Israeli archeologists find rare stone age figurines

ISTANBUL

A ram figurine is one of the objects.

Israel’s Antiquities Authority says archaeologists have unearthed two 9,500-year-old figurines near Jerusalem that help shed light on religion and society during the stone age, drawing parallels with similar discoveries at Göbeklitepe, a Neolithic site in Turkey that produced the world’s oldest known man-made religious structure.

Archaeologists unearthed the two rare figurines last week in Tel Motza between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv during a dig ahead of the expansion of a major highway in the area, Agence France-Presse reported the antiquities authority as saying.

One of the objects is shaped like a ram and made of limestone. The other depicts an ox and is made of dolomite. Both are 15 centimeters long.

Wednesday’s statement says the figurines could have been either good luck hunting icons or a representation of the animal’s domestication. Göbeklitepe is a hilltop sanctuary erected at the top of a mountain ridge in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa and is the oldest known man-made religious structure.