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François Olivier

Our understanding of the neolithic has been turned upside down, thanks to the mind-boggling discoveries made over the last 25 years in the South of Turkey, near the old city of Urfa, where neolithic sanctuaries with animal and human reliefs and sculptures have been brought to light.

With a dating confirmed at 9,500 B.C., i.e. a full 4,000 years before the temples of Malta and 7,000 years before the pyramids of the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the sanctuaries, not yet fully excavated, are now among the most important archaeological sites in the world.

'Tepe' means a 'hill' in Turkish or a 'Tell' in Arabic. Since the 1960s, archaeologists had been aware that the 'Taş tepeler' (stone hills) near the ancient city of Urfa could yield neolithic discoveries. But it in only in 1995, when German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt started excavating the now world-famous Göbekli Tepe ('Potbelly Hill') that the unique importance of the region was revealed. Schmidt's excavations brought to light an amazing series of circular sanctuaries flanked with large T-shaped stone pillars.

Excavations at Karahantepe, about 46 km East of Göbekli Tepe, started only in 2018 The site will be officially open to the public at the end of 2022, but visitors who already made it to the gates are not turned away.

Karahantepe is more or less contemporary with Göbekli Tepe. T-shaped pillars with reliefs were also found in Karahantepe and the main sanctuary has a circular shape similar to the one of the sanctuaries at Göbekli Tepe. But there is one major difference: the human element is much more present at Karahantepe which has yielded an impressive number of human representations. Apart from the human head carved out of the rock in sanctuary A-B, all the other human sculptures are now displayed in the Urfa Museum. Like Schmidt had assumed at Göbekli Tepe, Karahan Tepe proved that both sites had been deliberately filled with rubble, maybe to protect them.

Only a small part of Karahantepe has been excavated so far and other hidden sanctuaries are visible to the naked eye near the site.

Major discoveries will certainly come over the coming years: other 'tepe' await excavations, and T-shaped pillars have been found in the village of Sayburc where farmers used them to buttress agricultural walls. The famous 'Urfa Man' statue, already found in 1993 in the very centre of Urfa, is 11,000 year old and reveals an artistic style very similar to the one found in the 'tepe' mounds.

Göbekli Tepe was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018 and the 'tepe' region will certainly welcome millions of visitors eager to see the oldest cultural centres in the world.

Use our photo gallery links above to immerse yourself into this newly revealed neolithic culture, a source of immense beauty and intense emotion.