At first glance, Göbekli Tepe looks like your average neolithic stone circle type monument (you know the type), until you realise that this massive stone temple was built before humans had figured out that farming was a good idea. Yep, turns out humanity invented ritualised group worship in stone-built temples before they invented veggie patches. The site consists of over 200 great T-shaped stone pillars arranged, at last count, in at least 20 separate stone circles atop a mountain ridge in south east Turkey. Many of the pillars feature intricate carvings of animals, including lots of depictions of vultures, leading experts to believe that this could be the site of the earliest sky burials - a grisly process of excarnation in which the dead are left exposed to the elements in order to strip the flesh from their bones. Whilst it could be argued that this is technically a building, not a piece of technology, it demonstrates a great deal of technological advancement in a civilisation that hadn't invented pottery yet. The sheer existence of Göbekli Tepe is telling of the complex society that built it. It's thought to be a ritual site where a class of religious leaders would perform ceremonies, meaning the people who used it may have organised themselves into some sort of caste system. This is evidence of a seriously advanced civilisation, not to mention one that can manage to organise the massive undertaking of temple-building without writing, agriculture or the wheel (they tend to come in handy when lugging tonnes of stone up a rugged Turkish mountain).
