Archaeologists recently unearthed a 12,000-year-old baked clay figurine in Israel, representing a woman mating with… a bird. A scene that inevitably recalls the Greek myth of Leda and Zeus: “When I took this small block of clay out of its box, I immediately recognized a human figure, then the bird lying on its back”Laurent Davin, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told Live Science by email.
According to a study published Monday, November 17 in the journal PNAS, this piece constitutes the oldest known representation of a woman in South-West Asia. By its complexity, it would also testify to a system of beliefs remarkably elaborate for the time.
During his research, Laurent Davin examined tens of thousands of clay fragments from several Natufian archaeological sites. This people, established between 15,000 and 11,500 BC in the current territories of Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, are known to have initiated one of the first settlements in history, building small round, semi-buried houses.
It was at the site of Nahal Ein Gev II, about two kilometers east of the Sea of Galilee, that the team found a tiny fragment of clay with surprisingly fine modeling. Found broken into three pieces, the figurine – only 3.7 centimeters high – would have been shaped from the same block, then hardened in a fire and covered with a red mineral pigment.
Meeting with a giant goose
According to researchers, this is the most complete human representation ever observed in Natufian culture. The extremely rare piece could also be the world’s oldest evocation of an intimate interaction between a human being and an animal.
On the upper part, a bird rests on the back of a woman, its partially outstretched wings appearing to envelop her. The triangular area incised in the lower part would represent the female pubis, while two symmetrical oval impressions would evoke the breasts. The bird would probably be a goose, the bones found on site showing that the Natufians used it both for food and to decorate their objects.
Proof of animism?
The study puts forward several hypotheses: the figurine could represent a hunter bringing back a killed bird, but others see it as a mythological scene – a gander mating with a crouching woman. If such symbolic unions between human and animal spirits run through numerous myths throughout the world, their representation remains unprecedented in such an ancient era.
“This emerging desire to represent female figures could reflect the growing importance of women in the management of the spiritual practices of these communities”underlines Laurent Davin. He further identified a partial fingerprint on the object; its comparison with modern prints suggests that the figurine was made by a woman.
For researchers, the sculpture undoubtedly had a primarily funerary function. It was discovered in an area dedicated to burials, alongside other singular deposits: the grave of a child and a cache of human teeth. The object could thus have served as an intermediary between the world of the living and that of spirits. These elements reinforce the idea that the Natufians were animists and that they lent a soul to natural and supernatural beings.
This Natufian vestige thus sheds light on the beginnings of symbolic thought: the moment when imagination, put at the service of beliefs, began to shape human culture as societies became more sedentary.
