Laurent Davin

Left: The 12,000-year-old Natufian clay figurine from Nahal Ein Gev II, depicting a woman and a goose. Right: Artistic reconstruction of the figurine. CREDIT: Photo: Laurent Davin, Reconstruction: Laurent Davin and Vic Oh

A 12,000-year-old clay figurine from an archeological site in northern Israel depicts a woman and a goose in a mythological scene that hints at an animistic belief system. Depictions of human–animal interactions in Paleolithic artwork are rare. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/q06T50Xx2E8

Découverte en Asie du Sud-Ouest de la plus ancienne figurine représentant une interaction humain-animal - Recherche à l'université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Une équipe internationale d’archéologues dirigée par Laurent Davin, préhistorien à l’UMR TEMPS (CNRS, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris Nanterre) a découvert une figurine représentant un être humain et...

🔦 Une figurine âgée de 12 000 ans ?

Une équipe internationale d’archéologues dirigée par Laurent Davin a découvert en Asie du Sud-Ouest la plus ancienne figurine représentant une interaction entre un être humain et un animal.

Retour sur la découverte 👉 swll.to/eQSC37k

Découverte de la plus ancienne figurine représentant une interaction humain-animal Une équipe internationale dirigée par Laurent Davin, post-doctorant au laboratoire Technologie et ethnologie des mond

Découverte de la plus ancienne figurine représentant une interaction entre l'homme et l'animal en Asie du Sud-Ouest par une équipe impliquant l'@umrtemps.cnrs.fr.
www.inshs.cnrs.fr/fr/cnrsinfo/...

Ok, that's one way of viewing things or, in this case, not seeing things.

Do you mean that you think that the incising, grooving, scraping and imprinting traces made in the wet clay and shown here (Figure 3 & 4) are not modeling traces?

Thanks for sharing. Did you saw the numerous modeling and tool marks on both the goose and the woman shown in Figures 3 & 4? As well as the technical drawing highlighting both individuals?

📸👇The fingerprint of the #Natufian young adult/adult female who meticulously modeled the clay figurine of a woman and a goose 12,000 years ago in Nahal Ein Gev II.
Details in @pnas.org
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Given that a wild living goose would not naturally adopt such a posture on a human’s back, we believe that the interaction represents an imagined reality (the dichotomy between imagination and reality is a modern Western concept that does not exist in many societies around the world).

All of this led us to believe that the figurine does not represent an objective reality (e.g., a female hunter transporting a hunted bird to camp on their back).

Plus, the posture of the goose’s body, especially the neck, which is not held in the human’s hand, suggests a live animal supporting its own body weight. The forward-leaning posture of the woman is also inconsistent with the transport of prey weighing less than 5 kg.

Contrary to what is seen on the figurine, goose remains at the site attest that hunters were trimming the neck and head from carcasses before transporting them back to the village. The fact that the goose is depicted with a head and neck suggests that it is not the carcass of a dead goose.

Yes, of course, we mention in the article the earlier painted or engraved examples of human-animal interaction. But seing it in a figurine, that early, is new. We raised several arguments attesting that the figurine do not depicts a female hunter carrying a prey:

Yes, don't worry, I'm not thinking about these changes (in our study) as transformations in cognitive abilities, rather as transformations in how the technologies of imagination were materialised.

This focus is stated already already from the title "A 12,000-year-old clay figurine of a woman and a goose marks symbolic innovations in Southwest Asia"

Of course, that's why our study is a focus on the transformations in symbolic expression in the Neolithisation of Southwest Asia. It's not a broad view of the Paleolithic.

In the Neolithisation of Southwest Asia, the theoretical framework of the 'Revolution of Symbols' (symbols before economy) initiated by Jacques Cauvin in 1978 is still valid. We show in the study that the transformations that Cauvin noticed in the PPNA actually emerged earlier, in the Late Natufian.

It's better to read the original article than something wrote from a press release...

Yes, I'm aware of Paleolithic communities all over the world. This statement, not in this form in the paper, is restricted to the chrono-cultural frame of the Neolithisation in Southwest Asia and the paradigm of a Revolution of Symbols emerging only from the Early Neolithic.

📢📷 🪿New #PaperAlert in @pnas.org :
Earliest figurine depicting a human-animal interaction

A 12,000-year-old baked clay and ochre-colored figurine of a woman and a goose discovered in Late Natufian Nahal Ein Gev II (Upper Jordan Valley)

doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Avec notre ex-postdoc @elisabethdmt.bsky.social, désormais maîtresse de conférences en histoire environnementale à Sorbonne Université, mais toujours associée au laboratoire ! 👇

Félicitations à @laurent-davin.bsky.social pour son article qui est à découvrir dans le N°38 des annales Fyssen.
N'hésitez pas à visionner sa remise de Prix et son discours sur notre site web!
www.fondationfyssen.fr/annale/annal...

Très heureuse de rejoindre Sorbonne Université au 1er septembre comme MCF en histoire de l’environnement ! 🥳 Je suis également très reconnaissante à tout l’équipe du @lhst pour cette année très riche de post-doctorat à l’EPFL.

#Podcast > Des flûtes en os de vautour qui remontent à + de 35.000 ans jusqu’aux innovations d’aujourd’hui en passant par les lyres de l’époque gauloise, chaque époque a marqué l’histoire de la musique. Comment retracer cette évolution ? tinyurl.com/266aujny avec Laurent Davin et Julian Cuvilliez