Hunters and Early Farmers of the Urfa Region

Hunters and Early Farmers of the Urfa Region

The megalithic constructions of Portasar / Göbekli Tepe are well known. Another site with even more impressive statues has been discovered nearby at Karahantepe. In 2021, another remarkable discovery was made at Sayburç (see the map for the locations of these sites).

At Sayburç, human reliefs dating to around 9000 BCE were carved into stone. These works were apparently created by the early farmers of West Asia and the Fertile Crescent.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the hunter-gatherer societies that developed agriculture and domesticated animals possessed surprisingly complex social organization. Without metal tools, they must have spent a considerable amount of time polishing stone and carving rock, which suggests significant planning, labor organization, and cultural development.

Ancient DNA from nearby sites such as Nevali Çori and Çayönü is now available. These populations do not show any unusual or “exotic” ancestry; rather, genetically they occupy an intermediate position between several neighboring groups:

• Anatolian hunter-gatherers

• Pre-Pottery Neolithic Levantine populations (Natufians)

• Neolithic farmers from the South Caucasus and historic Armenia

On the PCA (see the fourth picture), these populations appear within the blue hexagon located between three red circles, illustrating their intermediate genetic position among these three major groups.