All hail

See the turtle of enormous girth! On his shell he holds the earth. His thought is slow but always kind; He holds us all within his mind. On his back all vows are made; He sees the truth but may not said. He loves the land and loves the sea, And even loves a child like me

Here is Great A'Tuin, the world turtle. Its meteor-pocked shell dwarfing continents, flippers paddling the interstellar void with the slowness and inevitability a glacier. Swimming through space, its city sized eyes fixed on a distant point forever unknown.

Makes sense, the whole world is carried around on four elephants balanced on one.

Manot Cave, Occupied Palestine

Lots of things were worshiped before Abrahamic religions came around.

It really is turtles all the way down!

Isn't "it was probably a part of their religion" what archeologists always say when they don't know what it was used for?

The Turtle moves

Here another source with with zero paywall/registration demands. It also goes into much greater depth.

https://thedebrief.org/35000-years-ago-ancient-humans-entered-a-deep-cavern-to-worship-this-enigmatic-reptilian-god/

When will archeologists just admit that sometimes we don't know the purpose of things, and say so. Maybe somebody just liked carving turtles, surely not every fucking thing ever crafted in antiquity was religious.

that would make a sweet hipster sleuth hat