Fascinating find!  Especially that bas-relief carving, which is of a lioness, not a lion.  Actually, sculpture and signs of devotions were found in Lepinski Vir, dating back nearly 25,000 years, not to mention the famous cave-paintings of Lascaux and Altamira, dating from about the same time.  Agriculture, though of different plants, seems to have developed simultaneously -- about 7000 BCE -- in Mesopotamia, China, India, South America and Polynesia.  At approximately the same time, domestication of animals developed across the northern tier of Europe and Asia.  The Australian Aborigines and the North American Indians domesticated the dog at about the same period but seem to have stopped there, possibly because of a lack of domesticable herding animals in their environments.  Likewise, at about 9000 years ago, we find the first signs of metal use -- gold, silver and copper.  I'd love to see what the archeologists discover next about physical and climate conditions at that time!

--Leslie Fish