Around 100 prehistoric ‘cult sites,’ containing phallic carvings have been found in the Eilat Mountains in the Negev Desert in Israel.

The sites date back around 8,000 years, and archaeologists were stunned to find a variety of stone structures and artifacts.

They include stone circles that measure 1.5 to 2.5 meters across with penis-shaped installations pointing toward them.

‘While a comprehensive stylistic study of the stone objects is still ongoing, a preliminary interpretation suggests two symbolic aspects,’ the team, led by Uzi Avner, a researcher with the Arava-ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Sea Science Center and the Arava Insтιтute, wrote.

‘One is fertility, represented by the stones with elongated perforation (vulva-shape) and by the very combination of the elongated cell and the circle.’

Death is ‘signified by the burial of stone objects and by setting them upside down,’ the team members wrote in their paper. 

In one, a humanlike stone carving was found buried with ‘only the very top visible on the surface.’

Other findings there include standing stones that reach up to 2.6 feet (80 centimeters) high, stone bowls and stone carvings that have a humanlike shape.

These sites are often clustered together, and in one area the team discovered 44 cult sites in a spot encompᴀssing only 0.8 square kilometers (less than 200 acres). 

‘Taking in[to] consideration the topography, environmental conditions and the small number of known Neolithic habitations in the general southern Negev, the density of cult sites in this region is phenomenal,’ the team, led by  wrote in an article published recently in the Journal of the Israel Prehistoric Society.  

Archaeologists are working to decipher any meaning from the artifacts and structures, and say that both death and fertility seem to be symbolized at the sites.