Free Republic

In 2015, archaeologists working at a cave in southwestern Germany found an enigmatic perforated baton in a cave called Hohle Fels. It was a near-perfect match for an artifact found in 1983 in a cave down the road. Carved from single pieces of mammoth ivory, the Hohle Fels baton—roughly 20 centimeters long, about the length of a large paperback book—had multiple holes with spiraling grooves around the openings. Similar objects have been found elsewhere in Germany and in nearby France, often made from ivory or antler. They date from the last ice age, more than 35,000 years ago, a time...

The long-lost 'body' of mysterious ice age animal carving was discovered in German cave, but archaeologists aren't sure if it's a cave lion or cave bear.Archaeologists in Germany have discovered the missing piece of an ice age carving deep in a cave. But the new addition of the ivory carving, originally thought to depict a horse, has actually complicated matters: Now, researchers aren't sure if it portrays a cave lion or a cave bear.Researchers previously found the head of the 35,000-year-old figurine in the cave Hohle Fels in the mountainous Swabian Jura region in the southern part of the country....

Archaeologists from the University of Tübingen have found an ancient fragment of ivory belonging to a 40,000 year old animal figurine. Both pieces were found in the Vogelherd Cave in southwestern Germany, which has yielded a number of remarkable works of art dating to the Ice Age. The mammoth ivory figurine depicting a lion was discovered during excavations in 1931. The new fragment makes up one side of the figurine's head, and the sculpture may be viewed at the Tübingen University Museum from 30 July. "The figurine depicts a lion," says Professor Nicholas Conard of Tübingen University's Institute of Prehistory...

Ice Age Lion Man is world’s earliest figurative sculpture • Work carved from mammoth ivory has been redated and 1,000 new fragments discovered—but it won’t make it to British Museum show The star exhibit initially promised for the British Museum’s “Ice Age Art” show will not be coming—but for a good reason. New pieces of Ulm’s Lion Man sculpture have been discovered and it has been found to be much older than originally thought, at around 40,000 years. This makes it the world’s earliest figurative sculpture. At the London exhibition, which opens on 7 February, a replica from the Ulm...

Archeologists have discovered previously unknown fragments of a figurine known as the "Lion Man," and are piecing it back together. Could the 35,000-year-old statue actually represent a female shaman? ...Using a hand hoe and working in dim light, geologist Otto Völzing burrowed into the earth deep inside the Stadel cave in the Schwäbische Alb mountains of southwestern Germany. His finds were interesting to be sure, but nothing world-shaking: flints and the remnants of food eaten by prehistoric human beings. Suddenly he struck a hard object -- and splintered a small statuette. It was 1939 and Völzing didn't have much time....

Archaeologists have discovered fragments of one of the world's oldest sculptures, a lion-faced figurine estimated at 32,000 years old, from the dirt floor of a cave in southern Germany. The ivory figure, along with a tiny figurine known as the Venus of Hohle Fels, marks the foundation of human artistry. Both were created by a Stone Age European culture that historians call Aurignacian. The Aurignacians appear to have been the first modern humans, with handicrafts, social customs and beliefs. They hunted reindeer, woolly rhinoceros, mammoths and other animals. The Lion-Man sculpture, gradually re-assembled in workshops over decades after the fragments...

Lion man takes pride of place as oldest statue 30,000-year-old carving might be work of Neanderthals or modern humans. Intricate ivory carvings said to be the oldest known examples of figurative art have been uncovered in a cave in southwestern Germany. Researchers say that the finding could change our understanding of early man's imaginative endeavours. The artefacts - including a figurine depicting a Lowenmensch ('lion man') - have been carbon-dated to around 30,000 years ago, when some of the earliest known relatives of modern humans populated Europe. Discovered last year by a team led by US archaeologist Nicholas Conard of...