Oldest known representation of a narrative scene is a man holding his penis while being surrounded by leopards that dates back 11,000 years.

December 17, 2022 | 00:39:59

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Man Holding His Penis, Archaeologists in Turkey have found the world’s oldest narrative scene, a two-panel carving that shows humans and animals. The study details an 11,000-year-old complex at Sayburç, which includes multiple residential buildings and a sizable communal structure. It was published in the peer-reviewed journal Antiquity. On benches that border the walls of a community space, the engraving was discovered.

In the left panel, a male figure is depicted crouching and carrying a rattle or a snake against a bull. In the right panel, a male figure is depicted in high relief grasping its phallus as leopards approach from both sides.

This humanoid figure wears a triangle neckband and has a round face, big ears, and bulging eyes. The danger in each scenario is heightened by the prominent emphasis on the leopards’ teeth and the bull’s horns.

Eylem Zdoan, an archaeologist at Istanbul University and the paper’s author, said in a statement that “these characters, etched together to convey a narrative, are the earliest known examples of such a holistic scene.” This represented the myths that shaped the ideologies of the time, according to the author.

History news about Man Holding His Penis

The site in southeast Turkey, under a modern town in the province of Anlurfa, dates to the 9th millennium BCE. Beginning in 2021, excavations have shown that the area was inhabited by Neolithic people who were changing from nomadic hunters and gatherers to more sedentary farmers who had established permanent villages all across the area.

The study explains that “the process of Neolithisation brought with it enormous changes to the cycle of everyday life, subsistence tactics and technology, but probably most crucially to social connections, culminating in a reinterpretation of humanity’s place in the world.” This new way of life “was advanced in large part by the development of community activities and rituals, and the erection of communal buildings with significant symbolic components.”

Carvings and other visual representations of earlier oral storytelling and customs may have been a new point of connection as people adapted to more sedentary lifestyles, serving as a way to remember in a changing world. Carvings may have been used to narrate events or legends. According to Zdoan, the Sayburç reliefs are essentially “the expression of a communal memory that maintained the values of its community.”

As the communal building has only been partially uncovered, additional digs will probably turn up more ancient scenes, however, in the words of zdoan, “Sayburç contains extremely clear evidence [and] has the potential to tell us a lot about the Neolithic culture that we do not know yet.”