(LIVE SCIENCE) – Archaeologists have discovered dozens of terracotta figurines that are over 2,000 years old, including ones that depict gods, goddesses, men, women, cavalry and animals.
Some of the figurines still had paint on them and some had inscriptions – and all opened a window into life in the ancient town of Myra, in what is now modern-day Demre in Turkey.
This collection of figurines, “gives us rich clues about what existed in the mysterious Myra under a thick silt layer in the first and second centuries B.C.,” said Nevzat Çevik, a professor of archaeology at Akdeniz University in Turkey who led the excavation. Myra, is “one of the most important ancient settlements in Lycia,” an important maritime region along the Mediterranean Sea.
