Gobekli Tepe & the Younger Dryas: why did we start farming?

Why did humans, after thousands of years of nomadic existence, hunting and gathering, decide to settle down and begin farming? This is perhaps one of, if not the, greatest question that archaeologists have been attempting to answer for the past century and a half. Going along with the development of agriculture and the Neolithic Revolution, there is another mystery.

In south eastern turkey lies a massive archaeological site, the famous, and mysterious, Göbekli Tepe. As it turns out, the site of Göbekli Tepe, constructed after the Younger Dryas Cold Snap ended about 11,700 years ago, may very well help in answering this question. Which then raises another one: what was the Younger Drys period, and what caused it? Was it the draining of Lake Agassiz in North America? Tue eruption of Laacher See volcano in Germany? Or, perhaps more exotically, was it caused by an asteroid or comet? This last theory, commonly known as the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, argues for a drastic alteration in the earth’s climate during the end of the last ice age. It has many detractors and many supporters, ranging from accredited scientists, to more…interesting and questionable opinions such as the notion that it wiped out an ice age civilization, currently espoused by Graham Hancock and others like him, especially in the recently Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse .