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11,000-year-old sculpture of man riding a leopard found in Turkey
- stainablesteel 2mo ago"riding" and "leopard" are doing a lot of work here he might be standing and holding it, but that's a nice find
- huseyinkeles 2mo agoI spent so much time looking at it, how do they see a leopard there?
- analog8374 2mo agoThey have this standard icon for leopard. That's an example of it. It's like our Mickey Mouse isn't exactly anatomically correct either.
- YeGoblynQueenne 2mo ago>> 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?
- bena 2mo agoDepends on the nature of the grip. He could be trying to protect his junk from the leopards, or taunting the leopards by jerking at them. So many options. The past was just as juvenile and perverse as modernity.
- anentropic 2mo agoGiven that they went to considerable effort to carve it in stone as part of a temple complex, it was likely neither juvenile nor perverse
- westmeal 2mo agoSome people like making others laugh, maybe they thought we'd appreciate it
- ccozan 2mo agoHumor and jokes exist since the great apes!
- tclancy 2mo agoHave I got some ancient Greek theatre to show you?
- Contortion 2mo agoI think you underestimate the amount of effort people are willing to put in to being juvenile or perverse.
- anentropic 2mo agoI guess my point was that "juvenile" and "perverse" are modern judgements
- Exoristos 2mo agoWait until you see some of the carvings in Gothic cathedrals.
- webdoodle 2mo agoThis is most likely the explanation. Apex predators will often try to kill the seed of an enemy by tearing off their junk. It's much less dangerous than trying to kill the enemy, and it serves the same purpose of ending their genetic line.
- emiliobumachar 2mo agoWhat?? The predator is after a meal, not up for doing harm for harm's sake.
- doodlebugging 2mo agoIf you find yourself weak and near death out in the wilderness but in a situation where you know there is hope for rescue and you must try to avoid being eaten by the wild animals there is one thing to remember about how wild animals exploit vulnerabilities. The first scavengers or predators on the scene will evaluate your condition and attack the softer parts of your body. That includes your anus and genital area, your stomach/gut area, your eyes and neck. It is in your best interest to cover those areas as best as possible. Those animals will try to create injuries that are serious enough that you will not survive so they go for the soft parts. Buzzards are known to start at the anus/genital area and move into the gut area. when they are cleaning a carcass. Same with larger prey animals. Use your resources and energy to protect the soft parts and you will improve your chances of survival. Duck and cover by assuming a fetal position can work if you can maneuver your backside into a sheltered position where it is less accessible. Cover your ass in other words. When fighting back you should remain facing the threat with your rear covered.
- samudrijan 2mo agoIt’s a cautionary tale: man who jerks his meat in the woods risks getting eaten by leopards.
- dyauspitr 2mo agoThe simple joys of being a man.
- hluska 2mo agoThere are pictures available. I’m certainly not an expert but he’s holding his stomach in one hand, giving himself a good tug with the other and looks somewhere between scared and confused. The leopard on the left is all smiles. There’s another dude standing a few figures away with his back turned to old tug-a-lug. He’s holding something and looks kind of ashamed though I could be reading that into the image since it’s not really well carved… Tug-a-lug is the best carved of all and must be the centrepiece of the story. If this is another great flood narrative, I sure prefer the Hebrew great flood story.
- doodlebugging 2mo agoAfter looking at the 3D relief of the guy with his pecker in his hand I feel like this was carved in the period immediately preceding the abandonment of the site in pre-history. I base that on the definition of the outlines of the leopards. It appears that initial work had started on giving each of them a 3D view as they are cut in along the margins of the belly and back. Maybe the entire panel would've been a 3D relief had the people been around to complete it. Something came along and compelled these people to abandon the site or they were killed off by a different group. Very interesting anyway why a group would put so much effort into constructing these sites without the sites being places where they lived. I think I read somewhere that there is no evidence to suggest that anyone ever lived there. They were places where people gathered. I could be wrong though.
- avadodin 2mo agoI don't think it is necessarily a sign of any tragic upheaval but to me that decline in carving quality indicates that the man wasn't meant to be part of a scene initially. Perhaps an image of a God or a King. The leopard-obsessed bunch showed up later and started drawing leopard graffiti around putting in far less effort. That in itself could represent an invasion but it could also represent young people these days or even aligned additions to the King’s biography for reference.
- doodlebugging 2mo ago
- krapp 2mo ago[dead]
- indianwashlets 2mo agoNo cougars were hurt during filming that scene.
- ozgung 2mo agoMan gripping his phallus was a popular character in Karahan Tepe in the old times. See his 2.6 meter statue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karahan_Tepe#/media/File:Karahan_Tepe_man.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karahan_Tepe#/media/File:Karah...
- adriand 2mo ago> 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..."
- jollyllama 2mo agoNo, you have it reversed, the leopards have the monkey on their back.
- ncruces 2mo agoAnd yet (from the same site): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karahan_Tepe#/media/File:Urfa_museum_Karahantepe_Human_statue_with_leopard_on_back_Neolithic_Age_(cleaned_up).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karahan_Tepe#/media/File:Urfa_...
- schainks 2mo agomore like, "bruh, do I even keep riding this Leopard?"
- Nicholas_C 2mo agoThe aesthetics of this sculpture look very similar to the Moai on Rapa Nui (Easter Island).
