Over the past two years, German archaeologists have carefully excavated more of the sediment near the spot where the Lion-Man showed up. Thousands of bone fragments and some ivory pieces were found. Some of them matched the Lion-Man perfectly, a delighted Kind reported. Some of the figure's missing right side and parts of the back have already been restored as a result. "It needs a huge amount of patience," said Kind. "It's like doing a jigsaw puzzle in 3D." The work is continuing with the help of computer tomograph images of the pieces and simulation software. By next year, the Lion-Man may be complete.
The Lion man (in German: Löwenmensch) is a lion-headed ivory sculpture which is one of the oldest known sculptures in the world (the oldest animorphic sculpture). The figurine was determined to be about 32,000 years old using the C14 method on carbon bearing material from the same layer.
Its pieces were found in 1939 in a cave named Stadel im Hohlenstein in the Lonetal (Lone valley) Swabian Alb, Germany. Due to the beginning of the Second World War, it was forgotten and only rediscovered 30 years later. The first reconstruction revealed a humanoid figurine without head. In 1997/98 further pieces of the puzzle were discovered and the head was reassembled and restored.
via utexas.edu
The sculpture is 29.6 cm (11.7 inches) in height, 5.6 cm wide and 5,9 cm thick. It was carved out of mammoth ivory using a flint stone knife. There are seven parallel, horizontal carved gouges on the left arm. It was originally classified as a male, later as a female, but both interpretations lack scientific evidence. At last it is often called lion headed figurine, or - probably wrong but easy to remember - lion man.
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.
From "The Mind in the Cave" David Lewis Williams 2002
...the statuettes were associated with an early form of shamanism: 'entering an altered state of consciousness is often considered a dangerous activity' and 'shamans have to be strong and powerful to...perform the work they do'...transformation into an animal is an integral part of shamanism. In providing social and conceptual contexts for the statuettes...the comparatively segregated locations in which the objects were found and suggest that Aurignacian shamans may have performed their tasks in relative seclusion, though the statuettes' use as pendants also suggests that they had a public significance.
Over the past two years, German archaeologists have carefully excavated more of the sediment near the spot where the Lion-Man showed up. Thousands of bone fragments and some ivory pieces were found. Some of them matched the Lion-Man perfectly, a delighted Kind reported. Some of the figure's missing right side and parts of the back have already been restored as a result. "It needs a huge amount of patience," said Kind. "It's like doing a jigsaw puzzle in 3D." The work is continuing with the help of computer tomograph images of the pieces and simulation software. By next year, the Lion-Man may be complete.
