and eve lived in a land of plenty,

Until temptation triggered their fall from grace

And condemned them to a life of toil.

It's a tale long considered by science

To be a moral lesson based in mythology, not in fact.

But a prehistoric structure uncovered in turkey

Has rocked the foundations of stone age anthropology.

(dramatic music)

Could the bible's oldest story

Actually be rooted in reality?

(dramatic music)

For centuries the mysteries of the past

Have kept their secrets,

But there are clues cast in gold,

Etched in stone,

(crowd shouts) written in blood.

(dramatic music)

We can unlock them.

Every great archeological discovery

Attracts a truckload of superlatives.

The greatest.

The richest.

The biggest.

But when it comes to real game changers,

Discoveries that rewrite human history,

That cause paradigm shifts in our thinking

As seismic as an actual seismic event,

Those are few and far between.

Now recent excavations in turkey

Are producing results so epic in scope

That the discovery of the garden of eden

Itself is being invoked.

(gentle music)

Southeast turkey, 1994,

Klaus schmidt, of the german archeological institute,

Is alerted to the discovery of a potential new site.

A local farmer's plow has uncovered

A set of carved rocks protruding from the ground.

They stand on the crest of a mound called gobekli tepe

Near today's war-torn border with syria.

What schmidt uncovers is an archeological wonder

Like nothing else on earth.

Conard: Gobekli tepe when it was discovered,

Was an enormous surprise.

I think most people thought

That this doesn't really make sense.

Mastrelli: Over the next 20 years it has revolutionized

Archeologists' view of the stone age.

(tools clanking)

By the time he dies in 2014,

Schmidt's team has exposed a complex

Of massive limestone pillars,

A series of circular exclosures,

Each between 30 and a 100 feet across,

Clustered together near the top of the hill.

Today the site's in lockdown,

Just a few clicks away from what's long been a war zone.

But the protective shell

Conceals an architectural phenomenon.

At the center of each circle stands two huge monoliths,

T-shaped pillars carved out of a single block,

Standing up to 20 feet in height.

The entire complex is intricately decorated

With three-dimensional carvings of animals and birds.

A gallery sculpted in stone.

(dramatic music)

The structure's most complete ring of stones

Has been recreated at the museum of sanliurfa

On the syrian border.

Notroff: This reconstruction of enclosure allows us

To experience the sheer monumentality of the site.

Standing among these giant stones

Actually makes us appreciate the huge effort

These people must have gone through creating it.

Mastrelli: But the most breathtaking discovery

Was not the size of the complex.

It was its age.

It was once thought britain

Was home to the world's oldest stone circles.

But gobekli tepe blows stonehenge out of the water.

The most ancient organic material found in the fabric

Of the stonework was radio carbon

Dated to before 9,000 bce,

More than 11,000 years ago.

That's 6,000 years before construction

At stonehenge even began.

Notroff: We today actually are closer

To the builders of stonehenge

Than the people building stonehenge were to gobekli tepe.

(gentle music)

Mastrelli: Gobekli tepe represents the oldest

Monumental structure ever built,

Carved, moved, and erected without anything

More sophisticated than manpower and stone tools.

Notroff: We're talking about a period here

Which has not seen metal tools,

And even the wheel was not invented yet.

So, these monuments were put together by hand.

(gentle music)

Mastrelli: The art and architecture at gobekli tepe

Is rewriting prehistoric archeology.

But it was the identity of the architects

That would cause the greatest shock.

Archeologists found the clues not in the stonework,

But in the trash.

Joris peters has spent more than two decades

Examining 11,000-year- old animal remains

From the landscape around gobekli tepe.

But it's the animal bones discovered

Within the enclosures,

Which were the most revealing.

Most had been shattered,

(suspenseful music)

A clear sign they'd been butchered

To extract bone marrow.

(dramatic music)

But the key clue was in the type of bones discovered,

Only the richest cuts.

(people chatting)

Peters: Normally when you have domestic animals

Living in a place, when you slaughter them,

You will find all the elements of the body.

The head, the spine, the lower legs, it's all there.

But for gobekli tepe,

The picture is totally different.

Most of the bones we found

Are the ones that carry a lot of meat.

Mastrelli: The animals hadn't been butchered onsite.

They'd been carved up wherever they'd been killed,

And the meatiest joints brought up the hill.

For archeologists it was evidence

That these animals were wild,

And for the builders of gobekli tepe, they were prey.

Peters: The focus on meat-bearing parts

Points to hunter-gatherers.

(dramatic music)

Mastrelli: The discovery of gobekli tepe

Threw anthropologists' theories about life

In the stone age into chaos,

And rumor quickly spread of a mysterious monument

To nature in an ancient land of plenty.

(dramatic music) (birds chirping)

Could gobekli tepe hold the secret to the location

Of the bible's garden of eden?

(gentle music)

On a hilltop in eastern turkey called gobekli tepe,

Archeologists have unearthed

An 11,000-year-old complex of standing stones.

