Lion Man of Germany is the Oldest Statue in the World

[Fortis_in_Arduis]

Lion Man Oldest Statue

FROM NATURE NEWS SERVICE

USA, Jan 1 (VNN) — Lion man takes pride of place as oldest statue

30,000-year-old carving might be work of Neanderthals or modern humans.

Rex Dalton

Intricate ivory carvings said to be the oldest known examples of figurative art have been uncovered in a cave in southwestern Germany. Researchers say that the finding could change our understanding of early man's imaginative endeavours.

The artefacts - including a figurine depicting a Lowenmensch ('lion man') - have been carbon-dated to around 30,000 years ago, when some of the earliest known relatives of modern humans populated Europe.

Discovered last year by a team led by US archaeologist Nicholas Conard of the University of TŸbingen in Germany, at the Hohle Fels cave near Ulm, the objects include figures depicting a horse and a bird.

Conard says he thinks that the figures are older than a previously discovered Lowenmensch, fragments of which were found by German archaeologists in 1939 near Vogelherd and dated to about the same time. Until now, those artefacts were accepted as the oldest examples of figurative art in the world. The newly discovered objects are older, Conard argues, as they were uncovered at a lower level in the cave floor's sediments.

"These discoveries have incredible significance," says Clive Gamble, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton, UK. "They depict the animal world in a semi-realistic way. It shows early man moving from his immediate world to an imaginative world."

Conard reported the discovery on 30 July at the Sixteenth Congress of the International Quaternary Association in Reno, Nevada, during a lecture on the human colonization of Europe. He is now preparing a manuscript on the discovery for publication.

Conard, who has studied human migration from Africa at dig sites stretching from Syria to Germany, believes that humans first arrived in central Europe by following the River Danube west into the area. The figurines add a new dimension to theories about the Danube route, agrees Gamble. "During the Ice Age in Europe, the frozen Danube would be like a highway," he says, "providing a fast track to new environments."

Fossil remains suggest that modern humans and Neanderthals both lived in Europe during this period. Conard reported that the sedimentary levels in which the ivory carvings were embedded did not include any Neanderthal fossils. But some archaeologists argue that it is possible that the much-maligned Neanderthals produced similar objects. "I don't think that is as far-fetched as some people might think," says Jeffrey Brantingham, an archaeologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. "These objects are pushing the markers and traits" of modern man "further back into time", he says.

Archaeologists have pointed out that beads, bone points and pendants have already been discovered in association with Neanderthal fossils. Attributing artefacts to one of the two hominid groups remains difficult, says Brantingham. Gamble says that the discovery will spur fresh exploration of France, Spain and South Africa, where even older cave drawings - but not figurative art of this age - have been identified.

Rex Dalton is the West Coast Correspondent of the journal Nature.

© Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

http://www.vnn.org/world/WD0401/WD01-8500.html

[GermanWithGod]

This is amazing, but now they think it's the lionwoman maybe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_man

Whats interesting is why would it have a lions head in germany? It was carved out of mammoth ivory, i guess there were sabretooth tigers and stuff back then also ?

Regarding who made it, you have to keep in mind when you are reading things in this age of politically correct madness, you have to forget what things supposedly mean, go totally openminded and interpret them as you feel in your guts.

What i mean by this is, the term neanderthal... it conjurs up images from hollywood movies of hairy dumb gorilla-like beings who can barely say a word. Science shows that neanderthals brain was actually heavier than humans, although not built the exact same way. They are showing more and more evidence that they were highly intelligent beings, as well as the fact that we interbred with them.



The skull does not look that much different, but what it does resemble to me is some types of negroid/aboriginal skulls that i have seen online. And whats more interesting to me is that the 'reconstructed' neanderthal heads look remarkably like those very same people the skulls remind me of.

Does that mean aboriginals/negroids are neanderthals?

I am a strong believer in the multi-regional origin theory of humans. That means you don't believe we all came out of africa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multire...netic_evidence

I do not believe my ancestors were african bushmen, and i do not believe skin colour evolves or changes to suit a climate to the extent they want you to believe it can.

