Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel: Ice Age Ivory Sculpture

The Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel is a mammoth-ivory sculpture about 40,000 years old, showing a figure with the head of a cave lion and an upright, mostly human body. Found in a cave in south-western Germany on the eve of the Second World War and pieced together from hundreds of fragments over the following seventy years, it is one of the oldest known figurative sculptures. Because it combines a human and an animal, it is also the oldest clear depiction of a being that existed only in the imagination.

Discovery in 1939

Hohlenstein is a limestone cliff in the Lone valley of the Swabian Jura, near the village of Asselfingen and about 25 km north-east of Ulm. It contains several caves; the largest, a long tunnel-like chamber, is called the Stadel (“barn”).

In the late 1930s the anatomist Robert Wetzel of the University of Tübingen excavated in the Stadel, with the geologist Otto Völzing in charge of much of the digging. On 25 August 1939, deep inside the cave, far from the entrance, Völzing found many small fragments of mammoth ivory in an Aurignacian layer. A few days later the excavation was halted because of the approaching war, which began with Germany’s invasion of Poland on 1 September.

The fragments were packed away without being recognised as a single object. For about thirty years they lay in storage, and eventually came to the collection of the Museum Ulm.

Reassembly: 1969 to 2013

In 1969 the archaeologist Joachim Hahn, cataloguing the material, began fitting the pieces together. He assembled more than 200 fragments into a standing figure with an animal-like head and realised that it was a sculpture of a part-human, part-animal being.

In the 1980s the palaeontologist Elisabeth Schmid identified further fragments, including pieces of the head. Her reconstruction, completed in the late 1980s, showed the snout more clearly and confirmed that the head was that of a cave lion. It became the version displayed for the next 25 years.

Between 2008 and 2013 Claus-Joachim Kind of the Baden-Württemberg State Office for Cultural Heritage re-excavated the Stadel, including the spoil left from 1939. His team recovered many more small fragments of the figure. In 2012 the sculpture was taken apart, the old glues and fillers removed, and it was rebuilt with the new pieces. The restored Lion Man was presented in November 2013. It now stands 31.1 cm tall, with much of the face and back completed, although some parts are still missing.

What the figure shows

The Lion Man stands upright on two legs with feet, in a posture that is clearly human. The head is that of a cave lion (Panthera spelaea), a large Ice Age cat that lived across Europe and northern Asia. The body is slender, and the long arms hang at the sides; their shape has been compared both to human arms and to a lion’s forelegs.

Several details were carved deliberately. The left upper arm bears seven parallel horizontal grooves, and there are lines on the head and ear. The figure is carved from a section of mammoth tusk, and its maker used the tusk’s natural structure: the pulp cavity at the centre of the tusk runs between the legs.

The figure’s sex has been debated. It was first described as male. Schmid suggested it might be female, and later researchers have noted that the carving lacks clear sexual features. Many museums now use neutral terms such as Lion-human.

How it was made

Mammoth ivory is dense and difficult to carve. Working only with stone tools, the sculptor would have cut and shaped a block of tusk, then scraped and polished the figure and incised the details. Experiments in which modern craftsmen made replicas using flint tools suggest that the original took several hundred hours of work.

For a small group of hunter-gatherers living in a harsh Ice Age climate, that represents a major commitment of time and skill. It suggests that the figure had considerable importance to the community, and that some individuals may have been recognised as skilled carvers.

Dating and find context

Organic material from the layer containing the fragments has been radiocarbon dated to about 41,000-39,000 years ago (calibrated). This places the figure in the Aurignacian period, when the first Homo sapiens had recently settled in central Europe. It is comparable in age to the Venus of Hohle Fels and to the Ice Age flutes of Swabia, which come from nearby caves.

Kind’s excavations showed that the fragments came from a small area near the rear of the cave, a dark zone some distance from daylight. The same deposits contained perforated animal teeth used as ornaments and other ivory pieces. The excavators suggested the figure may have been deliberately placed or stored there, perhaps in a special part of the cave, though this cannot be proven.

The Lion Man’s world

The Lion Man was made by people of the Aurignacian, the first culture of Homo sapiens in central Europe. They lived in small mobile groups, hunting reindeer, horse, mammoth and other animals of the cold steppe and tundra, and using caves such as the Stadel as shelters and perhaps as special places.

The Lone valley is especially rich in early art. At Vogelherd, a few kilometres from Hohlenstein, Gustav Riek excavated in 1931 a series of tiny ivory animals, among them a horse, a mammoth and a lion, and later re-examination of his spoil heaps yielded more figures. Bockstein, also in the valley, is another of the six World Heritage caves. Across the Swabian Jura, more than fifty Aurignacian ivory figurines and fragments are now known.

The cave lion is a recurring subject in this art. It was the most powerful predator of Ice Age Europe, larger than modern African lions, and it appears in carvings from Vogelherd and in paintings in caves such as Chauvet in France. Its prominence suggests that the animal held a special place in the beliefs of Aurignacian people.

Meaning and interpretations

Because the Lion Man joins a human body to the head of a dangerous predator, it represents something that did not exist in the natural world. This has led many researchers to see it as evidence for mythology, religious belief or shamanism, in which people imagined beings that crossed the boundary between humans and animals.

Similar ideas appear elsewhere in the Swabian Jura. An ivory plaque from Geissenklösterle, the “Adorant”, shows a figure with raised arms that may have feline features, and a tiny ivory lion-headed figure was found at Hohle Fels in 2002. Much older therianthropes, as such part-human, part-animal figures are called, have since been found in paintings in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Later examples include the so-called Sorcerer of the Trois-Frères cave in France.

What the Lion Man meant to the people who made it cannot be known. Suggestions range from a god or spirit to a mythical ancestor, a clan symbol or a shaman in costume. All of these remain interpretations.

Since its restoration the Lion Man has been the centrepiece of the Museum Ulm’s prehistory gallery. It has been lent to major exhibitions, and replicas are displayed in museums and at the visitor facilities near the caves. In Germany it has become a widely recognised symbol of the deep human past.

For archaeologists, the long history of the Lion Man’s reconstruction is also a lesson in method. Each new reassembly changed how the figure looked and how it was interpreted, and the 2008-2013 excavations showed that even old spoil heaps can still yield vital evidence decades after a dig has ended.

Myths and facts

• Myth: the figure was found complete. It was found as hundreds of fragments and has been reconstructed three times.
• Myth: it is a statue of a lion. The body, posture and legs are human; only the head and perhaps the arms are lion-like.
• Myth: the 1939 date is its age. 1939 is the year of discovery. The figure itself is around 40,000 years old.

By the numbers

Timeline

• c. 41,000-39,000 years ago: The Lion Man is carved and left in the Stadel cave.
• Late 1930s: Robert Wetzel and Otto Völzing excavate at Hohlenstein-Stadel.
• 1939, 25 August: Otto Völzing finds the ivory fragments; the dig ends days later.
• 1969: Joachim Hahn assembles the fragments and recognises the figure.
• 1987-1988: Elisabeth Schmid completes a fuller reconstruction with new head fragments.
• 2008-2013: New excavations recover many further fragments.
• 2013, November: The newly restored figure is presented in Ulm.
• 2017, July: Hohlenstein-Stadel and five other caves become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

The Lion Man shows that, around 40,000 years ago, people in Europe could carve complex three-dimensional figures and imagine beings beyond their direct experience. Together with other early art from the Swabian caves and figures such as the Venus of Willendorf, it is central to understanding the creative culture of Ice Age Homo sapiens.