It's the oldest monumental structure on earth

And predates stonehenge by 6,000 years.

Archeologists have discovered

It was erected by hunter-gatherers,

Obliterating the theory that

Nomadic tribes never built in stone.

Its intricate carvings suggest a people at one

With nature in a landscape brimming with wildlife,

From pigs, to birds, wild cats, and serpents.

The world's media quickly connected gobekli tepe

To the bible's most famous story: The garden of eden.

Rose: That story is at the foundation of western thought.

Whether we like it or not,

That story is embedded in our worldview.

Mastrelli: In 2006, germany's most popular weekly magazine,

"der spiegel", splashed the story on its front cover.

The idea had taken hold.

For some the garden of eden story is an attempt

To answer a question common to all humanity.

How did we get here?

Schiffman: It doesn't matter whether talking about buddhists

Or hindus or jews or christians, muslims,

The human being is designed to want

To fill the brain that we have

With more and more understanding,

And there is something about trying

To understand why we are really here.

Mastrelli: For many the search begins in the old testament,

With the clues laid out in the text

Of genesis chapters two and three.

It describes an earthly paradise

At the point where four rivers split.

Schiffman: Now of the four rivers mentioned in the bible

As coming out of the garden,

Two of them are the tigris and euphrates.

That means the garden of eden,

Has got to be somewhere up there in the northern regions

Of what was mesopotamia and today is turkey.

(gentle music) (birds chirping)

Mastrelli: While gobekli tepe sits right

In the sweet spot for this biblical hunt,

Gobekli tepe is not the first place

To be held up as a possible original paradise.

Over the centuries scholars have claimed that other

Ancient mesopotamian sites could be eden.

Schiffman: You have people claiming that the garden of eden

Is in southern mesopotamia near the persian gulf.

You've got people claiming

That it's northern mesopotamia in turkey.

What this shows is very simply:

A, we don't know,

And b, these people miss the point.

Mastrelli: For most scholars the hunt

For the biblical paradise is futile.

For the faithful the book of genesis

Tells a theological story,

Not one that can be proven with archeology.

Still neither scientists nor theologians

Can miss the remarkable animal carvings

That decorate almost every surface,

And as archeologists uncover the enclosures,

They discover that in each one

A different animal predominates.

Notroff: There's one enclosure where a lot of foxes appear,

And in another one were a lot of boars.

In another enclosure there's a very strong focus on birds.

Mastrelli: Archeologists believe these carvings

May represent tribal signatures.

Notroff: It's interpretation.

It's speculation.

We have the idea where each enclosure

May belong to a certain group,

Was erected and used by a certain group.

Mastrelli: If each enclosure represents a different tribe,

But each tribe was using

Similar symbols carved into the rock,

It flies in the face of decades of theory.

It means these roaming hunter-gatherer groups

Weren't operating in isolation,

Shunning contact with neighboring tribes.

They were part of something bigger.

Notroff: We're talking about single bands

Of hunter-gatherers here,

But they also seem to share a common, common culture,

A common background.

(gentle music)

Mastrelli: Archeologists believe that the

Hunter-gatherers of the region had enough

In common to make them come together

And carve their shared culture into stone.

They were part of a wider society.

Rose: As an american when I lived in the uk,

The saddest day of the year was thanksgiving,

Because it was the day I felt out of sync

With the rest of society.

We get at gobekli are all of these disparate tribes

Scattered over hundreds of miles

All meeting together in this one spot

And agreeing that these symbols mean the same thing to them.

Gobekli acts as this

This prehistoric mecca unifying people.

(gentle music)

Mastrelli: Nomadic hunter -gatherers of prehistoric turkey

Were part of a wider society,

But what was attracting them all to gobekli tepe?

(dramatic music)

The broken up animal bones confirm

It was the site of food consumption.

But these weren't every day trash heaps.

The enclosures were packed full of smashed up animal bones,

And some of the meat hadn't been properly butchered,

Just tossed aside half-finished.

Peters: The fact that it has not been cut up

And chopped means they were consuming the meat quite fast,

Which could be indicative of feasting.

Mastrelli: This wasn't a case of hunter-gatherers carefully

Stripping down carcasses for every available calorie.

Rather, gobekli tepe seems to have played host

To epic meat-fueled feasts.

(dramatic music) (tribesmen chatting)

The tribes of hunter-gatherers

Were coming to gobekli tepe to celebrate.

But why did they build a stone monument

Larger and more complex than anything

The human species had ever produced?

(tribal people chatting)

(gentle music)

The world's oldest monumental stone structure,

This ornately carved complex of enclosures at gobekli tepe,

Seems to have been the focus for huge congregations

Of stone age hunter -gatherer tribes

Assembling for ritual purposes.

It may represent the first steps

Towards an organized religion,

Shattering the theory that religious behavior

Came out of later, settled societies.

