The Urfa man, also known as the Balıklıgöl statue, is an ancient human shaped statue found during excavations in Balıklıgöl near

Urfa Urfa, officially known as Şanlıurfa () and in ancient times as Edessa, is a city in southeastern Turkey and the capital of Şanlıurfa Province. Urfa is situated on a plain about 80 km east of the Euphrates River. Its climate features e ...

, in the geographical area of

Upper Mesopotamia Upper Mesopotamia is the name used for the Upland and lowland, uplands and great outwash plain of northwestern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey, in the northern Middle East. Since the early Muslim conquests of the mid-7th century, ...

, in the southeast of modern

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

. It is dated to the period of the

Pre-Pottery Neolithic The Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) represents the early Neolithic in the Levantine and upper Mesopotamian region of the Fertile Crescent, dating to years ago, (10000 – 6500 BCE).Richard, Suzanne ''Near Eastern archaeology'' Eisenbrauns; il ...

, and is considered as "the oldest naturalistic life-sized sculpture of a human". It is considered as contemporaneous with the sites of

Göbekli Tepe Göbekli Tepe (, "Potbelly Hill"; known as ''Girê Mirazan'' or ''Xirabreşkê'' in Kurdish languages, Kurdish) is a Neolithic archaeological site in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. Dated to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, between 9500 ...

(

Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) denotes the first stage of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, in early Levantine and Anatolian Neolithic culture, dating to years ago, that is, 10,000–8,800 BCE. Archaeological remains are located in the Levantine and Up ...

/B) and

Nevalı Çori Nevalı Çori ( tr, Nevali Çori, ku, Newala Çorî) was an early Neolithic settlement on the middle Euphrates, in Şanlıurfa Province, Southeastern Anatolia, Turkey. The site is known for having some of the world's oldest known temples and monu ...

(

Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) is part of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, a Neolithic culture centered in upper Mesopotamia and the Levant, dating to years ago, that is, 8800–6500 BC. It was typed by British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon during h ...

Discovery

The statue was found during construction work, and the exact location of the find has not been properly recorded, but it may have come from the nearby

site of Urfa Yeni-Yol. This is not far from other known Pre-Pottery Neolithic A sites around Urfa:

(about 10 kilometers), Gürcütepe. It is reported that it was discovered in 1993 on Yeni Yol street in Balıklıgöl, at the same location where a Pre-Pottery Neolithic site was investigated from 1997. The statue is nearly 1.90 meters tall. The eyes form deep holes, in which are set segments of black

obsidian Obsidian () is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed when lava extrusive rock, extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimal crystal growth. It is an igneous rock. Obsidian is produced from felsic lava, rich in the lighter elements s ...

. It features a V-shaped collar or necklace. The hands are clasped in front, covering the genitals. The statue is thought to date to around 9.000 BC, and is often claimed to be the oldest known statue in the world.

Context

Before the Urfa Man, numerous small-sized statuettes are known from the

Upper Paleolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coin ...

, such as the

Löwenmensch figurine The figurine, also called the Lion-man of , is a prehistoric ivory sculpture discovered in Hohlenstein-Stadel, a German cave in 1939. The German name, , meaning "lion-person" or "lion-human", is used most frequently because it was discovered a ...

(c.40,000 BC), the

Venus of Dolní Věstonice The Venus of Dolní Věstonice ( cs, Věstonická venuše) is a Venus figurine, a ceramic statuette of a nude female figure dated to 29,000–25,000 BCE (Gravettian industry). It was found at the Paleolithic site Dolní Věstonice in the Moravian ...

(c.30.000 BC), the

Venus of Willendorf The Venus of Willendorf is an Venus figurine estimated to have been made around 25,000-30,000 years ago. It was found on August 7, 1908, by a workman named Johann Veran or Josef Veram during excavations conducted by archaeologists Josef Szomba ...

(c.25000 BC) or the realistic

Venus of Brassempouy The Venus of Brassempouy (French: ''la Dame de Brassempouy'', , meaning "Lady of Brassempouy", or ''Dame à la Capuche'', "Lady with the Hood") is a fragmentary ivory figurine from the Upper Palaeolithic, apparently broken from a larger figure at s ...

(c.25000 BC). Slightly later than the Urfan Man, Pre-Pottery Neolithic C, anthropomorphic statues are known from the

Levant The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is eq ...

, such as the

'Ain Ghazal Statues El Ain ( ar, العين), Al Ain, or Ain is a village at an elevation of on a foothill of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains in the Baalbek District of the Baalbek-Hermel Governorate, Lebanon. It is famous for agriculture and trade, located on the highwa ...

Details

File:Urfa Adamı.jpg, Another view of the statue File:Urfa man portrait.jpg, Urfa man portrait, with obsidian stones in the eye sockets

References

{{reflist 9th-millennium BC works 1993 archaeological discoveries Sculpture of the Ancient Near East Neolithic Archaeology of the Near East 1993 in Turkey Archaeological discoveries in Turkey Şanlıurfa Sculptures of men in Turkey Pre-Pottery Neolithic A

Discovery

Context

Details

See also

References