Prehistory
Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel: Ice Age Ivory Sculpture
Reassembled from hundreds of fragments over seven decades, the Lion Man is one of the oldest known figurative sculptures and the oldest known depiction of an imaginary being.
Region
Europe
Prehistory
Altamira Cave Paintings: The Bison Ceiling of Cantabria
Dismissed as a forgery after 1880, Altamira was accepted as genuine Palaeolithic art in 1902 and became the founding site for the study of Ice Age cave painting.
Prehistory
Chauvet Cave Paintings: Europe's Oldest Painted Cave Art
Discovered in 1994, the cave pushed the known age of sophisticated painted cave art back to more than 30,000 years and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014.
Prehistory
Sungir Burials: Bead-Covered Graves of Ice Age Russia
The site produced some of the richest Palaeolithic graves known, central to debates about early social complexity and ritual.
Prehistory
Red Lady of Paviland: Britain's Oldest Ceremonial Burial
First thought to be a Roman-era woman, the skeleton is now recognised as a young man given an ochre burial about 33,000 years ago, the oldest known ceremonial burial in Britain.
Prehistory
Cosquer Cave: The Underwater Painted Cave near Marseille
The cave revealed a rich Mediterranean tradition of Ice Age art, but most of it has been lost to rising seas and the rest is under threat.
Prehistory
Venus of Dolní Věstonice: One of the Oldest Ceramic Figures
The figurine showed that Ice Age people fired clay roughly 10,000 years before the earliest known pottery vessels.
Prehistory
Venus of Willendorf: The Famous Palaeolithic Figurine
Found during excavations in 1908, the figurine became the world's best-known Palaeolithic image of the human body and is kept at the Natural History Museum in Vienna.
Prehistory
Pech Merle: The Spotted Horses and Hand Stencils of Quercy
Rediscovered in 1922, Pech Merle became one of the few decorated Ice Age caves in France whose original paintings can still be visited.
Prehistory
Cro-Magnon 1: The Rock Shelter That Named Europe's Early Humans
The finds gave their name to the early modern humans of Ice Age Europe; Cro-Magnon 1 became one of the best-known early Homo sapiens skulls.
Prehistory
Gargas Cave: Hundreds of Hand Stencils in the Pyrenees
Gargas became the best-known example of Ice Age hand stencils, and the puzzle of its 'mutilated' hands is still debated.
Prehistory
Venus of Lespugue: The Stylised Ice Age Ivory Figurine
Found in 1922, the figurine became a classic example of Gravettian art and early evidence for string and fibre technology.