A 10,000-Year-Old Settlement Discovered in Türkiye Could Rewrite the Origins of Sedentary Life and Civilization

A team of archaeologists from Mardin Artuklu University, in southeastern Türkiye, has brought to light one of the most important discoveries for understanding the origins of civilization in northern Mesopotamia. It is the site of Şika Rika 5, a prehistoric settlement dating to the end of the Epipaleolithic period, approximately between 12,000 and 10,000 BC.

The excavations, led by archaeologist Ergül Kodas, began in 2024 after the site was identified during surface surveys carried out between 2022 and 2023. What makes Şika Rika 5 extraordinary is not only its age, but also its location.

Until now, virtually all sites from this period in Anatolia were concentrated in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This new site lies in a region that had previously remained unexplored for these periods: the limestone foothills of Tur Abdin, in the northern part of the Khabur River valley, very close to the Syrian border.

Key Late Epipalaeolithic settlements in the Near East and the geographic areas of south-eastern Anatolia. Credit: E. Kodaş

A stone cemetery that hid a secret

The area known as Şika Rika, about two kilometers northeast of the village of Akinci, is not an isolated site. In fact, it is a prehistoric complex that contains a total of 20 different settlements, all visible on the surface thanks to the remains of their limestone structures. These villages are spread across the landscape, separated by only about 300 to 500 meters.

Archaeologists have identified three different types of settlements in the area: some have angular floor plans, others feature large round areas, and a third group, which includes Şika Rika 5, is characterized by smaller round structures.

Şika Rika 5 sits on a rocky slope in the northeastern part of this cluster. The stone structures identified on the surface extend over more than 1,200 square meters. In the center of the site, archaeologists have documented three adjacent circular buildings, labeled A1, A2, and A3.

The largest structure, A1, has a diameter of 6.3 meters. Inside, the team found four postholes surrounded by stone, indicating the existence of a roof or elevated structure, as well as a circular hearth also built of stone. The other two structures, measuring 5 and 3 meters in diameter respectively, each have a single central posthole.

A fourth structure, located east of the previous ones and designated A4, measuring 4.9 meters in diameter, was also excavated urgently because it had been damaged by illegal digging. Inside it, archaeologists found a posthole, a hearth, and what the researchers believe could be a burial pit.

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Overview of Şika Rika 5 site and the exposed architectural remains and drawing after the excavation. Credit: E. Kodaş

The “Swiss Army knife” of prehistory: tiny tools that speak

One of the key elements for dating the site and understanding the way of life of its inhabitants has been the study of stone tools. The lithic assemblage recovered at Şika Rika 5 is composed mostly of flint tools, although some pieces of obsidian also appear, a volcanic glass highly valued in antiquity whose origin must necessarily be distant, indicating trade contacts or exchanges with other regions.

Archaeologists believe that the flint may have been obtained locally from nodules embedded in the limestone blocks of the area. The discovery of small unworked blades, flakes, and numerous cores from which these flakes were struck confirms that stone knapping was carried out within the settlement itself. Percussors were also found, the stones used as hammers to strike and shape the tools.

The most characteristic feature of the lithic industry at Şika Rika 5 is its typology. It is dominated by microlithic tools, that is, very small pieces. Among them are the so-called “lunates,” which have a crescent shape, and retouched bladelets. These small geometric pieces, almost always made of flint and in some cases obsidian, were inserted into wooden or bone handles to form knives, sickles, or projectile points. It was the technology of the time, efficient and sophisticated.

Experts have also identified some very specific types, such as the “Helwan-type lunates,” which make it possible to establish chronological and cultural connections with other sites in the Mediterranean Levant. The tool assemblage, which includes burins (used to work bone or wood), scrapers, and drills, shows the typical characteristics of the end of the Epipaleolithic period (the long transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic, sometimes called the Mesolithic).

The first cooks: grinding stones and mortars in the rock

Alongside the small hunting or gathering tools, numerous grinding implements appeared: grinding stones and pestles. These tools are essential for understanding the subsistence of these human groups. They are related to the processing of wild cereals, legumes, and other plants, an activity that became increasingly important during this period and that would eventually lead to the development of agriculture.

