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 ...
'Oldest sculpture' found in MoroccoA 400,000-year-old stone object unearthed in Morocco could be the world's oldest attempt at sculpture... The object, which is around six centimetres in length, is shaped like a human figure, with grooves that suggest a neck, arms and legs. On its surface are flakes of a red substance that could be remnants of paint. The object was found 15 metres below the eroded surface of a terrace on the north bank of the River Draa near the town of Tan-Tan. It was reportedly lying just a few centimetres away from stone handaxes in ground layers dating to the Middle Acheulian period, which lasted from 500,000 to 300,000 years ago... A 200,000-300,000-year-old stone object found at Berekhat Ram in Israel in 1986 has also been the subject of claims that it is a figurine. However, several other researchers later presented evidence to show that it was probably shaped by geological processes.
by Paul RinconThe Neandertal EnigmaFrayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]
by James Shreeve
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So this is from a different Sphinx and not the one in Cairo?
That’s correct.
New fragments of a 32,000-year-old figurine found
http://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/004323.html
So, they now know the Sphinx is male?
He sat there for thirty-two thousand years without complaining.
En Rampant.
“What walks on four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon and three in the evening?’’ Riddle of The Sphinx.
:’)
Nice! Thanks AGR!
The German interest in the Egyptians border on fanatical.
There speaks an honest man. Rare...
He?
Here’s to the camel’s libido,
And here’s to the thoughts that he thinks
As he stands on the banks of the Nile
And tries to make love to the Sphinx.
But the Sphinx’s posterior portions,
Are sunk in the sands of the Nile —
Which accounts for the hump on the camel’s back
And the Sphinx’s inscrutable smile.
I was going to post something similar. Rarely do these archeologists admit how little knowledge they have about the cultures they are researching.
They're perfectly crazy about American Indians too.
My question is what is the official definition of Sphinx?
The one in Egypt has the body of a lion and the head of a man. This is the reverse—head of a lion and body of a man.
Does any combination merit the title of Sphinx by defiition or is this just a lazy man’s headline.
Is there anything the Germans do that doesn't border on the fanatical?
32,000
And everybody knows if I dig a deep hole in my cave floor to hide my precious religious figurine to keep it from falling into the wrong hands it's age automatically matches that (bottom of the hole) stratum when arkeyallogists dig it up later.
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