42,000-year-old Mongolian pendant may be earliest known phallic art

The human predilection for phallic imagery is well documented—just look at the scrawling in any high school locker room. A pendant recently found in northern Mongolia suggests our species has been artistically recreating the penis for at least 42,000 years. According to researchers behind a study of the pendant, published this week in Nature Scientific Reports , the 4.3-centimeter piece of carved graphite is the “earliest-known sexed anthropomorphic representation.” If so, the pendant would predate cave art at Grotte Chauvet in France that depicts vulvas and dates back 32,000 years. It would even edge out the Venus of Hohle Fels statue found in southwestern Germany that may be as old as 40,000 years. But not everyone is convinced that the Mongolian pendant represents a phallus. The pendant was unearthed in 2016 at site called Tolbor in Mongolia’s northern Khangai Mountains. Radiocarbon dating of organic material found near it puts the artifact at between 42,400 and 41,900 years old. A fragment of an ostrich eggshell pendant, ostrich eggshell beads, other stone pendants, and animal bone pieces were also found in the same sedimentary layer. Solange Rigaud, an archaeologist at the University of Bordeaux and the study’s lead author, thinks the strongest argument for the pendant as a phallic representation comes from the features its maker focused on. “Our argument is that when you want to represent something abstractly, you will choose very...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news