Karain Cave is one of the greatest natural caves in Turkey, at about 450 m altitude and 30 km northwest of Antalya. The cave has been continuously inhabited by people along protohistoric ages such as paleolithic, neolithic, chalcolithic, old bronze, and classical ages, 500 thousand years in short. In the cave, human bones, hunter-gatherers, simple hand tools, and animal bones such as rhinos, elephants, and hippos which haven't been seen in Anatolia for centuries were found during the excavations. In contrast to other caves that dated to the paleolithic era, in Karain Cave it is possible to trace the lower, middle, and upper paleolithic periods uninterruptedly. The archeological excavations demonstrated that it was a settlement until the late Roman period, Greek inscriptions and niches were found on the forehead and outer walls of the cave.
The ruins, bones, and other findings are exhibited in the Antalya Museum and the Karain Museums, since 1997 it is declared a first-degree archaeological natural site and on Unesco World Heritage Tentative List. The cave has an important role to understand the prehistoric migration routes too.
