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Discovering a New Neolithic World

Excavations in southeastern Turkey are revolutionizing how archaeologists understand the monumental achievements of hunter-gatherers

While digging at Sayburç, another of the Taş Tepeler sites, in 2021, archaeologist Eylem Özdoğan of Istanbul University unearthed a stone bench with a carved relief showing two humans, two leopards, and a bull—a scene, she says, that represents the most detailed depiction of a Neolithic story found to date. Surface surveys have shown that Karahantepe is divided into four distinct sectors: one each on the east and west terraces of the slope, where many of the special structures are located; the site’s quarries; and the southern plain, where archaeologists have found grinding stones, flints, and other objects of daily life suggesting that this may have been a domestic area. “They were likely constructed with communal consent and served functions relevant to the general community.” For example, structure AD, with its central location, ample dimensions, seating arrangements suitable for a large group, and recurring iconographic elements that are found in contemporaneous Taş Tepeler settlements, appears to have been a gathering place for crowds

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