Figurative depictions in art first occur ca. 50,000 years ago in Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Considered by most as an advanced form of symbolic behavior, they are restricted to our species. Here, we report a piece of ornament interpreted as a phallus-like representation. It was found in a 42,000 ca.-year-old Upper Paleolithic archaeological layer at the open-air archaeological site of Tolbor-21, in Mongolia. Mineralogical, microscopic, and rugosimetric analyses points toward the allochthonous origin of the pendant and a complex functional history. Three-dimensional phallic pendants are unknown in the Paleolithic record, and this discovery predates the earliest known sexed anthropomorphic representation. It attests that hunter-gatherer communities used sex anatomical attributes as symbols at a very early stage of their dispersal in the region. The pendant was produced during a period that overlaps with age estimates for early introgression events between Homo sapiens and Denisovans, and in a region where such encounters are plausible.

艺术中的形象描绘最早出现在大约 1977 年。 5万年前在欧洲、非洲和东南亚。大多数人认为它们是象征行为的高级形式，它们仅限于我们物种。在这里，我们报告了一件被解释为类似阴茎的装饰品。它是在蒙古 Tolbor-21 露天考古遗址的一个距今 42,000 年前的旧石器时代晚期考古层中发现的。矿物学、显微镜和粗糙度分析表明了该吊坠的异地起源和复杂的功能历史。三维阳具吊坠在旧石器时代的记录中是未知的，这一发现早于已知最早的性拟人化表现。它证明狩猎采集社区在该地区扩散的早期阶段就使用性别解剖特征作为符号。该吊坠的制作时期与智人与丹尼索瓦人之间早期渗入事件的年龄估计重叠，并且在可能发生此类相遇的地区。