Recent excavations at Karahantepe, a sister site to Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, have revealed a megalithic chamber aligned with the winter solstice. The chamber contains phallic pillars and a carved human head, suggesting that the hunter-gatherer societies of 9000 BCE possessed a sophisticated understanding of solar cycles and astronomy.
As reported in Anatolian Prehistory News, these findings challenge the traditional timeline of the development of science, indicating that organized ritual and celestial tracking preceded the invention of agriculture by several millennia.