40 000 years old man-lion statue

Hohlenstein-Stadel is a cave located in the Hohlenstein cliff at the southern rim of the Lonetal (Lone valley) in the Swabian Alps in Germany. While first excavations were started after the second half of the 19th century, the significance of some of the findings was not realized until 1969. The most significant finding was a small ivory statue called the Lion-man, which is one of the oldest known sculptures in the world.

August 25, 1939, archaeologists excavating in the mine were performing Stadelhole find attached a lot of mammoth bones, and a statuette, which is a strange creature: half man, half lion.

The most important thing is what experts believe represent. The statuette depicts a mysterious being, about which nothing is known. The body of man and head of a lion figurine raises many questions about the civilization that created it. Does such a man existed 40,000 years ago or simply talking about a shaman who knew very well capable secrets of nature?

Since ancient times, the lion was the symbol of courage and power. No one can say whether the being in question is male or female, but certainly has the body of man and head of a lion. For this reason, it was named "man-lion" and can be seen live in the museum of Ulm in Germany. Since ancient times, the lion was the symbol of courage and power. No one can say whether the being in question is male or female, but certainly has the body of man and head of a lion. For this reason, it was named "man-lion" and can be seen live in the museum of Ulm in Germany.

This discovery is fascinating and raises many questions about the distant past of mankind. In laboratory tests, it has been established that bizarre statue has existed for 40,000 years and was carved with amazing

precision. The material from which it was made is ivory. Most likely it is mammoth ivory. There is an obvious discrepancy between "the art" of the statues and the other "works" made at the time of those who lived in those areas. I refer both to the drawings on cave walls and various objects for decoration only showed more than mere scratches or inlay. Given the tough material and in conjunction with current instruments used by those who just descended from the cave after the last of glaciations, we are surprised by the accuracy of the details of the statues. We must remember that in that period, for man, there is no iron or bronze or even fire could not be controlled very well. Humanity is still only in the late Stone Age. Making tools from so fine ivory was an extremely costly for people back then. Both time and as resources. Observable is the fact that the area where the statue was discovered, weather conditions permitting only part of the year to feed what gives you natural vegetation. In the other half of people they had to hunt and to make supplies. So time was not in any way a resource maker.

In these circumstances arises, naturally, the question: what would have to persuade the creator of the statue to devote so much time to create the instruments needed for processing ivory, and subsequently to achieve the statue. It remains a question that scientists are called, still seek an answer.

The researchers calculated that the sculptor has employed at least 400 hours to carry out the work, working for two months in the light of day. This means that the carver was not a hunter and was maintained by the community. This presupposes a certain degree of social organization and a substantial appreciation of the visual arts.

The debate among scholars as to what is the statue is still open. Some opinions it to be connected to shamanism and the spirit world, there are those who believe that this is a work of art for its own sake and believes that it can also consist of toys made for children Upper Paleolithic.

However, the human-lion fantastic creature is a unique relic of its kind. It refers to the intellectual life, social and religious life of the mind of human beings who lived during the last ice age. However, their complex vision of the world, can not be deciphered more than we have managed so far.

The first excavations at Hohlenstein were made in 1861 by Oskar Fraas, who was searching for bear bones. The finding of the Lion Man sculpture came on a later expedition in 1939 by archaeologist Robert Wetzel.

The team was forced to quickly fill the excavation trenches using the same soil in which they found the ivory pieces. For the next three decades, the fragments sat in storage at the nearby City Museum of Ulm, until archaeologist Joachim Hahn began an inventory. As Hahn pieced together more than 200 fragments, an extraordinary artifact dating to the Aurignacian period (more than 30,000 years ago) began to emerge. It was clearly a figure with both human and animal characteristics.

Decades later, a museum worker came across the archeological findings and assembled the pieces to the Lion Man. However, only a small part of the head and the left ear had been found, so the type of creature it represented remained a mystery.

Robert Wetzel returned to Hohlenstein-Stadel in 1954 and continued excavating there until his death in 1961. Many prehistoric artifacts and Cro-Magnon remains were discovered.

Between 1972 and 1975, additional fragments from excavation seasons in the 1960s, which had been stored elsewhere, and still others picked up from the cave’s floor, were taken to the museum. Yet it took until 1982 for paleontologist Elizabeth Schmidt to put the new pieces together with Hahn’s earlier reconstruction. Schmidt not only corrected several old errors but also added parts of the nose and mouth that made it clear that the figurine had a cat’s head. Five years later, to conserve the figurine, the glue that held it together was dissolved. It was then carefully put back together, revealing that only about two-thirds of the original had actually been recovered.

This changed in 2008 when archaeologist Claus-Joachim Kind returned to the site at Hohlenstein. Kind removed the old backfill from the hastily concluded excavation of 1939. Over the next three years, Kind’s team found several hundred more small mammoth ivory fragments. “In 2009, when we found the first ones, it was a huge surprise,” says Kind. “But this is exactly the spot where the fragments of the figurine were originally found, so I knew right away that some belonged to the lion man. It had clearly been damaged during the earlier excavations. Only the larger pieces were collected and the smaller ones left behind,” he adds. Kind was able to fit several of the new pieces to form part of the back and neck, and a computer simulation of the lion man was created, showing the placement of several more previously unattached fragments. “At the end of the 2011 season, all the backfill will have been removed. There will be no more pieces left,” says Kind. “We hope that the lion man will finally be complete.”

foto credit: google.com

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