Officials from Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism working at Karahan Tepe, a “significant parallel site” to the enigmatic Göbekli Tepe, have announced the discovery of a unique stone sculpture depicting a human figure riding a leopard.
Ministry officials said the 70-centimeter-tall “composite sculpture,” likely carved thousands of years before the first organized human societies, “opens new questions” about the ancient Neolithic artist who created it.
The discovery also offers insights into the sophistication of the society and the types of artistic expression taking place thousands of years ago in this archaeologically rich region of southeastern Turkey, according to a recent Yenisafak news agency report.
When most people think of ancient megalithic structures, well-known archaeological sites like the Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge, and Machu Picchu likely come to mind. Critically, all those impressive feats of ancient engineering were accomplished after the generally agreed-upon formation of humanity’s first societies.
Those attitudes began to shift after the relatively recent discovery of Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey. Famous for its massive stone pillars and lifelike animal sculptures found throughout much of the site, the site’s construction has been scientifically dated to between 11,500 and 12,000 years before present. That date places this impressive site and its artwork’s creation thousands of years before those first human societies.
While researchers continue to excavate Göbekli Tepe, they have also unearthed several historically rich sites in the same region. That includes the nearby Karahan Tepe, which has been dated to a few hundred years after its more famous neighbor.
According to the ministry, Karahan Tepe lies approximately 30 kilometers from Göbekli Tepe. The historic sites are part of the larger Taş Tepeler archaeological project. That effort includes a cluster of Stone Hills sites previously dated to the Neolithic period more than 11,000 years before present.
When Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy announced the discovery, he described the ancient artwork as a “composite sculpture.” The Minister said the find, which he also described as 11,000 years old, represented a style not previously encountered at the ancient site, near Şanlıurfa.
The minister said the unusual sculpture was found during ongoing excavations this year. Instead of resting inside a majestic monument like the Göbekli Tepe sculptures, the leopard-and-man statue was found resting on a bench along the wall of a circular structure “roughly three meters in diameter.”
Notably, the structure’s floor was paved with flat stones. The ministry said this suggests a sophisticated level of deliberate architectural planning “during an era predating the emergence of cities and written records.”
When discussing the discovery’s significance, the ministry pointed to the volume of monumental structures and elaborate artworks found in the region. They also noted the value of artifacts representing humanity’s transition “between mobile hunter-gatherer existence and settled agricultural life,” which “challenge previous assumptions about the timeline of complex social organization.”
“While Göbeklitepe has drawn international attention since the 1990s for its T-shaped pillars and animal carvings, Karahantepe has emerged as a significant parallel site since excavations began there in 2019,” the announcement explains.
After highlighting Turkey’s ‘Heritage to the Future’ initiative, which supported the effort, Minister Ersoy said the ancient statue’s discovery “opens the door to new questions about the earliest periods of human history” and would resonate throughout the scientific community.
Christopher Plain has spent the last six years as Associate News Editor and Head Science Reporter at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his novels at plainfiction.com, or email him at christopher@thedebrief.org.
New subsurface scans of Turkey’s controversial Durupınar Formation—a 157-meter (515-foot) geological feature long promoted by some researchers as the possible remains of Noah’s Ark—have reportedly identified subsurface anomalies that may challenge past assessments of the controversial site.
The findings, revealed in a press release and not yet detailed in research that has undergone peer-review, do not conclusively establish that the formation is artificial. However, according to researchers with Bakhtar Research and Engineering, LLC, and Noah’s Ark Scans, their preliminary data reveal newly identified features that warrant further investigation.
Scientists and religious scholars have long debated the historical basis of biblical narratives. However, the 1959 identification of the boat-shaped Durupınar Formation near Turkey’s Mount Ararat added a new dimension to the longstanding search for archaeological evidence associated with Noah’s Ark. Some researchers have argued that the formation’s dimensions and location resemble descriptions associated with the biblical vessel, while skeptics and geologists have generally maintained that the feature is a natural geological formation.
In a press release announcing the new analysis, the researchers said the survey marked the first use of BakhtarRadar at the controversial Durupınar site. The system was developed by project leader Dr. Khosrow Bakhtar, who, according to the release, has spent four decades developing detection technologies for organizations including the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and NORAD-USNORTHCOM. The team says the BakhtarRadar system used during the survey originated as a specialized subsurface imaging technology called EarthRadar, developed for the U.S. Air Force.
Joined by Noah’s Ark Scans founder Andrew Jones, Bakhtar conducted scans across the formation that the team says produced high-resolution, three-dimensional volumetric imagery of its subsurface features.
