Ein Untergang im Morgenland? – Göbeklitepe als Fallstudie für die Vollendung und das Verlöschen einer späteiszeitlichen Jäger- und Sammlerkultur

The following contribution attempts to reconcile aspects of Cultural Morphology as outlined by Oswald Spengler in his seminal Decline of the West and Man & Technics with archaeological observations dating to the transitional period from the Epipalaeolithic to the Early Holocene in the so-called Fertile Crescent (ca. 10.000 BC). The finds and features of Göbeklitepe and related sites of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) in Upper Mesopotamia are reevaluated, to allow a different reading of the emergence of monumental architecture as the cultural climax of a then declining hunter-and-gatherer tradition, and not the prelude for a new era shaped by animal husbandry and agriculture.