Stone phalluses and colorful boar statues are new discoveries in a vast, arid region of southeastern Turkey that is home to some of humanity’s oldest ruins.
To researchers, the sculpture of a man sitting on a leopard-adorned bench, clutching a phallus in both hands, offers new clues to the origins of humanity.
The 2.3-metre (7.5-foot) high ruins were discovered in late September in Karahantepe, at the centre of a complex of around 20 ruins where thousands of people lived during the Stone Age.
Karahantepe is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Gobekli Tepe, the site where our prehistoric ancestors gathered and worshiped more than 7,000 years before Stonehenge and Egypt’s oldest pyramids.
Necmi Karlı, head of Istanbul University’s prehistory department, discovered the statue, which had fallen and broken into three pieces.
“We have found several statues of this kind, but this is the first time we’ve found a phallic statue here,” said the archaeologist coordinating work on a project focusing on settlements in the area.
A man was found lying on one of the original rectangular buildings, probably as a pillar supporting a wooden roof, providing a clue as to how people may have used the site.
Karur said the settlements bear witness to “a new social order that emerged after the Ice Age.”
“The main reason for starting a new type of architecture is to build a new type of society,” he pointed out.
Another 150 years of work
Göbekli Tepe may be part of a larger sacred complex that encompasses nearby hilltop ruins that some experts believe were never actually inhabited, but that archaeologists believe may be even older.
But tame photos of the statue, first released by Turkey’s Culture Ministry, have led local media to question censorship in the Islamic country, which has leaned more conservatively under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“We are archaeologists. There is no censorship! We haven’t found a phallus yet,” the archaeologist said with a laugh.
But there is a hidden meaning behind the discovery.
“The residents used to destroy pillars and statues before leaving the ruins, and previously they broke noses and phalluses,” he said.
The site has since been filled in and buried under tons of sand and soil.
Its function remains unknown, as does the reason for its sudden abandonment and destruction after hundreds of years of use.
The site’s largest room is surrounded by smaller ones and appears to have been a kind of meeting place, accessed through a narrow passageway supported by a forest of phallic pillars topped with men’s heads carved into the rock.
“The people who came in here knew the symbols… they knew the meaning, they knew it told a story, but we don’t know,” he added, noting that no statue of the woman has been found.
They were probably made of wood, he suggested, pointing out.
Shortly after Karur unearthed the hominids at Karahantepe, he made another discovery at Göbekli Tepe in the same week.
Archaeologists discovered a drawing of a boar measuring 1.2 metres long and 70 centimetres high (4 feet by 2 feet), with red eyes and teeth and a black and white body.
Karur said the 11,000-year-old boar is the first colorful sculpture discovered from that period.
The site was inhabited for approximately 1,500 years before being abandoned.
Of the 20 regional sites in the Tas Tepe (Stone Hill) Project, which Karur coordinates and stretches over 120 kilometers (75 miles) near the Syrian border, only nine have been excavated.
“We will continue the work for the next 150 years,” said Karl, deciding to leave the humans and wild boars exactly where they emerged from the Earth, but to take the necessary measures to protect them. – AFP
