A 40,000-year-old ivory sculpture reveals the ancient origins of human imagination.
In short: Curator Jill Cook explores the Lion Man, a prehistoric sculpture featuring a human body and a cave lion head. This remarkable mammoth ivory figure offers a window into the symbolic world of our ancestors and the deep history of human creativity.
The Lion Man is a 40,000-year-old artifact carved from mammoth ivory. By blending human and animal forms, the sculpture serves as an early example of complex symbolic thought, suggesting that humans have long looked beyond the physical world to create meaning.
The piece was featured in the British Museum exhibition 'Living with gods: peoples, places and worlds beyond,' which ran from 2 November 2017 to 8 April 2018. The exhibition was supported by the Genesis Foundation and accompanied a BBC Radio 4 series hosted by Neil MacGregor.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: Living with gods: the 40,000-year-old Lion Man
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