Thundercats, HO!
This is de Löwenmensch, the Lion Man. He’s about a foot tall, carved out of a single mammoth tusk (which explains his pose, to some extent). The head is a cave lion, a creature from before the last Ice Age. Actually, Löwenmensch translates more to “lion person” — there’s some dispute whether the figure is male or female.
He was found in a cave in Germany in 1939 and, owing to some little distractions in the country at the time, forgotten for thirty years. More bits (including the head) were found in the same cave in the Nineties and a thorough restoration was undertaken in 2012/13.
Dude is forty thousand years old, the oldest undisputed representational sculpture found to date. If he looks stylistically familiar, he was made (probably) by the same people who did some of the better cave paintings found in France. The known territory of his makers — the Aurignacian culture — extends right through Europe into Asia.
More pics. He’s in a museum in Ulm and his official page is here (Google translate does a surprisingly good job with these pages).
Yeah, that’s right. I’m doing neolithic pinups now.
March 31, 2016 — 9:12 pm
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