Hohle Fels Cave Yields 40,000-Year-Old Mammoth Ivory Bird Carvings

Archaeologists have uncovered two tiny bird figurines carved from mammoth ivory in the Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany. The carvings, dated to roughly 40,000 years ago, are linked to the Aurignacian culture of early modern humans in the Upper Paleolithic. One figurine shows a bird perched, while the other depicts a bird with its wings spread, though its left wing is broken. Weighing only 1.3 g and 0.7 g and measuring about 2 cm, they are the smallest known Ice Age artworks.

The finds were made by a team led by Nicholas Conard of the University of Tübingen. Conard said, "Mammoth ivory was not simply used here to create a simplified form of a bird's body," emphasizing the detailed observation of nature that the artists captured. The discovery adds new insight into the artistic capabilities and ecological awareness of early Homo sapiens in Europe during the last Ice Age.