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Name : Hohle Fels water bird
What it is : Sculpture of a bird carved from gigantic bone
The Hohle Fels water bird was carved out of mammoth ivory about 40,000 years ago.
Where it is from : Hohle Fels spelunk , Baden - Württemberg , southwestern Germany
When it was made : Around 40,000 years ago
Related : Tumaco - Tolita gold figurine : A 2,000 - class - old statue with a ' fancy nose decoration ' from a vanish South American refinement
What it tells us about the past :
archeologist excavating Hohle Fels undermine in southwestern Germany over two ten ago fall upon three tiny figurines cut up out of gigantic ivory . date to around 40,000 year ago , the carving typify some of theoldest examples of figurative art , and the petite carve bird is the former depiction of a bird anywhere in the world .
TheHohle Fels birdsculpture was let out in two parts : the body was found in 2001 , while the rest was find in 2002 . In the space of just 1.85 inches ( 4.7 centimeter ) , someone painstakingly carve the skirt ’s eyes , conical beak , short leg , empennage and a series of line be feather .
Based on the shape of the mind and the protracted cervix of the bird , archaeologistNicholas Conard , who described the discovery in the journalNaturein 2003 , suggested that the beast was a water bird such as a underwater diver , cormorant or duck’s egg .
The other two ivory sculptures discovered at Hohle Fels at the same time admit a carved mind of ahorseback or undermine bearand apart human , part lionstanding fig . Together , the three objects point to the area of the Upper Danube River as an significant centerfield of cultural innovation during the Upper Paleolithic menstruum ( 50,000 to 12,000 years ago ) , Conard publish in the study .
But the meaning of the Hohle Fels bird is uncertain . One argument is that these sorts of ivory statuette are a kind of " hunting magic " that a shaman might employ to help ensure a successful hunt . Water birds were not typically food for thought , though , and Conard suggested instead that these multitude simply depicted animals they admired .
The cave situation of Hohle Fels was occupied during theAurignacianperiod of prehistory ( 43,000 to 28,000 geezerhood before present ) , when former humans — once known as Cro - Magnons — thrived in Europe travel along thedisappearanceof theNeanderthals .
These groups createdan blowup of art , some of which had never been seen before in human history , including so - call Venus figurines , melodious tool , luxuriant jewelry andcave house painting . Much of this art involved drawing and carving animals that the Aurignacian multitude would have seen on a 24-hour interval - to - Clarence Day basis .
— Mechanical Dog : A ' ripe boy ' from ancient Egypt that has a red tongue and ' barks '
— Onfim ’s doodle : A 13th - century kid ’s self - portrait on horseback , slaying an enemy
— Yup’ik masks : carving depicting distorted spirits ' faces woolgather up by shamans in Alaska
The Hohle Fels bird is not the oldest figural sculpture in Europe . That title has been have by another breakthrough from the same cave in 2008 : theVenus of Hohle Fels , a sculpture of a woman with enlarged breasts and second joint , which was created 41,000 age ago .
But the entire ingathering of ivory carvings at Hohle Fels suggest that something very new was happening around 40,000 twelvemonth ago in the south German tidy sum , as the people who create the Aurignacian culture manufacture types of figurative artistic production and medicine akin to what we have today .
Many of the Hohle Fels object are on showing at theUrgeschichtliche Museum(Museum of Prehistory ) in Blaubeuren , Germany , and a3D scan of the water birdcan be accessed online .
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