I am also not entirely convinced by evolution. I dont know how we got here, but i feel that i've always been here, i did not come out of africa.

[GreenHeart]

The skull does not look that much different, but what it does resemble to me is some types of negroid/aboriginal skulls that i have seen online. And whats more interesting to me is that the 'reconstructed' neanderthal heads look remarkably like those very same people the skulls remind me of.

Does that mean aboriginals/negroids are neanderthals?

It may indeed be...

The left skull is a modern negroid skull, the right skull is neanderthal.

http://www.theoryofuniverse.com/man/...ces-skulls.htm
http://www.boneclones.com/bh-030.htm

The only major or real difference I see is that 1) the negroid skull lacks the robust browridges of the neanderthal skull, but there are many living examples of negros that do have these. 2) The neanderthal has a more prominent nasal bridge.

Both appear to be prognathic, and the other features match up as well.

[Cythraul]

Fascinating. I thanked NordicPower's post of the Sphynx because I can see a lot of similarities between the German Lowenmensch and early Egyptian and Mesopotamian carvings. There are many theories and finds which suggest a link between ancient middle-eastern culture and western-european culture. For example, the same angles and sacred geometrical figures are encoded into British Megalithic sites as are found in the Giza Pyramids. It's interesting to ponder whether the makers/owners of this Lowenmensch statue themselves came from the earliest, as-yet-unknown civilisations in the middle east. This find certainly strengthens the likelihood of a link between north-Africa and the middle-east, and central and western Europe.

[Lyfing]

Speaking of Die Löwenfrau and geometrical figures..

Deciphering Upper Paleolithic (European): Part 1. The Basic
Graphematics—Summary of Discovery Procedures
Abstract
I propose a preliminary and tentative decipherment of a European Upper Paleolithic
protolanguage, UP(E), which crystallized during the Magdalenian period, ca. 15,000 to 10,000
BC. Many attempts have been made to decode the geometric signs in the cave and portable art
of Upper Paleolithic Europe. It appears that a subset of these signs have the capacity to, and in
fact did, constitute a protolanguage.
Building on the symbolic studies of Alexander Marshack on Upper Paleolithic symbolism
and Marija Gimbutas on Old European Neolithic symbolism, and applying the structuralist
semantic techniques of A-J. Greimas, it is possible to detect a complementarity set of four basic
sign-clusters (semantic fields) which constitute UP(E). UP(E) appears to consist of ‘gesturewords’
or ‘motion-form words,’ which refer to elemental processes of nature, both the natural
environment without and the psychic or spiritual realm within. The four UP(E) sign clusters
appear to signify: "center inward," "contact irrupting spirit energies," "sprout, grow and branch,"
and "flow." Syntactic pairings of UP(E) signs can generate ritual formulae and narratives of
spiritual transformation (trans-formation) processes. At a higher level, UP(E) appears to refer to
personifications (divinities, goddesses and gods) that preside over these ritual and natural
transformation processes. Some of the meanings of the animal and anthropomorphic images in
European Upper Paleolithic art, such as Venus figurines, can be decoded using this
decipherment.
In a further step, it is possible to match this preliminary grapho-semantic derivation of UP(E)
against a reconstruction of primordial language (PL) stem words in Foster (1978). Assuming its
validity this comparison procedure results in differentiating the four basic UP(E) semes into 24
(4X6) semes, each corresponding to a canonical geometric sign. Some fifty remaining PL words
appear to signify every day social and cultural activities, including semantic fields for tool
making and food preparation, foraging, childcare, and social goods (family, sexuality, wealth,
territorial defense).
James B. Harrod, Ph.D.
james@originsnet.org

27. Such vulva-seed signs are typical of the Aurignacian art style and continue through
the Magdalenian. Magdalenian disks from Isturitz and Mas d'Azil have central perforations,
concentric circles, and strokes, which were frequently engraved in an inward direction.
They suggest a semantic of centering, centeredness, inwardness, and inward centering into a
source of potential energy. If the two semes are combined, this would result in a decoding of
vulva, triangle, seed, uterus, circle, hole, ellipse, and phallus as something like: "Form your
sacred circle, your seclusion, center inward, concentrate, yourself in yourself, and find your
vulva-seed-womb source of life, your generative matrix and phallic potency, your luteal and
seminal life-force!"

