Posted on 06/20/2007 3:48:04 PM PDT by blam
35,000-Year-Old Mammoth Sculpture Found in Germany
In southwestern Germany, an American archaeologist and his German colleagues have found the oldest mammoth-ivory carving known to modern science. And even at 35,000 years old, it's still intact.
The 35,000-year-old mammoth figurine was revealed on Wednesday. REUTERS
Archaeologists at the University of Tübingen have recovered the first entirely intact woolly mammoth figurine from the Swabian Jura, a 220-meter long 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."
In total, five mammoth-ivory figurines from the Ice Age were newly discovered at the site of the Vogelherd Cave in southwestern Germany, a site known to contain primitive artefacts since it was excavated in 1931 by the Tübingen archaeologist Gustav Reik. Over 7,000 sacks of sediment later, archaeologists were again invigorated by the discoveries.
Among the new finds are well-preserved remains of a lion figurine, fragments of a mammoth figurine and two as-yet-unidentified representations. These, the University of Tübingen Web site explains, "count among the oldest and most impressive examples of figurative artworks from the Ice Age."
Conard said that "the excitement and thrill were immense." He and his colleagues Michael Lingnau and Maria Malina in the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology reported their findings in the journal Archäologische Ausgrabungen in Baden-Württemberg.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
Rather the big-brained Cro-Magnons than the Neanderthals. In the German press they said that there is a high probability that it were Cro-Magnons.
The Vogelherd-cave is not too far from the place I grew up. We have lots of caves on the Swabian Alb and interesting artefacts can be found inside. I.e. the remains of cave bears (that were remarkably bigger than Kodiak-bears i.e.).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_bear
I own the tusks of a cave bear that we found during earthmoving works. :)
Based on the number of mammoth stories on Google News, it looks like it merits its own ping list.
Pick a darm topic at random, and one time out of a hundred it will be about mammoths.
AIEEEIEEEIEEEE! They’re everywhere!
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"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
...and was created in three days?
Wait a second — That thing fits in your hand! It is not MAMMOTH!!!
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