"On August 25, 1939, archaeologists working
at a Paleolithic site called Stadelhole (“stable
cave”) at Hohlenstein (“hollow rock”) in
southern Germany, uncovered hundreds of
mammoth ivory fragments. Just one week
later, before they could complete their fieldwork
and analyze the finds, World War II began. The team was
forced to quickly fill the excavation trenches using the same soil
in which they found the ivory pieces. For the next three decades,
the fragments sat in storage at the nearby City Museum of Ulm,
until archaeologist Joachim Hahn began an inventory. As Hahn
pieced together more than 200 fragments, an extraordinary
artifact dating to the Aurignacian period (more than 30,000
years ago) began to emerge. It was clearly
a figure with both human and animal
characteristics. However, only a small
part of the head and the left ear had
been found, so the type of creature it
represented remained a mystery..."
You can read the rest of the story about the recovery of additional
pieces and the reconstruction of the figurine in the March/April issue
of
Archaeology.
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