28. Based on this analysis, of which the above sketch is but the tip of the iceberg, I
propose that by the time of the Franco-Cantabrian Magdalenian, there existed a protolanguage,
UP(E), which had four grapho-semantic fields. With respect to shape, these signs appear to fall
into four basic clusters:
A) circle and its derivatives, including concentric circles, oval, teardrop, ellipse,
uterus, vulva, phallus, seed, with/without internal dots or stroke marks; and triangle, pointed up or
down, with/without internal stroke marks;
B) single stroke mark (may be iterated); , bi-line (pair of parallel short stroke lines), crisscross
stroke ("X" sign); stroke with points or feathers like dart, spear, arrow; "Y" sign; and claviform;
all frequently superimposed on animals, esp. on their necks; backs, and bellies;
C) branch, vine, plant, penniform (feather); vulvar or rectangular sign broken through by line(s);
single or concentric ellipses with open ends, suggestive of, or associated with birthing imagery;
and tectiform;
D) chevron, "V" sign, running angles, zigzag; meander; spiral or coil; arcs or catenary
curves; tri-line (triad of lines); and ray (with lines directed outward, "comet").

The overall semantics of these clusters may be read, respectively,
A) "Center inward, form your sacred circle, your seclusion, concentrate, yourself in
yourself, and find your vulva-seed-womb source of life, your generative matrix and phallic
potency, your luteal and seminal life-force!"
B) "Contact, cleave to, sacrifice to, feel irrupting spirit energies within, your animal spirit
body, the creative tension and interplay of opposites, be pregnant, gestate, doubling and
redoubling, or split within, disrempt, bifurcate, be set apart, cross over into the separate
reality, the other world!"
C) "Branch out, sprout, emerge, give birth, hatch, grow out of, grow, unfold, unfurl
branches, ramify, branch."
D) "Flow, streaming with undulating self-movement of all things, spiraling, dancing with
life!"
In summary, the basic fourfold semantic of UP(E) reads:
"Center inward in seed-like potency! Contact, cleave to irrupting spirit energies!
Emerge, unfold, branch! and Flow with the undulating movement of life!"

http://originsnet.org/loslecture888k.pdf

Later,
-Lyfing

[Pro-Alpine]

The lion is an animal of Africa, it was probably just inspired by cats or some other Eurasian felidae.

[Jäger]

The lion is an animal of Africa, it was probably just inspired by cats or some other Eurasian felidae.

Or it is further proof, that Nordics conquered Africa, and are indeed the source of every high-culture on our earth

[Soldier of Wodann]

The lion is an animal of Africa, it was probably just inspired by cats or some other Eurasian felidae.

Wrong. Lions used to exist all the way from Western Europe to the Americas. They may very well have existed near enough to Germany for the ancient inhabitants of Germany to have known of them directly. Leaders of Roman units actually used to wear their skin, I think Greeks may have as well. They existed in the middle east until only a few hundred years ago as well.

[Pro-Alpine]

Or it is further proof, that Nordics conquered Africa, and are indeed the source of every high-culture on our earth

There are no ancient civilizations in northern Europe, but of course that's because they all went further south to an far-off environment with a climate that they don't tolerate very well and created cultures which made false art depicting a dark people to fool the future generations.

[Hauke Haien]

Aristotle and Herodotus wrote that lions were found in the Balkans in the middle of the first millennium BC. When Xerxes advanced through Macedon in 480 BC he encountered several lions. Before 20 BC they became extinct from Italy and around the year 1 AD from Western Europe also. Around the year 70 they were restricted to northern Greece, in the area between the rivers Aliakmon and Nestus. Finally, in the year 100 they became extinct in Eastern Europe too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Lion