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

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 specific features that really characterize what you want to represent,” she says. For example, the carver appears to have taken care to define the urethral opening, she notes, and to distinguish the glans from the shaft.

A combination of microscopy and other surface analyses show that stone tools were likely used to carve out the grooves for both the urethra and the glans. The pendant was also discovered to be smoother on the back than the front; a string was likely fastened around the glans, suggesting the ornament may have been worn around the neck. The amount of wear on the surface suggests it was likely handed down across multiple generations. Graphite wasn’t widely available near Tolbor, suggesting the pendant may have come from elsewhere, perhaps through trade.

But phallic imagery is often in the eye of the beholder, “like a face in a cloud,” says Curtis Runnels, an archaeologist at Boston University who was not involved in the study. He called the pendant a “small and rather shapeless object” and said he “would need to be convinced” that it was intended to represent a penis.

Rigaud concedes it’s ”very tricky to say” what the object was meant to symbolize. Its small size would have made it difficult for anyone other than the wearer to identify at a distance, so it may have held some personal meaning to its maker or wearer, she says.

Francesco D’Errico, an archaeologist at  Bordeaux who was not involved in the research but shares a lab with several of the authors, concedes that the likeness is a matter of interpretation, but thinks Rigaud and her team are on the right track. “The small size of the object, the exotic provenance of the raw material, and the … modifications are quite telling,” he says. “I think the interpretation holds.”

If the pendant does reflect a phallus, it reinforces the notion that some of the earliest forms of symbolic thinking are found on personal ornaments, the authors say. The oldest jewelry includes shell beads found in Africa, dating back at least 60,000 years and perhaps up to 142,000 years. The pendant is “important because it highlights very specific cognitive capacities in our lineage”—that is, the ability to attach meaning to symbolic representations—which is one of the hallmarks of being human, Rigaud says.

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 specific features that really characterize what you want to represent,” she says. For example, the carver appears to have taken care to define the urethral opening, she notes, and to distinguish the glans from the shaft.

A combination of microscopy and other surface analyses show that stone tools were likely used to carve out the grooves for both the urethra and the glans. The pendant was also discovered to be smoother on the back than the front; a string was likely fastened around the glans, suggesting the ornament may have been worn around the neck. The amount of wear on the surface suggests it was likely handed down across multiple generations. Graphite wasn’t widely available near Tolbor, suggesting the pendant may have come from elsewhere, perhaps through trade.

But phallic imagery is often in the eye of the beholder, “like a face in a cloud,” says Curtis Runnels, an archaeologist at Boston University who was not involved in the study. He called the pendant a “small and rather shapeless object” and said he “would need to be convinced” that it was intended to represent a penis.

Rigaud concedes it’s ”very tricky to say” what the object was meant to symbolize. Its small size would have made it difficult for anyone other than the wearer to identify at a distance, so it may have held some personal meaning to its maker or wearer, she says.

Francesco D’Errico, an archaeologist at  Bordeaux who was not involved in the research but shares a lab with several of the authors, concedes that the likeness is a matter of interpretation, but thinks Rigaud and her team are on the right track. “The small size of the object, the exotic provenance of the raw material, and the … modifications are quite telling,” he says. “I think the interpretation holds.”

If the pendant does reflect a phallus, it reinforces the notion that some of the earliest forms of symbolic thinking are found on personal ornaments, the authors say. The oldest jewelry includes shell beads found in Africa, dating back at least 60,000 years and perhaps up to 142,000 years. The pendant is “important because it highlights very specific cognitive capacities in our lineage”—that is, the ability to attach meaning to symbolic representations—which is one of the hallmarks of being human, Rigaud says.