Ok, that's one way of viewing things or, in this case, not seeing things.

Do you mean that you think that the incising, grooving, scraping and imprinting traces made in the wet clay and shown here (Figure 3 & 4) are not modeling traces?

Thanks for sharing. Did you saw the numerous modeling and tool marks on both the goose and the woman shown in Figures 3 & 4? As well as the technical drawing highlighting both individuals?

Given that a wild living goose would not naturally adopt such a posture on a human’s back, we believe that the interaction represents an imagined reality (the dichotomy between imagination and reality is a modern Western concept that does not exist in many societies around the world).

All of this led us to believe that the figurine does not represent an objective reality (e.g., a female hunter transporting a hunted bird to camp on their back).

Plus, the posture of the goose’s body, especially the neck, which is not held in the human’s hand, suggests a live animal supporting its own body weight. The forward-leaning posture of the woman is also inconsistent with the transport of prey weighing less than 5 kg.

Contrary to what is seen on the figurine, goose remains at the site attest that hunters were trimming the neck and head from carcasses before transporting them back to the village. The fact that the goose is depicted with a head and neck suggests that it is not the carcass of a dead goose.

Yes, of course, we mention in the article the earlier painted or engraved examples of human-animal interaction. But seing it in a figurine, that early, is new. We raised several arguments attesting that the figurine do not depicts a female hunter carrying a prey:

Yes, don't worry, I'm not thinking about these changes (in our study) as transformations in cognitive abilities, rather as transformations in how the technologies of imagination were materialised.

This focus is stated already already from the title "A 12,000-year-old clay figurine of a woman and a goose marks symbolic innovations in Southwest Asia"

Of course, that's why our study is a focus on the transformations in symbolic expression in the Neolithisation of Southwest Asia. It's not a broad view of the Paleolithic.

In the Neolithisation of Southwest Asia, the theoretical framework of the 'Revolution of Symbols' (symbols before economy) initiated by Jacques Cauvin in 1978 is still valid. We show in the study that the transformations that Cauvin noticed in the PPNA actually emerged earlier, in the Late Natufian.

It's better to read the original article than something wrote from a press release...

Yes, I'm aware of Paleolithic communities all over the world. This statement, not in this form in the paper, is restricted to the chrono-cultural frame of the Neolithisation in Southwest Asia and the paradigm of a Revolution of Symbols emerging only from the Early Neolithic.