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Three Mysterious Carvings May Reveal How Göbekli Tepe Was Designed 12,000 Years Ago
Long before written plans and measuring instruments entered the archaeological record, Göbekli Tepe’s builders were arranging enormous stone pillars within carefully organized monumental spaces. Three carvings on the site’s famous Pillar 43 may offer an unexpected clue to how those architectural ideas were visualized. Before a single pillar could be raised at Göbekli Tepe, someone…
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Karahantepe Diet Revealed: Gazelle Meat and Legumes Shaped Early Neolithic Life
A quiet detail is beginning to reshape how we understand the earliest settled communities. At Karahantepe, one of the key sites of the Taş Tepeler project in southeastern Türkiye, new research suggests that daily life was built around a surprisingly focused diet: gazelle meat and legumes. The finding may sound simple. It is not. It…
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As the Euphrates Receded, Familiar Stones Emerged: Is the Taş Tepeler World Expanding?
When the waters of the Upper Euphrates pulled back, the stones left behind told a story archaeologists know well—but not from this place. Along the exposed shoreline of the Atatürk Dam reservoir in southeastern Türkiye, researchers have identified T-shaped stone elements—a form inseparable from the ritual landscape of Göbeklitepe. Their appearance here, hundreds of kilometers…
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A 10,000-Year-Old Sketch: Sefertepe Excavation Uncovers Remarkably Detailed Boar Cub Carving
Archaeologists working at Sefertepe, one of the emerging Neolithic sites of Türkiye’s Taş Tepeler region, have uncovered a delicately incised depiction of a wild boar piglet carved into the underside of a heavily used grinding stone. The discovery, reported exclusively by Arkeolojihaber, adds a new layer to our understanding of symbolic expression in the 10th…
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An amphitheater-like Neolithic structure has been uncovered at Karahantepe in southeastern Turkey
Under the sharp light of the Şanlıurfa plateau, archaeologists at Karahantepe have revealed a structure unlike anything previously documented in the early Neolithic world: a circular, amphitheater-like gathering space carved directly into bedrock, lined with tiers of stone benches and flanked by human heads sculpted into its walls. The discovery pushes the boundaries of what…
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Turkey’s Taş Tepeler Reveals its Most Mysterious Neolithic Art Yet: New Faces, New Rituals, New Questions
A still-faced sculpture with a sealed mouth, unfamiliar stone portraits carved in the hills, and a double-sided bead that seems to look in two directions at once—Turkey’s Taş Tepeler region has entered a new phase of archaeological intrigue. In Şanlıurfa this week, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism introduced a set of discoveries that not…
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Karahantepe May Reveal Göbeklitepe Was Never Just a Temple
In the barren hills of southeastern Turkey, Karahantepe is quietly rewriting what we thought we knew about humanity’s earliest monuments.For decades, Göbeklitepe stood as an enigma — a site of stone circles and sacred carvings often described as the world’s first temple.Now, new evidence from Karahantepe suggests a more complex story: these were not places…
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Daily Life Unearthed at Karahantepe: Over 30 Neolithic Dwellings Reveal the Human Side of an 11,000-Year-Old Settlement
Archaeologists excavating the Neolithic site of Karahantepe in southeastern Türkiye have uncovered more than 30 small, subterranean dwellings dating back around 11,000 years. The discovery provides the clearest glimpse yet into how early Anatolian communities lived, worked, and organized their daily routines — long before the rise of cities or agriculture as we know them.…