Karahan Tepe: The History of Anatolia's Mysterious Neolithic Site

When one thinks of the world's first cities, Sumer, Memphis, and Babylon are some of the first to come to mind, or if the focus then shifts to India, then Harappa and Mohenjo-daro will likely come up. But archaeologists recently uncovered a site thousands of years older than any of those, marking one of the oldest settled sites in the world. One of the earliest species of the genus Homo to be discovered thus far is Homo habilis, which basically means "handy man." The name came from the belief at the time of its discovery that this species was the first to start using stone tools, since the first fossils to be uncovered in Olduvai Gorge were from the same stratigraphic layer as simple stone tools. Fossils of the crania and postcranial skeleton for this species have been found in both eastern and southern Africa and date to as far back as 2.5 million years ago. While other Homo species would be able to use stone tools and harness fire over time as well, the Bronze Age, marking the transition to new kinds of tools, would not come until very recently (relatively speaking). The Neolithic period came before the Bronze Age and is generally regarded as the final subdivision of the Stone Age. During this time, communities domesticated plants and certain animals but still relied on hunting and gathering to a considerable extent, and beginning sometime around 7000 BCE, handmade pottery was developed, along with more advanced stone axes that enabled people to clear vast forests. Thanks to tools like that, the sizes of these Neolithic communities ranged from thousands to as few as a hundred, and they spread across the world with a variety of cultures and languages. One aspect these cultures had in common was that they relied on similar tools made of stone, wood, and bone. Despite the fact some Neolithic communities grew to considerable sizes, they're typically not considered when people think of the first ancient civilizations or the first major cities, so when archaeologists discovered the archaeological sites of Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe in the 20th century, it created an academic firestorm that is still raging. Archaeologists have been able to determine when Karahan Tepe was built, possibly how long it was occupied, and that it was probably related to the larger, better-known site of Göbekli Tepe, but several important questions remain. What was the purpose of Karahan Tepe? Was Karahan Tepe a permanent or semi-permanent settlement? What was the background of the people who built the site, and how long did it take them to build it? Karahan Tepe was just one of many sites in ancient modern Turkey, and as part of a greater complex, Karahan Tepe represents one of the earliest known attempts to build a complex society, so understanding more about the site can tell historians about how the process worked. Uncovering some of these mysteries can go far in understanding not just Karahan Tepe and nearby sites, but also the subsequent Bronze Age cultures in the Near East. However, since writing apparently didn't exist during the life of Karahan Tepe, many theories about it are hypothetical, leading to some fanciful and even outlandish hypotheses about Karahan Tepe and similar sites. Either way, Karahan Tepe represented a step forward in human development, an enduring symbol of prehistoric organizational structures that were capable of channeling greater numbers of people and the resources needed to build stone structures.