- Djokovic hails Nadal 'legacy' as Alcaraz in 'shock' over retirement
- Obama hits campaign trail for Harris
- Delta eyes Election Day travel pullback as profits climb
- Djokovic tells Nadal: 'Your legacy will live forever'
- Ethel Kennedy, wife of RFK, dead at 96
- Zelensky denies ceasefire with Russia under discussion on trip
- Florida battered by hurricane, floods but spared 'worst-case scenario'
- After long fight for glory, Nadal leaves with a legacy of memories
- Home hopes Zheng and Wang through to last-eight in Wuhan Open
- UN peacekeepers say Israel fired on Lebanon HQ, injuring 2
- UK's William and Kate in first joint public engagement since cancer treatment
- Alcaraz out as top players pay tribute to Nadal at Shanghai Masters
- Racing's Farrell 'not thinking' about British and Irish Lions
- Alcaraz, Sinner pay tribute to 'unbelievable' Nadal at Shanghai Masters
- Over 200 women in legal talks with Harrods over Fayed abuse claims
- After K-pop, K-novels? South Korean Nobel win sparks joy, hope at home
- After Nadal exit, Djokovic left to rage against dying of the light
- A very stiff breeze: BBC says sorry for 20,000 kph wind forecast
- Triple centurion Brook happy to break Dad's club record
- Zelensky touts 'victory plan' against Russia in Macron talks
- Musk finally unveiling his long-promised robotaxi
- UN peacekeepers accuses Israel of firing on Lebanon HQ
- London's Frieze art fair goes potty for ceramics
- Southgate taking year out from coaching
- US, Europe stocks fall on US inflation data
- Zelensky meets Macron in Paris as part of European tour
- Hurricane Milton shreds Florida stadium roof
- UN probe accuses Israel of seeking to 'destroy' Gaza healthcare
- US consumer inflation eases to 2.4% in September
- England in sight of victory after Brook's triple hundred
- Juventus readmitted to ECA after failed Super League revolt
- World number 2 Alcaraz knocked out of Shanghai Masters by Machac
- Leaders of Egypt, Eritrea, Somalia meet amid regional tensions
- Klopp's Red Bull decision 'ruined life's work' say Dortmund fans
- Han Kang wins South Korea's first literature Nobel
- S. Korea's Nobel winner Han Kang a modest, thought-provoking writer
- Hurricane Milton tornadoes kill four in Florida amid rescue efforts
- The almost impossible job: Beating Rafael Nadal at the French Open
- New French government faces key test with budget plan
- Rescuers say Israeli strike on Gaza school kills 28
- Italy's ex-world champion gymnast Ferrari announces retirement
- Zelensky talks 'victory plan' in meeting with Starmer, Rutte
- South Korea's Han Kang wins literature Nobel
- Federer lauds retiring Nadal's 'incredible achievements'
- Ikea posts fall in annual sales after lowering prices
- Australia beat China 3-1 to resurrect World Cup campaign
- Stock markets diverge, oil gains after China rebounds
- Nadal defied injury woes in record-breaking career
- Nadal v Djokovic, French Open, 2006: Chapter One in epic rivalry
- World can't 'waste time' trading climate change blame: COP29 hosts
RBGPF | 4.03% | 63.35 | $ | |
CMSC | 0.16% | 24.56 | $ | |
SCS | -3.41% | 12.6 | $ | |
BCE | -1.69% | 32.755 | $ | |
JRI | -0.05% | 13.214 | $ | |
BCC | -1.9% | 139.73 | $ | |
NGG | 0.19% | 65.754 | $ | |
RIO | 0.03% | 66.37 | $ | |
CMSD | 0.24% | 24.74 | $ | |
RELX | -0.68% | 46.395 | $ | |
RYCEF | 0% | 6.9 | $ | |
AZN | -1.02% | 76.72 | $ | |
BTI | -0.71% | 35.23 | $ | |
GSK | -2.54% | 39.245 | $ | |
BP | 0.94% | 32.285 | $ | |
VOD | -0.41% | 9.69 | $ |
Phallus and the boar: Turkey digs yield clues to human history
The dry expanses of southeastern Turkey, 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-meter (7.5-foot tall) 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.
Necmi Karul, who heads the prehistory department at Istanbul University, found the toppled statue that was broken into three sections.
"We found several statues of this kind... but for the first time here we found the phallus," said the archaeologist, who coordinates the work of a project focused on the area's settlements.
The man lay in one of the first rectangular buildings, probably as a pillar supporting the wooden roof -- clues to how people used the site.
Karul said these settlements bear witness to "a new social order born after the Ice Age."
"The main reason to start a new kind of architecture is to build a new type of society," he noted.
- 150 more years of work -
Gobekli Tepe -- which some experts believe was never actually inhabited -- may be part of a vast sacred landscape that encompasses other nearby hilltop sites that archaeologists believe may be even older.
But the first modest photos of the statue released by Turkey's culture ministry led the local press to suspect censorship in the Muslim nation that has veered conservative under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
"We are archeologists, censorship doesn't exist! We had not yet found a phallus," the archaeologist said, laughing.
But there's meaning hidden in the discovery.
"Before leaving a site they (residents) used to crash the pillars and the statues -- but before, they broke the nose and the phallus," he said.
Then the site was filled in, buried under tonnes of sand and earth.
Its function remains unknown as do the reasons for the sudden abandonment and destruction of place after apparently hundreds of years of use.
The largest room at the site, surrounded by smaller rooms, seems to have been a kind of gathering place accessed via a narrow passageway, supported by a forest of phallus-shaped pillars topped by a man's head carved out of the rock.
"Those who entered here knew the symbols... they knew the meaning, it told them a story but we don't know it," he added, noting they have not found any female figures.
Perhaps they were made of wood, he noted, hazarding a guess.
No sooner had Karul unearthed the Karahantepe man, when he made another discovery the same week at Gobekli Tepe.
Archaeologists found a 1.2 metre long by 70 centimetre tall (4-foot by two-foot) 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, Karul said.
The site was occupied for some 1,500 years before being abandoned.
Of the 20 area sites in Tas Tepe (Stone Hills) project that is coordinated by Karul -- which stretches over 120 kilometres not far from the Syrian border -- only nine are being excavated.
"Work for the next 150 years", noted Karul, who has decided that both the man and the boar will remain where they emerged from the earth, but with the necessary measures to safeguard them.
O.M.Souza--AMWN