Direkli Cave Excavation Site

Direkli Cave Excavation Site

Located in the Döngel District, 72 kilometers west of Kahramanmaraş's city center, Direkli Cave is an important archaeological site in Anatolia. The discovery of a statue of the Mother Goddess during the excavations in 2009 gave the cave its name, as this civilization once thrived in Anatolia.

The Paleolithic Layer of the cave has produced many significant artifacts, including blade-knives made of flint, piercers, pencils, scrapers, and cores. One of the most noteworthy finds is the meat of animals that lived during the Upper Pleistocene. Geologists have identified these bones as belonging to herbivores such as ox, deer, pigs, beavers, and rodents like bears or dogs.

So far, Venus-style statues have only been found in Europe. However, an example of this type of statue was discovered for the first time in the Near Eastern and Anatolian regions. This discovery has enabled researchers to trace back the history of civilization through which Venus-style statues could be dated to between 16,000 and 12,000 BC, around 5,000 years ago.

The statue found in Direkli Cave is about 3 cm tall and may be the earliest known goddess to be worshipped. The significance of this finding is that it shows that humans began worshipping a Mother Goddess in Anatolia during Neolithic times, around 7000 BC.