Examples of grinding stones, pestles and bedrock mortars: 1, 3 & 4) pestle; 2) mortar; 5) bedrock mortar. Credit: E. Kodaş et al. 2026

Even more significant is the discovery of mortars carved directly into the bedrock of the site. This type of fixed installation is usually associated with a greater degree of permanence at a settlement and is typical of the final Epipaleolithic period.

Among the most unusual objects recovered are several ornamental items: fragments of pendants made from bone, pieces of broken staffs, staff heads, and a fragment of a polished staff. These objects, which have no obvious practical function, point to the existence of a complex symbolic and social sphere in which personal adornment and certain prestige or status objects were beginning to play an important role.

Analysis of the recovered faunal remains reveals that the inhabitants of Şika Rika 5 exploited a wide variety of natural environments: wetlands, forests, mountainous regions, and steppes. This indicates that, despite already pointing toward greater sedentarization, their economy remained that of hunter-gatherers, with a deep knowledge of the territory and its resources.

Finally, isolated human bones were found inside structures A1 and A3, including teeth. The presence of these remains inside houses is a funerary practice documented in other Pre-Pottery Neolithic cultures and points to a very close relationship between the living and their dead, who remained under the same roof.

Closing a historical gap

The importance of Şika Rika 5 cannot be understood without the archaeological context of the region. Southeastern Anatolia is famous for hosting monumental sites such as Göbekli Tepe, considered the oldest temple in the world, already in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (around 9500 BC). However, the earlier phases—the ones that explain how groups of nomadic hunter-gatherers became the first sedentary communities that would build those sanctuaries—remained practically undocumented in the area.

Research had historically focused on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. In the Syrian section of the Khabur Valley, surveys carried out in the 1990s did not locate remains from the Upper Paleolithic or the Epipaleolithic. In the Turkish portion of this valley, the gap was even greater. Until now.

Excavations at Körtik Tepe, Boncuklu Tarla, and Çemka Höyük, all in the Upper Tigris, had provided some data, but their number was very limited. The Epipaleolithic period is poorly represented in southeastern Anatolia, explain the authors in the article published in the journal Antiquity.

Barely one partially excavated building at Körtik Tepe, a large building at Boncuklu Tarla, and several dwellings at Çemka Höyük made up the entire available record. This prevented researchers from having a regional perspective and understanding how Neolithization occurred in this vast area.

“Local dynamics” versus external influences

Şika Rika 5 helps fill that gap. For the first time, there is evidence of a settlement from this period outside the Tigris Valley. But in addition, surveys carried out by the team in the Mardin region have identified no fewer than 30 new sites with Epipaleolithic characteristics, many of which show architectural remains and lithic tools similar to those found here.

This fact is crucial. The emergence of sedentary life in northern Mesopotamia had often been explained as a process radiating eastward from the Mediterranean Levant (the Natufian culture, for example). However, the density of sites found in Mardin suggests a different reality.

The new data obtained from the settlement of Şika Rika 5 provide information about an Epipaleolithic site outside the Upper Tigris Valley, the researchers note in their conclusions. The emergence of sedentary life in this region therefore appears to be more closely associated with local dynamics than could previously be hypothesized due to the lack of archaeological data, indicating a stronger underlying cultural framework.

In other words, the process that led humans to settle permanently and, ultimately, to domesticate plants and animals may have had deeper local roots than previously believed. These groups were not merely recipients of external influences, but were probably developing their own path toward sedentarization.

Archaeologists even raise a broader debate. The late Natufian culture, well known in Israel, Jordan, and Syria, is considered the immediate precursor of the Neolithic in the Levant. The discovery of these new sites in Türkiye opens two possibilities: either the area of Natufian expansion was much larger than previously known, reaching as far as southeastern Anatolia, or we may be facing a different cultural manifestation specific to this region, one that researchers will have to define and name.

The Şika Rika 5 project, which has only just begun, now faces the challenge of continuing excavations to answer these questions. For the moment, the stones of this hunter-gatherer settlement, with its circular houses, its hearths, and its dead beneath the ground, have begun to tell a story written in a region that had until now been overlooked by prehistoric archaeology. A story suggesting that, at the dawn of civilization, northern Mesopotamia was a hotbed of local innovation, and not merely a periphery of what was happening further south.