Pāhonoa te oro

is that Göbekli Tepe inverts the standard model entirely. Civilization did not produce religion. Shared ritual purpose produced civilization. The organizational demand of building and maintaining this site may have been what created the conditions for settled life, agriculture, and everything that followed. Religion came first. Everything else came after. What remains unexplained is the deliberate burial. Around 8000 BCE, the entire complex was systematically backfilled with thousands