 Picture of the restorated statue The Lion man is an about 30 centimeter high, lion-headed ivory sculpture which is one of the oldest known sculptures in the world (the oldest human-animal sculpture). 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 restorated. It was determined to be about 32000 years old. It was originally classified as a male, later as femal. However, there are too few indications of either to determine it.
The sculpture is 29,6 cm (11,7 inches) in height. It was carved out of mammut 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 mix-beeings. These, however, are several thousand years younger. Meanwhile a similar, but smaller, lion-headed sculpture was found in another cave in the same region, along with other animal figures. This leads to the possiblity, that the lion-human beeing 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.
External Links
Löwenmann (http://www.showcaves.com/english/explain/Archaeology/Loewenfrau.html)
Official website of the Museum (http://www.loewenmensch.de/)
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