Stone Age · c. 9000 BC · Karahan Tepe, Şanlıurfa, Turkey
Statue of a human seated on a leopard found at Neolithic Karahan Tepe, Turkey
The 70-centimetre sculpture, about 11,000 years old, reverses a known motif at the site, where earlier statues show humans carrying live leopards on their backs.
Official announcement
Karahan Tepe, Turkey Archaeologists have found a statue of a human figure sitting on the back of a leopard at Karahan Tepe. The Neolithic site lies near Şanlıurfa in southeastern Turkey. The sculpture is about 11,000 years old, which places it around 9000 BC. It was found during the 2026 excavation season.
Turkey's Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, announced the find on 25 August.
The statue is 70 centimetres tall. According to the minister, it was resting on a bench that runs along the wall of a circular building. The building is about three metres across, and its floor is paved with flat stones.
Ersoy said the piece was found where it had been placed in antiquity. He described its style as one not previously encountered at Karahan Tepe.
No scientific publication has yet accompanied the announcement. Details of the statue's dating, how it was made and what it represents are still to come.
The History Blog points out a further open question. No evidence yet shows whether the figure stood on the bench from the start or was moved there when the space was deliberately closed.
Earlier statues show humans carrying leopards
Leopards are the animal that appears most often at Karahan Tepe, according to the excavation director, Necmi Karul. Earlier seasons produced three composite sculptures with the opposite arrangement to the new find: a human carrying a leopard on their back.
Those leopards were not carved as dead prey. They are alive, alert and aggressive, with bared teeth.
In the new statue, the human sits on the animal instead. It cannot yet be determined whether that reversal carried a different story, status or symbolic relationship.
La Brújula Verde reports that specialists will analyse the piece in the coming months. They will compare it with sculptures from neighbouring sites.
Leopards on pillars, benches and figurines
Leopards also appear on their own at Karahan Tepe. The Şanlıurfa Museum holds leopard heads from the site and a 45-centimetre limestone leopard figurine. Leopards are also carved in relief and incised on the pillars of a building known as Structure AD.
In 2023 the team found a statue of a man about 2.3 metres high. It was set on a bench decorated with a leopard and was accompanied by a vulture.
Karul has argued that people at the beginning of settled life may have seen themselves as part of the animal world. In his view, they did so to a greater degree than later societies did.
He also argues that the human figures carrying living leopards reflect a relationship in which animals held a very different place from ordinary prey. At nearby Sayburç, a relief about 11,000 years old shows human figures alongside two leopards and a bull.
One of the largest early Neolithic sites in the region, near Göbekli Tepe
Karahan Tepe lies nearly 50 kilometres east of Göbekli Tepe. Both belong to the same Pre-Pottery Neolithic world. This was the period when communities in the region built permanent settlements and monumental buildings before they made pottery.
Both sites have T-shaped stone pillars and similar animal imagery. Karahan Tepe covers roughly 14 hectares, and more than 250 pillars have been identified there. Its rock-cut spaces and three-dimensional human figures set it apart from its better-known neighbour.
Systematic excavation began in 2019. The work is part of a project called Legacy for the Future. The ministry's General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums runs it.
Besides domestic areas, the team has found larger buildings with stone benches, pillars, carved human figures and animal imagery. More recently it found small animal figures arranged as a deliberate group. This suggests that images may have been used to tell stories shared by the community.
The minister said the 2026 season also produced other buildings and objects, but he did not describe them. After conservation and restoration, the new statue is likely to go on display in a regional museum. No date for its transfer has been set.
Sources
- A Unique 11,000-Year-Old Statue of a Human Sitting on a Leopard Unearthed at Karahantepe (Arkeonews)
- 11,000-year-old sculpture of man riding a leopard found in Turkey (The History Blog)
- An Exceptional 11,000-Year-Old Sculpture Depicting a Man on a Leopard Found in Karahantepe (La Brújula Verde)
- Unusual Sculpture Uncovered in Southeastern Turkey (Archaeology Magazine)
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