Israeli archaeologists have discovered 9,500-year-old figurines dating back to the New Stone Age (circa 8,000 BC), the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced Wednesday.
 
The artifacts were found during excavations the authority is carrying out at Tel Motza, a few kilometers north of the main entrance to Jerusalem.
 
One figurine, precisely-shaped in the image of a ram with twisted horns and 15 cm in diameter, was fashioned from limestone and its legs were incised in order to distinguish them from the rest of the body.
 
The second figurine, sculpted from smoothed dolomite, depicts a large animal with prominent horns that resemble those of a wild bovine.
 
Archaeologists Anna Eirikh and Dr. Hamoudi Khalaily, directors of the excavation on behalf of the IAA, said the objects, found near a round building whose foundation was made of fieldstone and mud brick, point to the existence of a cultic belief in the region in the New Stone Age.
 
"The archaeological evidence from this period, particularly the artistic objects such as the figurines that were discovered, teaches us about the religious life, the worship and the beliefs of Neolithic society. Other evidence has been derived from the study of tombs and funerary customs of the same prehistoric society," Khalaily said in a press release.
 
Khalaily estimated that the figurines served as "good luck statues for ensuring the success of the hunt" and highlighted a traditional ceremony the hunters performed before setting out to pursue their prey.
 
Eirikh, his research partner, presented another theory which links the objects to the process of animal domestication, such as the wild bovine and different species of wild goat.
 
The figurines join other unique finds that were previously unearthed at Tel Motza, which experts believe was most probably the largest site of its kind in the mountainous region around Jerusalem.