Türkiye’s Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, announced that archaeologists have uncovered a T-shaped pillar depicting a human face in Karahantepe—marking the first such discovery in history.
The find was made as part of the ongoing excavations within the Tas Tepeler (Stone Mounds) Project, an initiative that explores the earliest known monumental sites in human history across southeastern Türkiye.
T-shaped pillars—familiar from Gobeklitepe and other nearby Neolithic sites—have long intrigued archaeologists for their stylized arms and hands carved along the shafts, suggesting that the pillars symbolized human figures. The latest find at Karahantepe, however, takes this idea further: for the first time, one of these monumental stones bears a distinctly carved human face.