- optimalsolver 2mo agoThey remind me of Cycladic sculptures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycladic_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycladic_art
- adityapatadia 2mo agoWhat a downgrade. We were riding leopards back then!
- erikig 2mo agoI'm inclined to think that this was art not documentary.
- ks2048 2mo agoAnd leopards were riding humans. Image on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karahan_Tepe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karahan_Tepe
- doodlebugging 2mo agoI'm not sure I would call that riding. With all the poses I suspect this was some odd-ball cult practice. I'm sure the archaeologist who had to polish that knob on that anthropomorphic figure in that one panel #3 has some good stories. Probably significant that its the smoothest part of that figure. The old joke about what they call a chicken fucker in Oklahoma comes to mind here except I think those pre-Turks were cavorting with leopards.
- avadodin 2mo agoI was going to say that these ancient furries were about as much proto-Italians if not more than proto-Turks but then I noticed you said pre so maybe you meant simply that they predate the Turkic invasions.
- doodlebugging 2mo agoI was trying to say that with the anthropological and archaeological data that we have available right now the best we can do is say that they pre-date the groups that are peopling the region today whose histories we understand. It is possible that some of those groups resident today share ancestry with those who built the sites but it is also possible that the original builder groups moved on due to environmental, societal, or other pressures we are not currently able to document. Maybe the ones who built this site went to the Spanish/French border and are the ancestors of the Basques, who have a unique language. I'm not the guy to answer that question. If I wanted to identify this group's descendants among modern people I would look for people who have a deep connection to cats like the ones depicted in their monuments. And now you know why I am not much of an archaeologist. I get a little tired of every polished rock being something someone worshiped though it looks like for these people that probably fits.
- lproven 2mo agoThe 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.
- Insanity 2mo agoone of those mind-boggling timeline comparisons I sometimes think about is Cleopatra and the Pyramids. The Giza pyramids were built around ~2600 years _before_ Cleopatra. And she's about 2000 years removed from us today. So to think that Egyptians and Romans in Cleopatra's era went to visit the Pyramids as a kind of tourist thing from a civilization 2 millennia removed from them is quite astounding. I guess Cleopatra feels somewhat 'close' to us due to the surviving literary and archeological artifacts from the Roman empire.
- GolfPopper 2mo agoThere was still a wooly mammoth population on Wrangel Island in the Artic when the pyramids were built. They didn't go extinct until several hundred years later. https://www.theglobalwow.com/mammoths-alive-during-pyramids/ https://www.theglobalwow.com/mammoths-alive-during-pyramids/
- krapp 2mo ago>I guess Cleopatra feels somewhat 'close' to us due to the surviving literary and archeological artifacts from the Roman empire. Shakespeare wrote a play about her and Elizabeth Taylor played her in a movie. The effect of modern media is 99% of the reason why Cleopatra feels more "contemporary" than, say, Hatshepsut (for whom plenty of artifacts exist) or even Nefertiti.
- quuxplusone 2mo agoCleopatra was a contemporary of Julius Caesar, and played a major role in his biography. (Which is why Plutarch wrote about her, which is why Shakespeare wrote about her, which is why 20th Century Fox made the film about her.) Julius Caesar is... a big name... in the West. Call that "the effect of media" if you like, but it's a thing. Hatshepsut and Nefertiti lived respectively 1400 and 1300 years before Cleopatra, and about 700 years before even the founding of Rome. I'm no expert, but seems to me that those two names completely disappeared from the historical record between say 1000 BC and AD 1800, and were rescued from obscurity only by 19th-century archaeologists.
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- Zigurd 2mo ago"Hold my..." checks notes, yeah it's a couple thousand years earlier and near enough "...beer and watch this!"
- tclancy 2mo agoExact same thought, “Oldest evidence of bad ideas found in Turkey”.
- quickthrowman 2mo agoHaha, I had a similar thought. EXT DAYTIME - SUNNY An athletic man wearing a thin leather tunic crouches behind a leopard, facing the camera. “Hi, I’m Mörêk, welcome to Jackass!” Mörêk leaps forward and grabs onto the leopard, the leopard takes off running while Mörêk lets out a whoop and the opening bars of Corona start playing.
- mudil 2mo ago[flagged]
- huflungdung 2mo ago[dead]
- janandonly 2mo agoIn 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/ https://lexfridman.com/irving-finkel/
- oriettaxx 2mo agommmmhm, riding?
- ck2 2mo agoPotbelly 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 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe#/media/File:G%C3%B6beklitepe_%C5%9Eanl%C4%B1urfa.jpg 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
- lazyninja987 2mo agointeresting parallels with ayyappan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayyappan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayyappan
- a3w 2mo agoI read that as "man riding turkey", but why would he wear a leopard, Brain? Narf.
- jeltz 2mo agoHe would wear a leotard because he is a wrestler.
- anigbrowl 2mo agoDisappointing that it only has a single low-resolution picture which mostly obscures the leopard.
- analog8374 2mo agoI don't think he's sitting on the leopard.
- bgnn 2mo agoI'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 2mo agoLeopard 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-human-sitting-on-a-leopard-unearthed-at-karahantepe/ https://arkeonews.net/a-unique-11000-year-old-statue-of-a-hu...
- alecbell 2mo agoLink is broken?