Lion man
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The Lion man is a lion-headed ivory sculpture which is one of the oldest known sculptures in the world (the oldest human-animal sculpture). It is about 30 centimeters high. Its pieces were found in 1939 in a cave in the Swabian Alb, Germany. Due to the beginning of the second world war, it was forgotten and only rediscovered 30 years later. In 1997/98 it was reassembled and restored. It was determined to be about 32,000 years old. It was originally classified as a male, later as female.
The sculpture is 29.6 cm (11.7 inches) in height. It was carved out of mammoth ivory using a flint stone knife. There are seven parallel, horizontal carved gouges on the left arm.
Interpretation is very difficult. There are certain similarities to French cave wall paintings, which also show hybrid creatures. These, however, are several thousand years younger. Meanwhile a similar, but smaller, lion-headed sculpture has been found in another cave in the same region, along with other animal figures. This leads to the possibility, that the lion-man played an important role in the mythology of humans of the early Paleolithic.
The Lion man can be seen in the "Ulmer Museum" in Ulm, Germany.
