Phallus and the boar: Türkiye digs yield clues to human history The dry expanses of south-eastern Türkiye, home to some of humanity's most ancient sites, have yielded fresh discoveries in the form of a stone phallus and a coloured boar.
For researchers, the carved statue of a man holding his phallus with two hands while seated atop a bench adorned with a leopard, is a new clue in the puzzle of our very beginnings.
The 2.3-metre work was discovered at the end of September at Karahantepe, in the heart of a complex of some 20 sites that were home to thousands of people during the Stone Age.
Karahantepe is part of the network around UNESCO-listed Gobekli Tepe, a place where our prehistoric ancestors gathered to worship more than 7,000 years before Stonehenge or the earliest Egyptian pyramids.

... Archaeologists found a 1.2 metre long by 70 centimetre tall depiction of a boar, with red eyes and teeth as well as a black-and-white body.
This 11,000-year-old wild pig is the first coloured sculpture from this period discovered to date, Mr Karul said ...