The archaeological site of Arslantepe is located on the Malatya plain, five kilometers from the city center and 15 km from the Euphrates River, said UNESCO in a statement.

“The site also testifies to the fact that these crucial changes in human history took place for the first time over a large area including, besides Mesopotamia, the Euphrates region in Eastern Anatolia,” it said. 

The long history of the site, located at the crossroads of the main civilizations of the Near East, reportedly reveals crucial events and processes of change in connection with the contemporary developments in Mesopotamia, Anatolia and the South Caucasus.

“This research has enlightened the millenarian history of the Upper Euphrates region and makes Arslantepe an exceptional testimony to crucial stages in the human history: the birth of hierarchical societies, that of the first centralized political and economic systems, the origin of bureaucracy and its first working system, the rise of a systematic control on human labour, in other words, the origin of power and the State,” said UNESCO.

“It is a 4 hectares and 30 m. high archaeological mound dominating the Malatya plain and was formed by the superimposition of settlements for millennia, from at least the 6th millennium BCE to the late Roman period,” said UNESCO.