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BERLIN - Archaeologists have unearthed what is believed to be the world's oldest fully intact ivory carving of a mammoth from an Ice Age site in south-western Germany that was inhabited by the first Homo sapiens some 35,000 years ago.
The tiny carving, which is only 3.7cm long, has a pointed tail, a graphically arched trunk and powerful legs that join together at the bottom, enabling it to be hung from the neck and worn as what was almost certainly a charm.
The mammoth is among a group of Ice Age figurines retrieved by the American archaeologist Nicholas Conard and his German Tuebingen University colleagues from the Vogelherd cave in the state of Baden Wuerttemberg last year. However, the discovery was made public only this month when Conard and his colleagues Michael Lingnau and Maria Malina reported their findings in a German archaeology journal.
"Our discovery shows that there has been art in this region for over 35,000 years," Conard said.
- INDEPENDENT
