11,000-year-old sculpture of human on leopard found in Türkiye

Archaeologists excavating at Karahantepe in southeastern Türkiye have discovered an 11,000-year-old stone sculpture depicting a human figure seated atop a leopard, Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said Tuesday. The 70-centimeter figure was unearthed this year during ongoing excavations at the site near Şanlıurfa, resting on a bench along the wall of a circular structure roughly three meters in diameter. Ersoy described the discovery on NSosyal as a "composite sculpture" representing a style not previously encountered at the prehistoric settlement.

Neolithic settlement network

Karahantepe lies approximately 30 kilometers from Göbeklitepe and forms part of the Taş Tepeler archaeological project, a cluster of Stone Hills sites dating to the Neolithic period more than 10,000 years ago. The area has yielded monumental structures and elaborate artwork from communities transitioning between mobile hunter-gatherer existence and settled agricultural life, challenging previous assumptions about the timeline of complex social organization. While Göbeklitepe has drawn international attention since the 1990s for its T-shaped pillars and animal carvings, Karahantepe has emerged as a significant parallel site since excavations began there in 2019.

Heritage preservation efforts

The find comes under Türkiye's "Heritage to the Future" initiative, which aims to expand archaeological research and preservation across the country's ancient landscapes. Ersoy said the discovery "opens the door to new questions about the earliest periods of human history" and would resonate throughout the scientific community. The sculpture was found within a structure whose floor was paved with flat stones, suggesting deliberate architectural planning during an era predating the emergence of cities and written records.