Archeologists say the figurines made during the Stone Age were not religious icons rather they were the world's first educational toys.
According to mailonline, about 2,000 figures have been unearthed at Turkey's Catalhoyuk - the world's oldest known town - over the past few decades. The statues were made by Neolithic farmers in the shape of tiny cattle, crude sheep and flabby people with less than five percent female figurines. Many of the figures, which were thought to have been women in the 1960s, are now believed by experts to be just as likely to be men. "The majority are cattle or sheep and goats. They could be representatives of animals they were dealing with - and they could have been teaching aides," said Stanford University archaeologist Professor Lynn Meskell. "All were found in the trash - and they were not in niches or platforms or placed in burials."
"These are things that were made and used on a daily basis," she said. "People carried them around and discarded them."
Catalhoyuk is one of the world's most important archaeological sites, which once accommodated 5,000 people living around 7,000 BC in mud brick and plaster homes. The town contains the oldest murals and is believed to have been an equalitarian society that survived for around 2,000 years.
| As far as I know, equalitarian is not a word in English. Perhaps the writer meant egalitarian. |
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