Karain Cave is one of the most interesting historical and archaeological sites and the largest natural cave in Turkey. It is located near the village of Yagca (Yenikoy district) in the Mediterranean region of the country, about 27 kilometres north-west of Antalya, on the eastern slope of the rocky Chan Mountain. The cave is about three hundred and seventy metres above sea level sea level and eighty metres up the slope, where the West Taurus zone borders the a plain of calcareous tuff. The height of the cave itself is one hundred and fifty metres.
In addition to its natural value, Karain is also of immense historical value. Thanks to its particularly favourable location and its convenience, it has, since the Palaeolithic period - as early as twenty-five thousand years ago - been inhabited by people who left a large number of physical reminders of of their stay.
The cave was first discovered in 1946. In the same year, the first scientific expedition into these underground labyrinths, led by Ismail Kilic Kokten. However, due to the crisis that erupted in the post-war years, the excavations had to be suspended for an indefinite period of time. They were resumed under the leadership of Ishin Yalchinkaya only in 1985. All the research work was mainly in the Karain-E hall. Karain Cave began to be studied more thoroughly since 1996, when the Department of Prehistory began to supervise the excavations. Department of Prehistory at the University of Liège (Belgium).
The cave was divided into seven halls, which were named in the form of letters of the Latin alphabet from A to G. The greatest interest among tourists Hall E, where Neanderthal bones up to two hundred thousand years old were found. This hall is the largest treasury of ancient monuments in the world. The cultural is about eleven metres long, and it contains tools from the Aschelian, Mousterian and Orignacian periods, made of stone.
There is only one entrance to the cave, and it leads to three large halls and a small museum of Anatolian civilisations, which houses a collection of of artefacts from the Karain excavations - stone and bone artefacts of the of the hunter-gatherers who inhabited the cave.
Remarkably, it was in this cave that the remains of the most ancient human remains in modern Turkey, as well as fragments of ancient weapons, arrowheads, tools, and bones of prehistoric animals such as the cave bear, wolf, lion and hippopotamus. In the Mousterian layer, and in the intermediate layer between it and the Orignac layer, two ancient human teeth were found, one of which belongs to a Neanderthal.
Judging from the inscriptions that lavishly decorate the walls of the cave, that it was used in ancient times not only as a dwelling, but also as a as a place of worship. It may have been a place of worship and sacrifice. It is also assumed that the cave served as a burial place in different periods. Severe destruction and collapses have occurred inside the cave.
In the halls, illuminated by electric dimmed light, special viewing platforms for tourists are made. The cave has many beautiful stalagmites and stalactites, formed over many millennia by nature. Preserved the excavation sites have also been preserved so that they can be viewed by interested tourists to see. The cave is kept at a constant temperature, of about twenty degrees centigrade, and it's quite humid.
