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

About 11,000 years ago, a Neolithic artist living in modern-day Turkey carved a 2.3-foot-tall sculpture of a human riding on the back of a leopard. The circumstances of the artwork’s creation have been lost to time. But the artifact has survived for centuries, buried at an archaeological site known as Karahan Tepe, where researchers unearthed it during recent excavations.

Measuring nearly ten feet in diameter, this structure featured a floor made from flat stones. Ersoy adds that the artifact could provide new insights into early human history. That might have added to their symbolic meaning.” Notroff theorizes that the newly discovered artifact may have signified strength.

A sculpture of a human “apparently mastering” such a dangerous creature “could be read as maybe a symbol of power,” he adds. The image of a human riding a leopard is unique. Previously, however, archaeologists at Karahan Tepe revealed a curious artifact showing this dynamic in reverse: a statue of a human carrying a leopard on his back.

Discovered in 2021, this artwork is now in the collections of the Sanliurfa Museum. Both leopard artworks were crafted in an abstract style, similar to “known prehistoric mural paintings in continental Europe,” Ergun Lafli, an archaeologist at Turkey’s Dokuz Eylul University, tells the Art Newspaper’s Hadani Ditmars. As such, they provide rare evidence “for the cultural unity and a common iconographic language of prehistory.” Built in the tenth millennium B.C.E., Karahan Tepe is located about 22 miles east of Göbekli Tepe, another Neolithic site often described as one of the earliest known temples in the world.

Twice as old as Stonehenge, the site features pillars decorated with “intricate carvings of abstract symbols and wild animals, including lions, foxes, gazelles and birds,” according to History.com’s Jennifer Nalewicki. Last year, officials announced the discovery of a human face carved into a pillar at the site. At that time, Necmi Karul, the archaeologist leading the dig, explained that artworks depicting humans became more common as our ancestors transitioned from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to early settlements.

These Neolithic artworks date to “a period before writing,” and we know very little about the figures depicted in them, Karul added.