World’s oldest sculpture of a human with an animal is discovered

A 12,000-YEAR-OLD figure of a woman with a goose draped over her back is the oldest human-animal sculpture ever discovered.

The clay artwork was discovered at a prehistoric Natufian village overlooking the Sea of Galilee in Israel.

At less than two inches tall, it depicts a crouching woman who is carrying a goose on her back.

The animal appears to be alive rather than slaughtered in a hunt.

In Natufian culture, geese hold key practical and symbolic importance.

They are both an important food source, and provider of bones, feathers and talons for beads and adornments.

It is thought that the Natufians believed that humans and animal were spiritually interconnected and the scene of the goose and the woman may represent this union.

“The figurine captures a transformative moment,” said Professor Leore Grosman of the Institute of Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“It bridges the world of mobile hunter-gatherers and that of the first settled communities, showing how imagination and symbolic thinking began to shape human culture.”

The earliest figures ever found are around 40,000 years old.

These include the Venus of Hohle Fels found in Germany, which also depicts a woman, and the Lowenmensch figurine, a lion-headed chimaera.

Geese feature regularly in prehistoric artwork.

One of the most celebrated paintings in Ancient Egypt, the Meidum Geese, features the birds and dates back to more than 4,600 years ago.

This latest figure was discovered in a semi-circular stone structure containing burials and ceremonial deposits at the Late Natufian settlement at Nahal Ein Gev II.

According to archaeological reports, it was a large village that was inhabited for several centuries.

Archaeologists initially recovered the sculpture in three separate clay fragments, which were later reassembled.

Researchers said that the location of the pieces within a ritual structure strongly suggest that the figure held symbolic meaning for the community.

Further analyses revealed red pigment residue on both the woman and the goose, along with a preserved fingerprint.

The clay had been heated to around 400 degrees suggesting it had been deliberately fired.

This would make it one of the earliest examples of the use of fire for artistic or technological purposes.

Researchers believe the piece “embodies the earliest seeds of myth, storytelling, and spiritual connection, articulated in clay by hands that lived millennia before the rise of civilisation.”

“This discovery is extraordinary on multiple levels,” said Dr Laurent Davin.

“Not only is this the world’s earliest figurine depicting human-animal interaction, but it’s also the earliest naturalistic representation of a woman found in south-west Asia.”

Back in 2017, archaeologists reported the finding of a sculpture of a human face carved into a pebble at Nahal Ein Gev II.

Three other faces have since been discovered at the site.

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The Natufian culture, active between roughly 15,000 and 11,500 years ago, marks a key transition as groups shifted from mobile foraging to more settled village life.

Art from this period is rare, and detailed human interactions are especially uncommon.