Note # 26 — in the Levant. I wonder if that is just the tip of broader cultural diffusion into the Middle-East (lost through time under the footprint of successive successful civilizations.)
Posted on 04/30/2011 12:57:18 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
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 were discovered in 1939, is a kind of reverse sphinx: a human body, standing erect, but with the head of a now extinct European cave lion.
The head is finely cut, but there is not enough detail left in the body to judge whether this chimera was meant to be male or female.
Claus-Joachim Kind, the chief archaeologist at the palaeolithic site near the city of Ulm, said the figure, was probably used by a shamanistic religion.
'But we are walking on thin ice with any interpretation,' he warned...
The world's first cities, based on intensive, year-round agriculture, were established in Mesopotamia 7,000 years ago. The cave paintings of Lascaux in France, the world's best known Stone Age Art, probably date back 17,000 years.
But Aurignacian sites, including the caves in Germany as well as the Chauvet Cave decorated with murals in southern France, are twice as old, going back 32,000 to 40,000 years from the present, radiocarbon dating of the debris in the caves shows.
(Excerpt) Read more at monstersandcritics.com ...
The name Sphinx is a corruption of an old Egyptian term which translates as “living image” — but the modern use of it is more generally anything that combines human and animal, particularly kitties. So, for example, we could probably refer to the Viking kitties as sphinxes and get away scot-free.
Yes, they are estimating the age at 32,000 years. The item itself is ivory and could be radiocarbon dated using a pretty small sample (or more likely, a number of very small samples, in order to get a narrow range of dates).
Ooh, thanks again!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_man_of_the_Hohlenstein_Stadel
[snip] A lion headed figure, first called the lion man... then the lion lady... is an ivory sculpture that is the oldest known zoomorphic (animal-shaped) sculpture in the world and one of the oldest known sculptures in general. The sculpture has also been interpreted as anthropomorphic, giving human characteristics to an animal, although it may have represented an unfactual presence deity. The figurine was determined to be about 32,000 years old[1][2] by carbon dating material from the same layer in which the sculpture was found. It is associated with the archaeological Aurignacian culture.[3] [/snip]
Note # 26 — in the Levant. I wonder if that is just the tip of broader cultural diffusion into the Middle-East (lost through time under the footprint of successive successful civilizations.)
Really not trying to pee on anybody's parade, but WHY haven't they carbon dated the figurine itself instead of just estimating it's age by the age of the material at the same level?
I think the subject matter is fascinating, but for all I know, that damn statue has Made In Taiwan stamped on it's...
It’s man. As a child he crawls on all fours. As a strong young man he walks on two. And as an old man bent with age he walks with ‘’three’’, a cane. :-)
Probably it was a good thing it was only found in ‘39 and thereby neglected for 30 years.
Can you imagine what they would say about it on Antique Road Show if somebody found it in their WWII vet grandaddys attic in Rapid City?
In her Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5000 B.C. Myth, Religion, Archaeology, Mary Settegast reproduces a table which shows four runic character sets; a is Upper Paleolithic (found among the cave paintings), b is Indus Valley script, c is Greek (western branch), and d is the Scandinavian runic alphabet.
;’)
Yup, it’s from Sophocles.
The dating was done early on, before the RC equipment now in use, so much of the artifact would have been destroyed in the process of dating it. :’) Probably in the next few years it will be directly dated, and as with the cave paintings will be found to be at least as old as 32K BP.
LOL!
I’ve always thought of such depictions as totems, not religious objects...except insofar as the religion was ancestor worship.
Link in post 9 takes you to wiki, where it says nearby material was carbon dated to 32kya. If it’s mammoth ivory, I wonder why they didn’t just carbon date the ivory. How much does it take?
(The Upper Paleolithic Period began about 40,000 years ago)
It’s not a sphinx. A sphinx has a lion’s body with a pharaoh’s head. This is a human body with a lion’s head. Is it meant to be a human wearing a mask? Or the portrayal of an imaginary figure?
The scientist quoted is right: this *is* a wonderful time to be alive. 32000 years in a cave! Lying in pieces for 70 years! Yet we are here to see it.
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