The lives of archaeologists have always been pained by the mass media's adoration of alternate historians.

A handful of authors who believe that Atlantis was real or that ancient aliens were real,

or some version of the narrative that there was some advanced civilization on Earth predating our own.

Gerbaikli Tepe is an archaeological site in Turkey that has some genuinely strange things about it,

and it's one of the darlings of the alternate historians.

What is really going on with this place?

Decoating Gerbaikli Tepe is coming up right now on Skeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid. I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

Decoating Gerbaikli Tepe.

On a high ridge among the dry rocky hills of southern Turkey is a mound, a long gradual mound of stones and debris that you might not even notice.

In the 1960s, an American archaeologist came upon it, noted what he took for neolithic gravestones and broken bits of Byzantine sculptures,

sent in a survey and moved along.

But since then, others have taken a closer look.

Teams of scientists have descended and dug and uncovered what many have described as the most astounding and out of place find in the history of archaeology,

indeed in the history of humanity.

In Turkish, it's called Gerbaikli Tepe, Potbelly Hill, an ignominious name for such a stupendous find.

Today, we're going to turn a shovelful of rubble of our own, gaze upon the wonders and ponder how, some say, the site cannot be reconciled with human history.

The neat thing about Gerbaikli Tepe is that if you go there or even just look at pictures of it, there's something immediately weird about it that stands out,

and you don't even have to know anything about archaeology to see it.

Most of the site looks just the way you'd expect any ancient ruins to appear.

The remains of low stone walls showing the outlines of where structures once stood,

excavation trenches where archaeologists have exposed these walls,

...