11,000-year-old sculpture of man riding a leopard found in Turkey

YeGoblynQueenne

>> Less than 12 miles away from Karahan Tepe, a high relief of a man gripping his phallus flanked by two roaring/biting leopards carved into the stone is the earliest narrative scene ever discovered. So, er, what is the um narrative conveyed by this scene?

adriand

> Since systematic excavations began in 2019, a number of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figural sculptures have been found at Karahan Tepe, often in unusual combinations. Several examples of a human carrying a leopard on his back. The leopards in these sculptures are not slung on the man’s back as if he had killed them in the hunt or tamed them enough to carry them, but rather are depicted snarling, with teeth bared, very much alive and very much unfriendly. Interesting that "you've got a monkey on your back" is a commonly-used expression in English. I could imagine these people saying the exact same thing, with "leopard" substituted in. "Bro, I gotta get this leopard off my back..."

Nicholas_C

The aesthetics of this sculpture look very similar to the Moai on Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

adityapatadia

What a downgrade. We were riding leopards back then!

lproven

The ancient Sumerians invented cuneiform writing about 5000-5500Y ago. This is as long before ancient Sumer as ancient Sumer is before us today. Mind-boggling.

Zigurd

"Hold my..." checks notes, yeah it's a couple thousand years earlier and near enough "...beer and watch this!"

stainablesteel

"riding" and "leopard" are doing a lot of work here he might be standing and holding it, but that's a nice find

janandonly

In a recent Irving Finkel interview he talks about Gulbekle Tepe and the proto-writing that was way older then even Sumerian. Link: https://lexfridman.com/irving-finkel/

oriettaxx

mmmmhm, riding?

ck2

Potbelly Hill in Turkey dates back to 10,000BCE and it is an amazing story * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe#/media/File:... the modern people who first looked at it thought it was just a graveyard with stone markers on the graves then someone dug down much further and those stone markers were several meters high

a3w

I read that as "man riding turkey", but why would he wear a leopard, Brain? Narf.

anigbrowl

Disappointing that it only has a single low-resolution picture which mostly obscures the leopard.

analog8374

I don't think he's sitting on the leopard.

bgnn

I've been to Gobeklitepe. Amazing place. What has been dug so far is a small fraction of what's under the surface yet. These round structures are intriguing. It's thought to be temporary. People came from all directions, built these, stayed for a while, ate a lot of hunted animals, and they buried these structures to never use again. Why? We don't know. I should visit Karahantepe too. Looks as interesting.

silverFork

Leopard seems to have had some sort of religious meaning to them. They have also found other sculptures where humans were carrying live leopards on their back in the same region. https://arkeonews.net/a-unique-11000-year-old-statue-of-a-hu...