Disclaimer: This is a brand new, original hypothesis from Matt Sibson of Ancient Architects. If anybody has made this claim before me, I can honestly say I am unaware and that I did devise this whole idea myself.
The more I learn about the Pre-Pottery Neolithic people, the more I've discovered they were far more advanced than I ever thought.
These people, who lived 11-12,000-years-ago, made terrazzo concrete floors to line enclosures, they had lime-plastered walls, they quarried and carved huge pillars with beautiful relief carvings, they made bread and brewed beer, they made well-worked stone vessels, tools and weapons and there was clearly architectural planning for the main sites like Gobekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe.
These people were not mere hunter-gatherer nomads settling for the first time and living a basic existence - they already had well-developed skills, techniques and technologies.
But knowing all of that, Karahan Tepe is a settlement that has left me baffled, mainly because of the strange pillared enclosure, labelled AB by archaeologist Necmi Karul. Many have already given a possible explanation for its form and hence its purpose, but I have always been unsatisfied with the answers.
I've looked at other ancient sites from other cultures that came later in history, read archaeological reports on Karahan Tepe, looked at raw footage, pictures and interactive models, and have devised a new hypothesis as to what this pillared enclosure is.
In my opinion, what we are looking at is a hypocaust - said to have been a Roman invention around 80 BC - but I'm claiming this was envisioned 9,000+ years early by the Pre-Pottery Neolithic people of SE Anatolia, in modern-day Turkey.
Please watch this 30-minute video as I go through the detail of the enclosure and state my case for this new Karahan Tepe hypothesis.
All images are taken from Google Images and the below sources for educational purposes only and special thanks to the Dakota of Earth Channel for the drone footage.