The dead, in this context, were not simply buried and forgotten.

They were present in and around the monuments, mixed into the substance of the place itself.

The Agricultural Villages That Came After

The later Neolithic villages of the Fertile Crescent — sites like Çatalhöyük in Anatolia, Ain Ghazal in Jordan, and the various tells that represent the accumulation of mud-brick village life across the region — give us a picture of what the world looked like as the agricultural transition consolidated.

These villages are recognizably different from the world of Göbekli Tepe’s major building phases.