An equilateral triangle at Gobekli Tepe? A recent paper by Hacklay and Gopher claims to have found evidence of geometric planning in the construction of Gobekli Tepe’s enclosures. Their paper received a lot of media attention, and seems to have gone relatively unchallenged, at least so far. Their central claim is this: that three of the circular enclosures uncovered so far at Gobekli Tepe were deliberately planned to form an equilateral triangle with a preferred orientation. The above illustration shows nicely what they mean. Now this is published in a top archaeological journal – the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, so it must be right. Right? Wrong. Its actually pure speculation. Let’s see what they really did. They locate the position of the centre of each pillar around the three circular enclosures, B, C and D, and then use a mathematical technique to work out the geometric centre of each enclosure. The method is this. They work out the distance from the assumed centr...
