Oldest caving of human narrative found 11,000 years old

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An 11,000-year-old carving of a man holding his penis while surrounded by leopards is the oldest known depiction of a narrative scene, researchers said.



The carving, called the Sayburç reliefs, was discovered in Turkey in 2021, and the research was published in the peer-reviewed journal Antiquity.

The scene consists of a man standing between two leopards, and the man holding his penis is depicted with a round face, prominent ears, bulging eyes, and large lips. To the side, another man is depicted holding a snake or a rattle while standing near a bull.

Researchers said that the scene depicted in the wall relief "reflects the complex relationship between humans, the natural world, and the animal life that surrounded them during the transition to a sedentary lifestyle."In the carving, emphasis is placed on "predatory and aggressive aspects of the animal world," researchers said, such as depicting dangerous features such as teeth and horns.
https://www.businessinsider.com/turkey- ... ng-2022-12

Amazing find. Even though the more sophomoric among us will doubtlessly just focus on the guy holding his Weiner.

That actually is really fascinating!

How about that “Venus” from circa 25,000 BC….and all those cave paintings, especially the ones in color, most of which were created before 11,000 BC? They speak of human experiences, human desires, human emotions.

I guess this might be an early instance of an individual person as discrete from the immediate environment.

There are older works of art from the paleolithic, but thats the oldest one that seems to be trying to tell a story.

Not sure WHAT the story is.

Thousands of years later Mesopotamian art would show a hero with subdued animals on either side of him. And that in turn lead (thousands of years after that) to conventions of European heraldry. Like the British coat of arms - a shield topped by a crown (as a stand in for a human monarch maybe) - with a lion on one side, and unicorn on the other. This carving seems to be a distant precursor of that artistic convention.

Its roughly contemporary with the recently found Goblecki Tepli temple, also in Turkey. Right at the end of the last Ice Age when humans began to transition from hunter gatherers to farmers.

I should point out this stone carving includes five figures across two reliefs; a kind of a prehistoric version of a two-panel comic. The first features the main human figure holding his penis with two leopards on either side of him, one of which also has a phallus. A second carving features another human figure, probably also depicted with a phallus, next to a bull.

Yes good point, The carvings are contemporaneous with Gobleke Tepi (which is 11-12,000 years old) and the latter also includes plentiful phalluses, among many other imaginative depictions.

I actually don't agree with the researchers, I think the male figures represent some type of male fertility figures and perhaps the power/dominion man has over nature (which is represented by the gnashing teeth, claws and sharp horns)

That makes sense.

Probably similar to the Venus—except it’s male.

Looks very sophisticated for it to be one one of the early forms of this type of art.

Also, what does holding your dick surrounded by large cats even mean?

Am I the only one thinking it's weird?

Yes it's very counterintuitive. It show the sculptors weren't primitive thinkers. There is a deeper connotation than just simply some naked dude walking into the jungle full of big cats and raging bulls holding his penis.

Religious symbolism-----like the Venus.

The figurine, upon a closer look, doesn't seem quite "human." Seems like a human-nonhuman animal hybrid.

For some reason this reminds me of the beautiful busty bird woman on the Burney Relief discovered in Mesopotamia.



I read somewhere that some scholars theorize that this figure may have once been a part of a high class Mesopotamian brothel.

Certainly from a later time than the OP carving.

Of course, I'm just saying the blatantly sexual nature of the other relief reminds me of this one too. A nude human posing in a sexually suggestive manner surrounded by wild beasts. And as someone pointed out in both cases the figures don't appear to be entirely human and have some animal-like characteristics.

There's plenty of animal-human hybrids sculpted thousands of years before penis man.
Lion Man of the Hohlenstein Stadel (38,000 BC)

Very fascinating too!