Civilizations desk
Karahan Tepe: the Neolithic site beside Göbekli Tepe
The excavators see rites of passage. Others see a sky calendar, a serpent cult or the memory of a lost civilization. Here is what each side points to.
Karahan Tepe is a Neolithic site in Şanlıurfa province, southeastern Turkey, in the same Taş Tepeler group as Göbekli Tepe. Istanbul University has excavated it since 2019. Its builders were hunter-gatherers working in the 10th millennium BCE, and what its rock-cut rooms were for is still an open, contested question.
Key takeaways
- Karahan Tepe was found in 1997 and has been dug by an Istanbul University team since 2019.
- Its rock-cut Structure AB holds a carved human head facing pillars the excavators describe as phallus-like.
- A T-shaped pillar with a carved human face was reported in October 2025, the first of its kind in the Taş Tepeler sites.
- The excavators read Structure AB as a place for rites of passage; Martin Sweatman, Andrew Collins and Graham Hancock each propose astronomical or cosmic readings.
- The excavation director calls his own ceremonial reading preliminary.
Karahan Tepe has a room cut into solid rock, a stone head that watches the entrance, and a newly found pillar with a human face. The people who made them were hunter-gatherers, before farming [2]. What they built it for is the question that pulls in archaeologists, astronomers and lost-civilization writers alike. Here is what the ancient civilizations desk can put on the table: the finds, the rival readings in their proponents' words, and what the excavators say back.
Where is Karahan Tepe in Turkey, and how old is it?
The site sits on a limestone height in the Tek Tek Mountains National Park, 55 km from downtown Şanlıurfa [1]. It was discovered in 1997, and an international team has dug it for the Istanbul University Department of Prehistoric Archaeology since 2019 [1]. It belongs to the Şanlıurfa Neolithic Research Project, known as Taş Tepeler, or "Stone Hills" [1].
On Karahan Tepe's age, the sources speak in broad strokes. The project says many settlements appeared around Şanlıurfa around the middle of the 10th millennium BCE [1]. Smithsonian magazine says Karahan Tepe was built in that millennium and occupied for about 1,500 years before it was buried and abandoned, crediting the span to The Art Newspaper [2]. Necmi Karul, the excavation director, dates the excavated buildings to the Late PPNA and Early PPNB phases of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic [3]. No published radiocarbon series narrows the range further.
Who built Karahan Tepe, and why?
The builders left no writing, so every answer to "why" is a reading of stone. The excavators read the main rooms as communal and ceremonial spaces [1][3]. Others go much further. An Edinburgh engineer sees a calendar [5][6]. An alternative-history author sees an oracle aimed at the Milky Way [7]. Graham Hancock asks whether the "phalli" are something else entirely [4]. The consensus view is one position in that argument, and its own authors call parts of it preliminary [3].
This example provides clear evidence that T-shaped pillars symbolized humans, and it is a unique and abstract example of the self-expression of the people of the period.
More from the desk is on the blog.
What has been found at Karahan Tepe?
The western slope holds a settlement with three phases [1]. At its center is Structure AD, a circular communal building with an internal diameter of 23 meters, cut 4.5 meters into the bedrock on one side and walled on the rest. Sixteen pillars divide its wall, with two-step benches between them and two more pillars facing each other in the middle [1].
Next to it is Structure AB, cut entirely into the bedrock: 7 by 6 meters and 3.5 meters deep, entered from AD by a staircase, with a second staircase probably used to leave [1]. On the long wall a human head is carved from the rock. Karul describes a man with a protruding forehead, thick lips and a beard under his chin [3]. Opposite stand ten pillars left in the rock, which the project says "have the appearance of phalluses," plus an eleventh, a flat plate set in a shallow bed [1][3]. A serpentine channel runs into the room, which the project reads as a sign of a ritual involving liquid [1].
Later phases added rectangular communal buildings with T-shaped pillars, some carved with arms and hands [1]. Around them sit houses with grinding stones, mortars and pestles [1]. Karul's paper says these special buildings were filled in on purpose, in a series of steps [3].
What is the Karahan Tepe face pillar?
In October 2025 Smithsonian magazine reported a T-shaped pillar topped with a carved human face, about four and a half feet tall and the first of its kind in the Taş Tepeler sites [2]. The face is a prominent brow and a straight nose, in the style of faces on statues and busts from the site [2]. Karul told The Art Newspaper that "the only missing element in this pattern was the face" [2]. It was found in a structure with domestic finds such as grinding stones [2].
Karahan Tepe: discovery to the face pillar
1997
Found in the Tek Tek Mountains National Park.
2019
An international team for Istanbul University starts on the western slope.
2021
Necmi Karul describes the deliberately filled Structures AA, AB and AC.
