The Dawn of Art

American archaeologist Nicholas Conard is convinced Swabia's tradition of innovation goes back a long way: 40,000 years, give or take a few thousand. Excavating in caves east of Tubingen, a medieval town 20 miles south of Stuttgart, Conard has unearthed expertly carved figurines and the oldest musical instruments in the world... claims his finds are evidence of an intense flowering of art and culture that began in southwestern Germany more than 35,000 years ago... the figurines and instruments in Conard's caves are symbolic representations that reflect a state of mind with which modern humans can easily identify... Conard's conclusions have been controversial from the start, and he's still fighting an uphill battle to convince colleagues that the evidence backs him up.

Standing about 11 inches tall, a carving known as the "Lion Man" is the oldest known depiction of a human with animal features. It is one of dozens of finely crafted Paleolithic figurines discovered in the caves of southern Germany. (Courtesy Ulmer Museum, Ulm, Germany, photograph Kenneth Garrett) Archaeologist Joachim Hahn discovered this flute, [above], carved from swan bone in the Paleolithic layers of Geibenklosterle. (University of Tubingen)

35,000-Year-Old Mammoth Sculpture Found in Germany

Archaeologists at the University of Tübingen have recovered the first entirely intact woolly mammoth figurine from the Swabian Jura, a plateau in the state of Baden-Württemberg, thought to have been made by the first modern humans some 35,000 years ago. It is believed to be the oldest ivory carving ever found. "You can be sure," Tübingen archaeologist Nicholas J. Conard told SPIEGEL ONLINE, "that there has been art in Swabia for over 35,000 years." (images at link)

Finds from the hollow rock cave near Schelklingen

The Lion-Man

Photo: Thomas Stephan, Ulmer Museum

The so-called Lion-Man was not "discovered" until 1969, 30 years after its excavation. Professor Joachim Hahn from the University of Tübingen had by then succeeded in fitting together many worked ivory fragments. At the end of the '70s, parts of the animal head turned up unexpectedly and fitted on top of the statuette.

This is the largest of all Ice Age statuettes found in the area. Its significance is just as obscure as that of the "Adorant" from the Geißenklösterle cave. The sculpture obviously has a lion’s head, while the body is a combination of human and animal aspects - a hybrid. It could be a shaman with a lion mask. The sex of the figure cannot exactly be determined, but it is generally regarded as a male. However, the Lion-Man certainly had a profound implication that may lie in a general association with stories, rituals and related cultural settings, which remain a mystery to us to this day.

http://www.showcaves.com/english/explain/Archaeology/Loewenfrau.html

The first systematic archaeologic excavations in the Stadel started 1937 and were conducted by Prof. Robert Wetzel, but they ended abruptly at the beginning of World War II. The finds were stored provisionally and were not scientifically analyzed. The figurine was discovered on the 25th of August 1939, the last day of the excavations in the form of hundreds of small fragments by Otto Völzing and Robert Wetzel.

The fact that the fragments belonged to a figurine was discovered in 1969 by Prof. Dr. Joachim Hahn, an archaeologist from Tübingen, while making an inventory of the finds. He mentioned a similarity of several small peices and puzzled a first version of the figurine with nearly 200 fragments.

Image: The figurine in an older state of restauration, copy in the Ulmer Museum.

The figurine shows a standing person, having both, human and animal features. The human body has the head of a cave lion. Hahn interpreted this to be a rare evidence of the mystic-religious imagining of the people of Old Stone Age.

Some years ago the scientific examination of the sculpture was redone completely by Elisabeth Schmid. Some more bones, found during the original excavation, could be added to the figure. Mainly the head and the second arm were completed. The figurine changed its looks completely.

Joachim Hahn interpreted the figurine as being male. Elisabeth Schmid derived from some details that the figure was a woman and called it lionlady. All in all there is no objective proof for the gender of the figurine and the discussion is more or less ideologic.

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Standing about 11 inches tall, a carving known as the "Lion Man" is the oldest known depiction of a human with animal features. It is one of dozens of finely crafted Paleolithic figurines discovered in the caves of southern Germany. (Courtesy Ulmer Museum, Ulm, Germany, photograph Kenneth Garrett)	Archaeologist Joachim Hahn discovered this flute, [above], carved from swan bone in the Paleolithic layers of Geibenklosterle. (University of Tubingen)