Urfa Man: An 11,500-year-old life-size statue of a man holding his penis

Over 11,500 years ago, people in what is now southern Turkey began crafting life-size human statues for the first time. Urfa Man, also known as the Balıklıgöl statue, is the oldest example of this sculptural tradition, but much about it remains a mystery.

According to the Şanlıurfa Archaeological Museum, which owns the statue, Urfa Man was discovered accidentally during construction work in the Balıklıgöl district of Şanlıurfa in 1993.

Urfa Man was carved out of limestone and stands 5 feet, 11 inches (180 centimeters) tall. His face features deep-set eye sockets filled with chunks of black obsidian, a partially broken nose and no mouth. The V-shaped lines around his neck likely represent a necklace. Aside from this accessory, Urfa Man is completely nude. His hands are clasped in front of him, holding his erect penis. Instead of legs, Urfa Man has a U-shaped lower half, likely designed to fit into a recess.

According to archaeologist Bahattin Çelik, the statue probably came from a Neolithic settlement that archaeologists call Yeni Mahalle, after the modern district in Şanlıurfa. Excavations at Yeni Mahalle in 1997 revealed the remains of two circular buildings with floors made from terrazzo — a cement-like material filled with chips of granite, quartz, glass or other material — along with flint arrowheads, sickle blades and obsidian flakes. Using radiocarbon analysis of carbonated plant remains, archaeologists dated the site to around 8600 B.C.

Whether Urfa Man is related to other ancient sites with life-size male statues is unclear.

Located about 10 miles (16 kilometers) northeast of Şanlıurfa, the archaeological site of Göbekli Tepe is known for having the world's oldest temples, which consist of monumental communal structures with distinctive T-shaped limestone pillars and numerous animal carvings. A ritual human statue was discovered at the site in 2025.

Archaeologists have also uncovered statues of men holding their phalluses at nearby sites that date back 11,000 years, including Karahan Tepe and Sayburç. One interpretation of the human statue at Karahan Tepe is that the person depicted is dead and represents an important ancestor associated with the building. This also may be the case for Urfa Man, as archaeoastronomer Alistair Coombs has argued.

"The feature of his absent mouth," Coombs wrote in a 2016 study, "forms part of a stylistic design that symbolically insinuates the presence of the dead." Urfa Man's lack of a mouth is clearly intentional and may convey that he was intended to depict "a communicator from a supernatural world of the dead to the world of the living in a realistically human shape," according to Coombs.

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