The significance of Göbekli Tepe extends beyond the academic study of prehistoric societies.

It speaks to questions about human nature and human social capacity that remain relevant in the present.

The older narrative of human social evolution — from simple, primitive hunter-gatherers to complex, civilized agriculturalists — was comforting in its teleological clarity and damaging in its implications.

It suggested a linear progression in which social complexity, cultural sophistication, and the capacity for large-scale cooperation were the products of specific material conditions, primarily agriculture.

Hunter-gatherers, in this narrative, were limited by their mode of subsistence to simple, egalitarian, small-scale social life.