Archaeologists Unearth 11,000-Year-Old Sculpture in Turkey

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Una publicación compartida por Konstantin | Ancient History Explorer (@thisisancient)

Archeologists in Turkey have unearthed an 11,000-year-old stone sculpture in Karahantepe, one of the oldest settlements of its kind in the world. The enigmatic artwork is 28 inches tall and depicts a human figure seated atop a leopard. The discovery was announced by Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, who described it as a “composite statue featuring a style unlike any previously encountered.”

The carved figure was found on a bench located along the wall of a circular structure measuring about 10 feet in diameter with a floor covered in flat stones. The discovery was part of ongoing excavations at the site near Şanlıurfa, a city in southeastern Turkey. The work is part of the “Heritage to the Future” initiative, devoted to growing archaeological research and preservation across this country with a rich past.

Elizabeth Carter, a professor emerita of Near Eastern archaeology at UCLA, says that while this not the first time a neolithic sculpture has been found in Taş Tepeler, a group of Neolithic archaeological sites, the composition is one of a kind. “Göbeklitepe is more famous than the Karahan site where this sculpture was discovered,” she told The Art Newspaper. “To my knowledge, the human figure mounted on an animal is unique. Although animal sculptures have been identified before on benches within the buildings at Göbeklitepe, I don’t know of a human astride an animal.”

The closest artifact to the one just found is a statue of a human with a leopard on their back, also found at Karahantepe in 2021. Researchers think both pieces could be linked. “Leopards were common feline predators in the region,” Jens Notroff, a Neolithic archaeologist at the German Archaeological Institute, told Live Science. “They are vigorous, dangerous animals, so probably challenging game for skilled hunters. That might have added to their symbolic meaning.”

Ultimately, both the local government and researchers hope this singular statue may shed some light on the human settlements in this region, which date back to the Stone Age. Ersoy says, “I believe this discovery, which opens the door to new questions about the earliest periods of human history, will have a wide impact on the scientific community.”