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Unusual Sculpture Uncovered in Southeastern Turkey - Archaeology Magazine
The carved figure may offer clues about early beliefs on power and masculinity, officials said, as researchers call it unlike anything seen before.
- On August 25, the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced the discovery of an 11,000-year-old limestone statue at Karahan Tepe depicting a human figure sitting atop a leopard.
- Karahan Tepe, a Neolithic site in southern Turkey excavated since 2019, shares a cultural landscape with Göbekli Tepe where early communities placed charged images of humans and dangerous animals in gathering spaces.
- Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, Turkey's Minister of Culture and Tourism, called the sculpture "a style unlike anything seen before." Archaeologists suggest the leopard motif symbolizes human power and control over dangerous animals.
- Archaeologist Jens Notroff noted the statue appears to be a "mirrored version of the known type of 'animal mounting on top of a human.'" The scene depicts a human fearlessly mastering the leopard.
- Ersoy believes the find "opens the door to new questions about the earliest periods of human history." The statue may reveal insights into the culture's fascination with masculinity and early settled communities.
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Unusual Sculpture Uncovered in Southeastern Turkey - Archaeology Magazine
Statue depicting a human sitting atop a leopard, Karahantepe, Turkey ŞANLIURFA, TURKEY—Yeni Şafak reports that an 11,000-year-old sculpture depicting a person sitting on a leopard has been unearthed in southeastern Turkey at the Neolithic site of Karahantepe. The 28-inch-tall sculpture was discovered on a bench situated along the wall of a circular structure measuring about 10 feet in diameter, said Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy…
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The piece, about 70 centimetres high, was found in Karahantepe, one of the oldest Neolithic deposits in the world, and opens up new unknowns about the art of the first human societies.
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