2024-08
Martin Sweatman's paper reads an 11-pillar pool at Karahan Tepe in calendar terms.
2025-10
A T-shaped pillar with a carved human face is reported.
What do the alternative readings say?
A sky calendar. Martin Sweatman, of the University of Edinburgh's School of Engineering, published a 2024 paper in Time and Mind arguing that V-shaped symbols at Göbekli Tepe record a lunisolar calendar [5]. Its abstract says "a megalithic 11-pillar pool structure at nearby Karahan Tepe can also be interpreted in terms of the same lunisolar calendar system," and reads a Karahan Tepe statue with a V-symbol necklace as a "time-controlling or creator" deity [6]. He ties the calendar to a proposed comet strike in 10,850 BC, the Younger Dryas impact [5]. "It appears the inhabitants of Göbekli Tepe were keen observers of the sky," he said [5].
A serpent oracle. Andrew Collins's 2024 book, Karahan Tepe, argues the site was a shamanic oracle center whose rock-cut rooms connected with the Milky Way's Galactic Bulge and the stars of Scorpius, seen as the head of a cosmic serpent [7]. The book's description says its builders created "the world's first post-Ice Age civilization" and were remembered as the Watchers, the Nephilim and the Anunnaki [7]. His evidence is the site's snake carvings, chambers, acoustics and alignments [7].
Navel stones, not phalli. Graham Hancock visited during the excavations, before the site's official introduction in September 2021 [4]. He accepts the phallic reading "may very well be true," then asks: "could the rock-hewn pillars represent not phalli but omphali?", navel-of-the-earth stones like those he links to Delphi and Cuzco [4]. He also reports that some archaeologists on site speculated the curved eleventh pillar could produce tones, and that the room once held water [4].
What do the excavators say back?
The excavators' own reading is social, not cosmic. The project interprets Structure AB as a place for puberty or transition rituals, citing ethnographic rites of passage [1]. Karul's paper reads the room as a ceremonial procession past "the human head featuring a phallic symbolism," and calls that a "preliminary interpretation" to be revisited when the complex is fully dug [3].
On alien and energy claims, Karul told Hürriyet Daily News in 2024 that "those working with energy are even advising us on where to dig," and that people "often take the easy route, believing in sensational topics" [8]. None of the excavation sources tests the calendar, serpent or omphalos readings directly. The proponents cite symbols and alignments; the excavators cite fills, floors and finds. Neither side has published evidence that settles the other's case.
How are Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe connected?
Both are Taş Tepeler sites around Şanlıurfa [1][2]. Smithsonian calls them "sister sites" built by hunter-gatherers in the 10th millennium BCE [2]. The shared feature is the T-shaped pillar, carved with arms and hands at both; the Karahan Tepe face pillar is what Karul says completes the pattern of pillars as people [2]. Sweatman's paper treats the two sites as one symbolic system [6].
For how we handle sources and corrections, see our about page.
Frequently asked questions
Why is it spelled both Karahantepe and Karahan Tepe?
The excavation project and Turkish officials write it as one word. Many English-language outlets split it in two. Smithsonian magazine translates the name as Karahan Hill [2].
Who is excavating Karahan Tepe?
An international team for the Istanbul University Department of Prehistoric Archaeology, within the Taş Tepeler project. The excavation director is Necmi Karul [1][2].
Were the buildings buried on purpose?
The excavators say yes. Karul's 2021 paper describes Structures AA, AB and AC as filled in a series of steps and then sealed [3].
Is Karahan Tepe older than Göbekli Tepe?
Hürriyet Daily News reported in 2024 that recent studies suggest Karahan Tepe may predate Göbekli Tepe [8]. The project's own pages place both in the early Neolithic without ranking them [1].
Sources
- Karahantepe — Şanlıurfa Neolithic Research Project, Taş Tepeler (text by Necmi Karul)
- A Human Face Was Carved Into This Stone Pillar in Turkey 11,000 Years Ago — Smithsonian magazine (Sonja Anderson, 10 October 2025)
- Buried Buildings at Pre-Pottery Neolithic Karahantepe — Necmi Karul, Türk Arkeoloji ve Etnografya Dergisi (2021)
- Karahan Tepe, Gobekli Tepe's 12,000-years-old "Sister Site", Begins To Reveal Its Secrets — Graham Hancock
- Carvings at ancient monument may be world's oldest calendars — University of Edinburgh, via ScienceDaily (7 August 2024)
- Representations of calendars and time at Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe (Martin B. Sweatman, Time and Mind, 2024), release and abstract — Architexturez
- Karahan Tepe: Civilization of the Anunnaki and the Cosmic Origins of the Serpent of Eden — Andrew Collins, Bear & Company (2024), publisher's description
- 'Aliens' of Göbeklitepe — Hürriyet Daily News (Salim Uzun, 12 November 2024)