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  • Researchers uncovered an 11,000-year-old statue depicting a person mounted on a leopard at the Karahan Tepe site in southeastern Turkey.
  • Experts suggest the artwork may symbolize power or mastery over dangerous predators, reflecting a shift in prehistoric iconography toward human dominance.
  • The find complements earlier discoveries at nearby Göbekli Tepe and highlights a broader cultural transition as communities became more sedentary.

Archaeologists working at the Karahan Tepe site in modern-day Turkey have unearthed a Neolithic sculpture that depicts a human figure riding on the back of a leopard. The artifact, which stands approximately 2.3 feet tall, dates to roughly 11,000 years ago and was found buried within a round structure featuring a floor made of flat stones. Officials describe the piece as unique, noting that it has no known parallel in the archaeological record for this period.

The sculpture was positioned on a platform running along one of the walls of the circular building, which measures nearly ten feet in diameter. Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, Turkey’s minister of culture and tourism, stated that the discovery brings to light a composite figure unlike anything previously encountered. He suggested that such artifacts could provide significant new insights into early human history and the symbolic languages used by ancient communities.

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Jens Notroff, an archaeologist with the German Archaeological Institute, noted that leopards were common but dangerous predators in the region during this era. Because these animals were vigorous and challenging to hunt, they likely held substantial symbolic weight. Notroff theorized that depicting a human mastering such a formidable creature could serve as a symbol of power or strength within the community that created it.

This discovery follows a previous find at the same site in 2021, where researchers uncovered a statue showing the reverse dynamic: a human carrying a leopard on his back. That earlier artifact is now housed in the Sanliurfa Museum. Ergun Lafli, an archaeologist at Dokuz Eylul University, observed that both sculptures share an abstract style similar to prehistoric mural paintings found in continental Europe. He argued that these similarities provide rare evidence of cultural unity and a common iconographic language across prehistoric regions.

Karahan Tepe is located about 22 miles east of Göbekli Tepe, another prominent Neolithic site often cited as one of the world’s earliest temples. Built in the tenth millennium B.C.E., Karahan Tepe features pillars decorated with intricate carvings of abstract symbols and wild animals, including lions, foxes, gazelles, and birds. While Göbekli Tepe is more widely known, Elizabeth Carter, a professor emerita at UCLA, pointed out that while animal sculptures have been found on benches at Göbekli Tepe, she was unaware of any prior examples showing a human astride an animal.

Excavations at Karahan Tepe began in 2019, several years after work started at the neighboring Göbekli Tepe site in the 1990s. Last year, officials announced the discovery of a human face carved into a pillar at Karahan Tepe. Necmi Karul, the archaeologist leading the dig, explained that artworks depicting humans became more frequent as ancestors transitioned from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to early settlements.

Karul suggested that as communities became more sedentary, people gradually distanced themselves from nature and began placing the human figure and experience at the center of their worldview. These Neolithic artworks date to a period before the advent of writing, meaning very little is known about the specific figures depicted or the exact narratives they represent.

Despite the lack of written records, Karul emphasized that as the number of such finds increases, researchers gain the opportunity to conduct statistical analyses and make meaningful comparisons. The growing body of evidence from Karahan Tepe and surrounding sites may help clarify how symbolic representation evolved during this critical period of human social development.

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  • Smithsonian Magazine↗Archaeologists Uncover a Neolithic Sculpture of a Human Riding a Leopard That's 'Unlike Anything We Have Encountered Before'