Before conducting the survey, the researchers outlined three primary objectives: determining whether the formation is a “single homogeneous mass of natural stone,” investigating whether it contains internal structures, and identifying the location of the underlying bedrock. The team also sought to determine whether that bedrock extends continuously beneath the surrounding valley.
“That is precisely the challenge at Durupınar,” the team’s statement explains, “separating layers, structures and discontinuities in difficult conditions and building a 3-D picture of what lies underneath.”
Earlier investigations, including a 2019 ground-penetrating radar survey, reportedly identified several unusual subsurface features within the formation. These included voids, linear and angular features, and patterns that investigators interpreted as “possible corridors and chamber-like spaces.”
Unlike the equipment used in that earlier survey, the team said BakhtarRadar was deployed to “interrogate those same targets with a fundamentally different radar approach.” According to the researchers, the system also allowed them to examine the “deeper geological framework beneath the site” and attempt to trace the bedrock surface below and around the formation.
After completing scans across the Durupınar Formation, the team reported several preliminary observations from the data analyzed so far. Most notably, the researchers said the scans “do not show the formation as a simple, homogeneous mass of rock.”
Instead, Bakhtar and Jones reported what they described as “strong subsurface anomalies and layering” beneath the boat-shaped formation. They also said their analysis of the deeper data processed to date revealed “no clear boundary” beneath the formation. According to the team, this was unexpected because “the radar is looking well below where a shallow rock core would be expected to appear.”
The researchers also highlighted a subsurface anomaly extending approximately 250 feet through the central portion of the formation, which they have interpreted as resembling a “tunnel or hallway.” However, the feature has not been physically excavated or otherwise confirmed to represent an artificial structure.
The team cautioned that these observations were preliminary, and “remain subject to full processing and interpretation.” However, they also claim that their new findings “strike directly at the geological objection that has been raised against the site for years,” which argues that the Durupınar formation “is nothing more than a natural pile of rock or mud draped over shallow bedrock.”
“We are not trying to end this debate with a press release,” Jones said. “We believe this is Noah’s Ark, but the way to demonstrate that is to keep testing it.”
For now, though, all the team has presented is the press release Jones mentions—none of the findings have been detailed in a formal study or undergone peer review. Additionally, critics have previously raised questions about how some of the team’s geophysical findings have been interpreted, particularly given that some members of the project, like Jones, have already publicly expressed their belief that the formation represents Noah’s Ark, and that others include self-ascribed Christian activists, according to the team’s website.
Even some prominent young-Earth creationists have expressed doubts about the team and its findings in the past. Such critics include Ken Ham, the founder, CEO, and former president of the Christian apologetics organization Answers in Genesis, who took issue with Noah’s Ark Scans’ founder, Andrew Jones, in a blog post last June.
“By his own admission, Andrew Jones of Noah’s Ark Scans, a committed leader of this latest ‘push’ to promote this site as the remains of Noah’s ark, was convinced of what this site likely was before viewing the results of these geophysical surveys,” Ham wrote on his blog last year, noting that geophysical data discussed by Jones had been “couched in terms of scan features being ‘decks’ as well as a claimed ‘corridor’ or ‘tunnel’ down the middle of the structure.”
“None of these reports objectively assess the raw geophysical data by canvassing other interpretations,” Ham argued.
It is worth noting that the Noah’s Ark Scans team concedes their failure to identify a bedrock boundary in the scan data processed so far, although noting that this “does not by itself prove bedrock is absent.” The group also concedes that radar anomalies alone “do not prove an archaeological origin.” Instead, they said more analysis and research will be needed to settle the argument about the controversial site’s true nature.
“Now we need to finish the processing, choose the best core locations, and put physical samples in the hands of the scientists,” Jones said in the recent press release. “That is where this becomes truly exciting.”
The researchers said that the purpose of the ongoing effort is to find physical evidence that can “withstand scrutiny” and distinguish their interpretation of the site “from a purely natural geological explanation.”
The team says it expects to release a preliminary report “in the coming weeks,” after which its findings “will be integrated with the existing geophysical surveys” to help the team prioritize targeted core-drilling locations and “guide the next phase of the Durupınar investigation.”
Whether the group will produce evidence capable of persuading geologists and archaeologists—let alone critics of the project who themselves believe in the biblical flood—remains to be seen. Until physical evidence conclusively demonstrates otherwise, however, the Durupınar Formation is best described according to the prevailing geological interpretation: as a naturally formed geological feature rather than the remains of an archaeological structure.
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and has spent the last six years as Associate News Editor and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him at christopher@thedebrief.org.
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