Şanlıurfa, Türkiye · 5 min
Taş Tepeler and Karahantepe: The Stone Hills of Şanlıurfa
Taş Tepeler, the "Stone Hills" around Şanlıurfa: how Karahantepe, Sayburç and their neighbours are changing what we know about early settled life.
Around the city of Şanlıurfa, in southeastern Türkiye, a ring of low limestone hills hides settlements as old as Göbeklitepe, or nearly so. Together they are called Taş Tepeler, "the Stone Hills".
Each new season at these sites adds a surprise: a pillar with a carved face, a tiny stone story in a buried bowl, a sculpture of a person riding a leopard. Here is what we know so far, and where sources differ.
What are the Taş Tepeler?
Taş Tepeler is a research programme coordinated by Türkiye's Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Daily Sabah describes it as an ongoing six-year initiative covering 12 Neolithic sites around Şanlıurfa. They include Göbeklitepe, Karahantepe, Sayburç, Çakmaktepe, Sefertepe and Gürcütepe.
Turkish teams work alongside researchers from China, the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. Sources date the start of the programme to around 2020–2021, and the exact list of sites varies slightly between publications.
The sites belong to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Archaeology magazine puts this period at roughly 12,000 to 10,200 years ago. Discover Magazine describes it as a time when communities were moving from mobile hunting and gathering towards more settled forms of life.
Where is Karahantepe, and how was it found?
Karahantepe lies roughly 55 to 60 kilometres east of Şanlıurfa, in the Tek Tek Mountains. Its first stone pillars were noticed during a survey in 1997. Systematic excavation began in 2019, led by Necmi Karul of Istanbul University, who also directs the work at Göbeklitepe.
It is a settlement site, not a single monument. Archaeology magazine and Smithsonian Magazine report T-shaped pillars like those at Göbeklitepe standing in a space with everyday features such as grinding stones.
What did Karahantepe reveal in 2025?
Archaeology magazine named Karahantepe one of its Top 10 Discoveries of 2025 and put it on the cover. Two finds led the story.
A pillar with a face. T-shaped pillars have long been read as stylised human figures, but none had been found with a three-dimensional face. This one is about 1.3 metres tall, carved from bedrock and dated to the ninth millennium BC. It was found with three other T-pillars in a domestic space. Karul is quoted by Smithsonian Magazine as saying the face filled the one missing element in the human pattern.
A buried bowl of tiny figures. In a deliberately buried and abandoned building, archaeologists found a bottomless stone bowl holding a stone plate, stone batons and a small bowl of figurines. The figurines depict a wild boar, a vulture and a fox, each about 3 centimetres tall with its head ringed in limestone. Karul believes it is the world's oldest three-dimensional narrative. That is his interpretation, not a settled fact.
What did the 2026 season add?
In late August 2026 Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy announced a sculpture about 70 centimetres tall at Karahantepe. It shows a person sitting on the back of a leopard. It was found on a bench along the wall of a circular structure, about three metres across.
Archaeology magazine points out that earlier sculptures at the site show the opposite: people carrying animals on their backs. Official Turkish tourism material also describes a seated human statue about 2.45 metres tall at Karahantepe as the largest known from the period.
What is the Sayburç carved scene?
Sayburç lies about 60 kilometres east of the Euphrates. A modern village was built over the mound in the mid-20th century. In 2021, excavators found reliefs carved into the back rests of benches in a communal building of the ninth millennium BC.
A study in the journal Antiquity describes five figures across two panels. One shows a figure flanked by two leopards. The other shows a figure facing a bull. The authors call it the earliest known depiction of a narrative scene, one that links two related episodes.
Who works on the Stone Hills, and what else has turned up?
A Ministry release marking five years of the programme counts 219 researchers from 36 academic institutions. It highlights further finds: a pair of human-face reliefs from Sefertepe, carved in contrasting high and low relief, and a bead from the programme's excavations made of black serpentinite, with a human face carved on each side.
At the anniversary event Minister Ersoy described the settlements as opening new horizons in world history. Treat such statements as the Ministry's own framing. The excavation reports and journal papers are where the detail lives.
Why do these sites matter?
Together they suggest that settled life in this region was varied. At Göbeklitepe, researchers debate how much was ritual and how much was domestic. At Karahantepe and Sayburç, houses, benches, pillars and carved figures sit side by side.
The people of the Stone Hills used stone to tell stories, mark places and organise shared space, thousands of years before writing.
Can you visit?
Karahantepe is being prepared for visitors. Hürriyet Daily News reports a visitor reception centre, a large protective roof and a research centre with conservation and archaeometry laboratories under construction. Check current opening arrangements before you go, as the site is still an active dig.
Key facts
- Taş Tepeler ("Stone Hills") is a Ministry of Culture and Tourism programme covering 12 Neolithic sites around Şanlıurfa.
- The sites belong to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, roughly 12,000 to 10,200 years ago.
- Karahantepe has been excavated systematically since 2019 under Necmi Karul of Istanbul University.
- Archaeology magazine ranked Karahantepe among its Top 10 Discoveries of 2025.
- A person-on-leopard sculpture, about 70 cm tall, was announced in late August 2026.
- Sayburç's carved bench reliefs, published in Antiquity, are called the earliest known narrative scene.
- Karul's reading of the buried-bowl figurines as the oldest 3D narrative is an interpretation.
Nothing in our atelier comes from sites like these. Our pieces are ethnographic household objects, made much later for daily use. Still, the Stone Hills are a reminder that people in this landscape have always given everyday things form and meaning, and that a hand-worked Anatolian object at home today belongs, quietly, to that long habit.
Sources
- Taş Tepeler official project site (Ministry of Culture and Tourism)
- Taş Tepeler: Sayburç settlement page
- Daily Sabah: Neolithic excavations boost tourism in Türkiye's Şanlıurfa
- Archaeology magazine: Top 10 Discoveries of 2025, Tales from the Neolithic (January/February 2026)
- Archaeology magazine: Unusual Sculpture Uncovered in Southeastern Turkey (27 August 2026)
- Smithsonian Magazine: A human face was carved into this stone pillar in Turkey 11,000 years ago
- Antiquity (Cambridge University Press): The Sayburç reliefs, a narrative scene from the Neolithic (record at Istanbul University)
- The Past: Neolithic carvings discovered in Turkey may represent the earliest-known narrative scene
- GoTürkiye press release: Taş Tepeler Project marks five years of rewriting human history
- Taş Tepeler (GoTürkiye): Karahantepe
- Discover Magazine: An 11,000-year-old sculpture of a person riding a leopard offers a new glimpse into Neolithic Türkiye
- Hürriyet Daily News: Karahantepe to welcome visitors this year
- Türkiye Tourism Promotion and Development Agency (GoTürkiye): Magnificent discoveries at Karahantepe and Göbeklitepe