Until researchers uncovered a startling finding, the first ivory work of art unearthed from the World Heritage cave Hohle Fels was thought to be a horse for more than 20 years.

Archaeologists recently discovered a fragment of a finely carved ivory figurine during work in the Swabian Jura near Schelklingen, a World Heritage cave. The figurine fragment revealed itself to be a piece of a body that was perfectly adapted to an animal figurehead discovered more than 20 years earlier. This gives one of the most famous Ice Age works of art a new look. The head, discovered in 1999, was first thought to be a piece of a horse sculpture and gained notoriety as the first ivory figurine discovered in Hohle Fels.

The group led by Professor Nicholas Conard at the University of Tübingen's Department of Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology is currently disputing this conclusion: At a press briefing on the "Find of the Year" on Thursday, Professor Conard said, "We still cannot definitively identify the animal species depicted, but it could be a cave lion or a cave bear." The current issue of the journal Archaeological Excavations in Baden-Württemberg, which is published by the Baden-Württemberg State Office for the Preservation of Monuments, contains a scholarly article on the figure, portions of which were discovered in layers of the Aurignacian Palaeolithic culture and carved 35,000 years ago.

The Upper Paleolithic artwork, in the opinion of Professor Conard, resembles a bear: "The figurine now has a massive body, shows the typical pronounced bear hump at shoulder height and presents itself in a posture that could imitate the trotting gait of a bear." It is by no means always simple to determine Ice Age depictions with precision, especially since they are kept in such fragmentary form, Professor Conard concedes. However, even those who assigned the figure the morphological and physiognomic qualities of a cave lion did so. Therefore, it makes sense to search especially carefully for this animal's missing pieces in the years to come.

In actuality, the animal form is currently made up of five discovery fragments that were located during various excavation years: Soon after, a tiny piece of the cheek that had been broken off in the neck region of the skull discovered in 1999 was located among the ivory discoveries. This is how the item was preserved and displayed for about twenty years in the Prehistoric Museum in Blaubeuren (urmu).

The new piece

The right shoulder and thorax of the animal were quickly identified and related to the current ivory discovery, which measures 3.99 centimeters in length, 2.49 centimeters in height, and 0.55 millimeters in thickness on one side. This prompted the researchers to explore among the many pieces of ivory recovered from Hohle Fels for other figurine components. With success: Using the engravings on the part, another tiny piece of the right side of the body could be located. This tiny section of the figure's torso, like the other pieces, has very fine lines with the same finish, which amply show the works' unity. It is quite possible that the figure also consists of another fragment, which cannot be clearly related to the rest of the body but may represent a piece of the left front leg.