the ain ghazal statues — 9000 years old and they stare right through you

These things were found in 1983 during a road construction project in Amman. 32 plaster statues, buried in two caches, some of them nearly life-size, two-headed figures included. 7000 BCE. That's two thousand years before Stonehenge. The craftsmanship is... not what you expect from "early Neolithic.……