(dramatic music)

For those who believe the teachings

Of the old testament re-tell a version of human history,

The discoveries at gobekli tepe are an exciting development.

Schiffman: Humans originally had a kind of idealistic life

Where everything was given to them,

But then as a result of a transgression,

They end up having to really support themselves

By very, very great toil and great effort.

Mastrelli: Now researchers believe the rituals celebrated

By people of gobekli tepe may have been the trigger

For a revolution in their way of living.

(gentle music)

Dr. Reinder neef is a specialist in ancient plants.

Neef: They were probably experimenting

With cultivation of cereals,

And that is something which you can expect from people

Who are building such incredible monuments.

They were experimenting,

And not only with stone but also with plant material.

Mastrelli: Scientists think gobekli tepe

Was blessed with the perfect grassland environment

To begin humanity's experiment with plant cultivation.

(grass rustling) (gentle music)

But what caused mobile hunter-gatherers

To start focusing on immobile crops?

Now, archeologists may have found the spark

That ignited the flame of farming.

(dramatic music)

It came with the discovery of a collection of huge,

40-gallon stone troughs at gobekli tepe.

A gray residue on the inner surface of some

Of the troughs offered an opportunity for analysis.

On a hunch, the team sent a sample to southern germany.

(gentle music)

Dr. Martin zarnkow is a bio-technologist

With a lab at the technical university of munich.

His team prepared the residue from gobekli tepe for testing

And discovered a surprising result.

The analysis suggests that the 11,000-year-old stone troughs

Of gobekli tepe contained beer.

Zarnkow: I believe there is a good possibility

That beer was inside these vessels,

But you cannot be absolutely sure.

(gentle music)

Mastrelli: Troughs full of stone age beer

May have been a key component of gobekli's ritual feasts,

And the bigger the celebration,

The greater the need for cereal to supply the brewers.

Notroff: Organizing a feast,

Including these huge amounts of meat

And maybe the alcoholic beverages,

Might put some stress to an economy based on hunting.

(dramatic music) (tribal people chatting)

Mastrelli: Any party must be well supplied.

Nobody's happy when the refreshments runs dry.

In order to adequately supply their stone age festival,

The people of gobekli tepe

Needed a reliable source of sustenance,

So they turned to their crops.

Notroff: These people were already gathering plants

And were nourishing on plants,

And whether it was some kind of gruel,

Or if it really was beer,

This might have been the stimulus to farming.

Mastrelli: If this theory is correct,

The single most important turning point in the history

Of civilization may have been caused by the craft brewers

Of the stone age.

(insects chattering) (dramatic music)

At gobekli tepe ancestor worship

And ritual were bringing a nomadic

Hunter-gatherers together.

Out of the need to provide

For that immense social upheaval, farming was born.

Anthropologists call it the neolithic revolution.

Rose: This period of time is the most

Fundamental revolution in all of human history,

And the fact that even today

We still eat porridge for breakfast.

You know, we have cereal grains.

That all happened because of the neolithic revolution.

What gobekli does give us is a window into this revolution.

The first piece of the puzzle was, was religion.

(dramatic music)

Mastrelli: The discoveries made at gobekli tepe are rewriting

The textbook on the origins of farming and civilization.

It's a story echoed in the bible's old testament,

Where adam and eve suffered a fall from grace,

And were sent from eden to work the land.

Rose: After adam eats the fruit of knowledge,

He's sentenced to have to toil the fields

By the sweat of his own brow.

What is this fruit of knowledge?

In some jewish traditions it is a grain of wheat.

Some have suggested this

Symbolizes the transition to farming,

The transition to having to produce our own food.

(gentle music)

Mastrelli: The hunter -gatherer tribes

Congregating at gobekli tepe 11,000 years ago

Had started down the path of organized religion,

Sowing the seeds of a wider culture,

Paving the way for the agricultural revolution,

And kick-starting civilization itself.

(gentle piano music) (fire crackling)

Thousands of years before the garden of eden story

Was written down, hunter-gatherers congregated

At gobekli tepe to worship their ancestors.

There they lit the fuse of religion,

Building an extraordinary monument in a land of plenty.

To fuel their ritual feasts and celebrations,

They took advantage of the wild grasses on their doorstep.

Unwittingly, they set off down the path toward civilization.

(sheep bleating) (gentle music)

When the community at gobekli tepe had finally moved on

From their hunter -gatherer existence,

Their monument ceased to have meaning.

The enclosures were buried,

Laying to rest an old -fashioned existence.

Peters: In the end it was given up

Because the hunter-gatherer way

Was replaced by a farming way of life.

Rose: As far as a historical perspective of our species,

This was the biggest moment in our history.

(bright uptempo music)

Mastrelli: It's an extraordinary moment, no doubt.

The garden of eden, the fall of man,

The dawn of agriculture all bundled into one.

It deserves to be properly memorialized

With a little of the good stuff.

After all it's home-brewed beer that kick started it all.