16.500-Year-Old Cave Settlement Discovered in Turkey

Earlier this week I was send a link to a Turkish news site, from a Twitter user called Diego, and I’m really glad he did because it was a news story from the end of December 2021 about a 16,500 year old site in Turkey.

The significance is obviously the age of the site, being around 5,000 years older than the earliest phase of Gobekli Tepe, also located within Turkey, but the site is located more than 800 kilometres away from the famous megalithic site, close to the Bosporus strait.


The story hasn’t really permeated the western, English speaking media so I’m happy to present what I can find here on the Ancient Architects channel.


The site is known as Gedikkaya or Inhisar Cave, located on the north-facing slope of the rocky hill, one kilometre southeast of the Inhisar in the District of Bilecik.


The bat-filled limestone cave was only discovered in 2017 and inside there are stone and bone finds, including 70 arrowheads that date back to the Epi-Paleolithic Period, to approximately 16,500 years ago. This makes it one of the earliest places, if not the earliest place, where people settled in Ancient Anatolia. It was actually inhabited in three different periods, the Epi-Paleolithic, Neolithic and Chalcolithic.


Watch this video to learn more and please subscribe to the Ancient Architects channel, Like the video and please leave a comment below. All images are taken from Google images and the below sources for educational purposes only.

Matt Sibson
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