An international team led by French researcher Laurent Davin has unearthed an exceptional 12,000-year-old clay figurine in an ancient hunter-gatherer village at Nahal Ein Gev II, Israel. It is believed to be the oldest known depiction of an interaction between a human and an animal, marking a turning point in the history of prehistoric art and belief systems.
A tiny work, a major impact
Fashioned from baked clay and colored with red ochre, the figurine measures only 37 millimeters. It depicts a woman leaning forward, partially enveloped by a goose. This type of scene, unrelated to hunting, seems to evoke a symbolic or mythological narrative, a rarity for this period situated at the transition between the Late Epipaleolithic and the beginnings of the Neolithic.
Unlike European Paleolithic representations, which often focus on isolated animals or hunting scenes, this figurine highlights a close, almost symbiotic, relationship between humans and animals. For researchers, it reflects an animistic worldview, in which humans and animals share a spiritually interconnected world.
A breakthrough in the understanding of ancient art
The study, published in the journal PNAS, highlights several major advances: it would not only be the oldest naturalistic representation of a woman in Southwest Asia, but also evidence that early sedentary societies were already developing complex forms of artistic expression, beyond the purely utilitarian or decorative.
Thanks to a multidisciplinary analysis (archaeometry, geoarchaeology, fingerprint analysis, etc.), the team was able to attribute the object's creation to a young adult, probably a woman. The modeling reveals sophisticated techniques for creating relief and perspective effects, a sign of true artistic mastery.
A ritual room in a symbolic site
The figurine was found in a building identified as a ritual site, reinforcing the hypothesis of its symbolic or religious use. Archaeologists also discovered evidence of the use of goose feathers in ornamentation, suggesting a central place for this animal in the imagination and practices of the time.
This discovery is part of a larger set of cultural transformations that took place in the Fertile Crescent region, where, from this period onwards, we observe the first traces of domestication, sedentarization and complex figurative art.
A unique piece of universal value
Laurent Davin, who had already participated in the discovery of the oldest wind instruments in the Near East in 2023, believes that this figurine offers a glimpse into "a way of being in the world" specific to the earliest human communities of the Levant. It also testifies to the antiquity of foundational narratives, predating the invention of writing.
While prehistoric remains often offer fragments of technological or dietary life, this figurine opens a window onto the imagination. It reveals that from the very beginnings of the Neolithic period, women, animals, and beliefs already formed a coherent whole, sensitively rendered in clay. A silent yet eloquent voice from the past.
