Fingerprints pressed into clay 15,000 years ago show that adults and children in what is now Israel made art side by side, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem reports. The study, published November 11, 2026 in the journal PLOS One by Laurent Davin of the university and colleagues, describes the earliest known tradition of making clay figurines in the Middle East.
The researchers examined 154 clay artifacts, the Hebrew University reports. The objects came from three sites in modern-day Israel and date back between about 15,000 and 11,500 years ago, according to the study. Some depict birds, mammals and humans. The Hebrew University names two of the sites as Eynan-Mallaha in the Upper Jordan Valley and Hayonim Terrace in the Lower Galilee. The makers belonged to the Natufian culture, a group of hunter-gatherers who formed some of the first permanent settlements in the Levant, Science News reports.
Archaeologists had believed clay figurines became common in the region only with the agricultural revolution, beginning around 11,500 years ago, according to the study. Earlier Natufian figurines were mostly bone or stone. The new finds push the clay tradition back well before farming villages and the invention of pottery, the Hebrew University reports.
The fingerprints tell the most touching part of the story. Using microscopic analysis, the researchers found that both adults and children helped shape and decorate the objects, the Hebrew University reports. On one human-shaped figurine, two prints overlap: one from a young adult or adult woman, the other from a child who had not yet reached puberty. Their placement suggests the figurine passed between an older person and a child as it was made. Science News reports that the torso of this figurine is 14,500 years old, and that Davin suspects the adult actively taught the child how to work the clay.
The children's prints were not accidental marks, the Hebrew University reports. Their placement shows that children took part in shaping and even coloring the objects. Several figurines carry traces of red coloring, including a thin layer of colored clay called engobe. One figurine, dated to 15,000 years ago, gives the earliest known evidence of that technique. Science News reports that the team had not set out to find children's artwork at all.
Long before the first farmers, people in the land of Israel were shaping little birds, gazelles and human figures out of clay, and the prints show grown-ups and children working on the same pieces. Davin's view, as Science News reports it, is that an adult was actively teaching a child the craft. According to PLOS, the study was funded by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Council for Higher Education. The Hebrew University reports that the work is part of a wider project on the earliest symbolic use of clay in Southwest Asia.
