That these plants grew in abundance within reach of Göbekli Tepe is not coincidental to the site’s significance: the region where the site is located is also the region where the transition to cereal cultivation is thought to have begun.

Archaeological evidence from sites in the vicinity of Göbekli Tepe, including material recovered from the site itself, includes grinding stones and other implements associated with plant processing, as well as macrobotanical remains that include wild cereal species.

This evidence suggests that the people who gathered at the site were harvesting and processing wild cereals as part of their subsistence strategy, even before the formal domestication of those species.

The game animals that inhabited the region included gazelle, aurochs, wild boar, red deer, wild donkey, and various smaller mammals.