First human face carved on T-shaped stone found at Karahantepe

Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy announced that, in recent excavations at Karahantepe, a T-shaped standing stone featuring a human face was uncovered for the first time. As part of the Stone Hills Project carried out by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, excavation work in 2025 is ongoing in 10 different areas. One of these areas, Karahantepe, yielded this unprecedented find of a T-shaped standing stone with a carved human face. The arm and hand reliefs on the T-shaped stones found around Göbeklitepe have long supported the idea that these stones symbolize humans. However, this new discovery at Karahantepe marks a turning point in Neolithic studies, as it is the first time a human face has been directly depicted on a T-shaped stone. The facial depiction on the upper part of the stone features sharp lines, deep eye sockets, and a blunt-shaped nose, similar in style to previously found human statues at Karahantepe. This discovery reveals not only the technical skill of Neolithic people but also their form of self-expression and abstract thinking ability. While it has long been accepted that the T-shaped stones carry symbolic meaning beyond supporting roof structures, this find shows that they do not just represent humans symbolically but also directly depict human facial features for the first time. The Stone Hills Project, dating back about 12,000 years, is one of the most comprehensive archaeological initiatives documenting humanity's transition to settled life and changes in belief systems. The work in southeastern Anatolia continues to provide new insights into the earliest known periods of human history.