Karain Cave
A Cave Occupied For About 500,000 Years By Paleolithic And Later People, One Of The Oldest Known Settlements In Anatolia, With A Museum, A Large Rock Hewn Hall And A Trail From The Car Park. A Quiet Visit To A Very Early Human Site, With A Small Museum Below · Dosemealti, Antalya
Karain Cave opens in a limestone hillside about 27 km north-west of Antalya, close to the village of Yesilbayir on the road to Burdur, and it is counted among the oldest inhabited sites in Anatolia. Excavators have found layers of tools, bones and hearth remains that reach back several hundred thousand years, with people coming and going through the Paleolithic and again in later periods (confirm the span). The cave is not a show cave with coloured lights and stalactite halls. It is a set of large rock-hewn chambers, climbed by a stair from a car park, where the point is to stand in the same shelter used by very early people and look out over the valley they hunted. A small museum at the foot of the hill displays tools, animal bones and explanations of the digs, and works well as a first stop before the climb. The visit is quiet, usually takes one to two hours, and fits neatly into a day with Termessos or the Antalya Archaeology Museum.
Karain Cave, a prehistoric cave in a hillside about 27 km north-west of Antalya near Yesilbayir, on the road to Burdur; coordinates approximate, Dosemealti, Antalya, Turkiye
The cave and the museum are normally open daily from about 08:00 to 17:00 in winter and to 18:00 or 19:00 in summer, with the museum sometimes closed one weekday - confirm both, since hours follow the museum authority and change by season. The last climb should start at least an hour before closing, because the stair is long and the interior is unlit in places. Heavy rain can close the path, as can maintenance on the steps. The nearby cafe and the village shops keep ordinary rural hours, roughly 09:00 to dusk.