Sep 30, 2023
Celebrating the Ain Ghazal Statues
This Doodle’s Key Themes
Today's hand-crafted Doodle celebrates the Ain Ghazal statues — roughly 9,000 years old and considered one of the earliest large-scale representations of the human form. On this day in 1983, the statues were discovered in Jordan.
Why did ancient sculptors create these statues? Researchers still don’t have concrete answers. However, it is known that after the statues served its purpose, our prehistoric ancestors strategically buried the sculptures, aligning them east to west.
Archeologists discovered the first cache of underground statues in 1983 and a second group of sculptures in 1985 at ‘Ain Ghazal, a Neolithic site in Jordan.
The Ain Ghazal figures depict men, women, and children with intricate human features such as almond-shaped eyes, prominent noses, and realistic legs, toes, and toenails.
The statues have gained global appeal and can be viewed today at galleries such as the Jordan Museum, Jordan Archaeological Museum, British Museum, and Louvre Abu Dhabi to ponder the mysteries of the past.
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