Tortoise engraving suggests Middle Eastern religion from 37,000 years ago

New research has found a turtle might be the oldest religious symbol to be worshiped by a society in the Middle East.

In Manot Cave in Western Galilee, Israel, researchers have found evidence of human spiritual rituals dating back 37,000 years.

Over 35,000 years before Jesus Christ, as many as 100 individuals gathered in the Manot Cave to gather around a carving of a tortoise shell in a boulder.

Although it’s unclear exactly what the tortoise symbolised to this community of early humans, the ancient Middle Easterners are believed to have revered the creature. At prominent individual’s graves from the Stone Age period, tortoise shells regularly appear.

There’s evidence that humans had frequented the Manot Cave since at least 50,000 years ago. This new research comes from the discovery of a “ritual compound” within the cave.

It’s believed the tortoise shell engraving in the cave was done by a deer antler also found there. The researchers were able to date a mineral layer on the antler to a similar time as the engraving, suggesting it might have been used as the carving tool.

The discovery of the tortoise shell, discussed by academics in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), gives more evidence as to the religious practices of humans from the Upper Paleolithic Aurignacian era, from 43,000 to 26,000 years ago.

Turtles and tortoises occur frequently in religious cultural practices. One of the most commonly held myths across world cultures is that of a giant tortoise supporting the entire world on its back. This creature is known as “Akūpāra” in Hindi mythology, “Ao” in Chinese mythology, and appears in the Indigenous North American Lenape people’s creation myth.

“Beyond their dietary importance, tortoises probably played a major role in the spiritual world of the Paleolithic people, possibly because of the resemblance in form and function between the shell and the cave, both providing shelter and protection,” the research states.

So far, the “Manot Cave is the only site in the Levant to yield clear evidence for the existence of a communal ritual compound in the Upper Paleolithic,” the research says, showing how vital this discovery is to understanding humans of that era.

From research on how carbon has formed on the roof of the cave, it’s believed that the people would collect in the ritual chamber and use handheld torches to see, far from any natural light source.

Multiple people from the region would potentially gather together, unified by this shared religious practice around the tortoise symbol.

This unification, the researchers suggest, may have been “a successful adaptive strategy to cope with the large demographic and economic challenges human society faced in the Upper Paleolithic.”

As the boulder which the turtle is engraved on is the only one of its kind found in the Upper Paleolithic Levant and is unique in its size and detail, it’s one of the most significant moments for understanding this region of the Middle East before early Mesopotamian societies such as Sumeria developed.