Paintings on cave walls stay where they are. But Ice Age people also made art they could hold and carry: small carvings in ivory, bone, antler and stone, and the first musical instruments, flutes made from bird bone and ivory. Archaeologists call this portable art. Some of it is older than any known cave painting.
The most famous piece is the Lion-Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel, from a cave in the Swabian Jura of southern Germany. It is a figure about 31 centimeters tall, carved from a mammoth tusk about 40,000 years ago. It stands upright like a person, but its head is a cave lion's. It is now in the Museum Ulm. (We do not have an approved picture of it yet, so here it is described in words.)
Key idea
Why it works
Looking closely: The Lion-Man. It is long and narrow, shaped by the curve of the tusk. The head has the short muzzle and small ears of a big cat; the body stands upright on two legs, with arms held at its sides, and a few lines are cut into its surface. Carving it with stone tools would have taken many hours of careful work, since ivory is hard and splits easily. It was found in 1939 as some 200 broken fragments, put together in the 1960s and 1980s, and rebuilt again after more pieces were found in 2008 and later.
| Clue | What it tells us |
|---|---|
| Mammoth ivory | Carvers used the big animals of the Ice Age for material as well as food. |
| Hours of skilled work | The community valued it enough to spare the time. |
| Part animal, part human | Imagination: a creature no one had seen. |
| Found in a cave chamber | Perhaps a special place; its use is unknown. |
Worked example: Which came first?
- Lion-Man: about 40,000 years ago.
- Lascaux: about 17,000 years ago.
- 40,000 is more than twice 17,000, so the Lion-Man is much older.
Answer: Older, by more than 20,000 years.
Common mistake