Holocene

Marble blocks at the site may have served as steps leading to the mudbrick temple

Göbeklitepe, a 12,000-year-old Neolithic archaeological site in southeastern province of Şanlıurfa, may have been made by aliens, the city's mayor says.

"The statues in Göbeklitepe depict something other than humans. They seem to be coming from somewhere else. They remind me of aliens," Zeynel Abidin Beyazgül told daily Milliyet on April 25.

British historian, writer and publisher Bettany Mary Hughes has made a documentary film on Arslantepe Mound, which is on the UNESCO Cultural Heritage List in the eastern province of Malatya.

Hughes and her team came to Turkey in cooperation with the Culture and Tourism Ministry and the Turkey Tourism Promotion and Development Agency (TGA) and started shooting on April 15.

It dates back to archaic to classical period (6th-5th century BCE) an has modern additions

Archaeological excavations carried out in a cave in the Dikili district of İzmir have unearthed 14,000-year-old stone tools and bones from the Late Paleolithic (Epipalaeolithic) period.

Turkish and German scientists, who carried out the works in the area, revealed that the cave was also used as a cult center dedicated to the mother goddess Kybele.

Excavations carried out at Aççana mound in the Reyhanlı district of the southern province of Hatay unearthed some 3,250-year-old seal impressions and 3,400-year-old tablets. The artifacts belong to the Hittite prince, according to officials.

In archaeological excavations in Panaztepe, located in the Menemen district of the western province of İzmir and is believed to have been a settlement from 3,000 B.C. to the Byzantine period, structures from the oldest period of the city have been unearthed.

Ariadne Minoan fertility goddess

Tourists are being offered a new glimpse at one of the largest ancient mosaics in the Middle East after renovations undertaken by the Palestinian Authority were unveiled this week.

Seals and prints determined to belong to a female administrator named Matiya were recently discovered during excavations carried out in the ancient city of Karkamış in southeastern Turkey's Gaziantep province.

Karkamış was the most important administrative center in the region of the Hittite Empire, which ruled over Anatolia and Mesopotamia for centuries.