[imagesource: DPA]

Monoliths have been in the news a lot lately (…is a line I never thought I’d write).

The most famous of the lot is the giant metal thing that they found in the Utah desert, which the internet is obsessed with as theories about its origins run wild.

Then it disappeared, and now it looks like there’s evidence that four guys dismantled it and took it away. There’s also another one that popped up in Romania, which also ‘mysteriously’ vanished.

But we’ve covered that at length, so let’s move on to today’s monolith – a giant penis.

Folklore says that the two-metre tall wooden statue which has stood on the Grünten mountain, south-west of Munich, for years, was erected (sorry) as a birthday gift for the sculptor’s friend.

Here’s a person standing next to it for scale:

Image: Newsflash

The recipient of the gift wasn’t too pleased about it and decided to keep its origins to himself.

Overall, no one knows where it came from or why it’s there. I like to think of it as the mountain/sculpture equivalent of a stall in a high school bathroom.

Or at least it was, says the BBC, until it also vanished.

On Monday police in the Bavarian town of Kempten said they had opened an investigation, according to German news agency dpa. But they are not sure what they will do if a culprit is found.

“We don’t know whether it is a criminal offence or not,” police spokesman Holger Stabik told Allgaeuer Zeitung.

The mayor of Rettenberg, Nikolaus Weissinger, says that the disappearance of the sculpture was “a shame”.

The police will look for it, but they aren’t sure exactly who the injured party would be as it has no official owner.

It has become a bit of a tourist spot, so that’s a pity. Google Maps even declared it a landmark.

Another day, another monolith mystery.

[source:bbc]