Löwenmensch

The Löwenmensch are known from stone age carvings first found in 1930s Germany. The initial depiction is a statue standing 28-31 cm tall carved from mammoth ivory. It shows a lion-headed human and has been suggested by radiocarbon to be somewhere near 40,000 years old. The statue was found by Gustav Rieck in the Vogelherd cave in the Swabian Jura region in Southern Journey in 1931. Due to WWII, the statue was improperly sorted until it was “rediscovered” in 1969 by Joachim Hahn. It’s one of the oldest examples of human art and shows the ability of early man being able to think abstractly. It’s thought to have taken over 300 hours to carve, and it was broken into 800+ pieces and then reassembled. Some believe it represents a shaman wearing a lion mask and had some common symbolic use, possibly being symbolically fed due to wear, especially around the teeth. The form of early man responsible was called an Aurignacian. 

Citations:

Coolidge, Frederick Lawrence, and Wynn, Thomas Grant. The Rise of Homo Sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking. United Kingdom, Oxford University Press, 2018.

Praetzellis, Adrian. Archaeological Theory in a Nutshell. United Kingdom, Taylor & Francis.

Ruickbie, Leo. The Impossible Zoo: An Encyclopedia of Fabulous Beasts and Mythical Monsters. United Kingdom, Little, Brown Book Group, 2016.