Phallus and the boar: Turkey digs yield clues to human history

Necmi Karul, a professor at Istanbul University, shows the newly found polychrome wild boar at the archaeological site of Gobeklitepe, southeastern Turkey. With its red eyes and teeth and black-and-white body, this 11,000-year-old wild pig is 'the first coloured sculpture from this period discovered to date'. Photo: AFP

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.