Unknown artist, Palaeolithic Europe
Lion Man of the Hohlenstein-Stadel, c. 39,000–33,000 BCE
Your taste…
A standing figure with a human body and the head of a cave lion, carved from mammoth ivory with a flint knife between about 41,000 and 35,000 years ago. It is one of the oldest known figurative sculptures, and an early sign of people imagining beings that do not exist. Found in a Swabian cave in 1939, its hundreds of fragments were pieced together over decades.
Look closer
Seven parallel grooves are cut across the left arm. Their purpose is unknown.
Looks like this
Compared by a vision model
