Why the Oldest Human Statue Ever is Displaying Its Penis

What Karahan Tepe tells us about human beliefs 12,000 years ago

Jared Barlament

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Maybe you’ve heard of Göbeklitepe. The findings, rolling in since the 1990s and accelerating in the 2010s, regarding what amounted to a completely pre-agricultural temple complex with impressive carved artworks of humans and animals and indecipherable symbols which hint at a highly developed and deeply meaningful world-belief system lost to time without any other trace than this.

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Jared Barlament

Author and essayist from Wisconsin studying anthropology and philosophy at Columbia University.