from the Hohlenstein-Stadel cave, Ca. 30,000-26,000 BCE.
31 centimetres tall.
Ccarved from mammoth ivory it stands as the oldest known example of figurative art.
Discovered in a cave in Germany, this enigmatic sculpture merges human and animal features in a way that challenges understanding—both hauntingly familiar and strikingly otherworldly.
It offers a profound glimpse into the creative genius of early humans, hinting at their capacity for imagination and symbolic thought.
Remarkably, the Lion-man predates the advent of known written language by more than 30,000 years. To put that in perspective, it is older than Stonehenge by tens of thousands of years.
This ancient artifact showcases an extraordinary leap in artistic expression, marking one of the earliest examples of humans conveying complex ideas long before written records existed.
So when I am writing about my eldritch story, or just while walking on cloudy days during my commute...
I have a playlist of kind of melancholy ethereal music to listen to, to help me get in the mood.Got some music from the original Dishonored video game, (Drunken Whaler and Honor for All) two songs used in trailers for the Death Stranding video game, (I’ll Keep Coming and Asylum for the Feeling) a song used in Bionicle ads of all things, (Creeping in My Soul) and Uprising by Muse. Because you know, it was like my first anarchy song, and it fits in with my eldritch story. I am putting more under the cut. @akirakan @jogress @majingojira @neshtasplace @ayellowbirds tagging you folks in case you would be interested in some of my writings. Will try to tag others later too.
As a reminder, I took a break from the eldritch story to have a friend edit it and so I could come back refreshed. The story in its current draft definitely needs refining, I worry everything after the first chapter is a lot less solid. The first chapter is genuinely something I am proud of, and the rest less so. As with many of my stories I am using fiction to comment on the times, namely police brutality in America. The story begins with the two leads arrested after police violently shut down a protest, perhaps a dated topic in hindsight. The first chapter starts with them bruised and beaten, and things only get worse in that chapter. At least until the monster shows up, and the two leads escape in the chaos.
Admittedly I might have intruded in issues I am unequipped to handle as one of the leads is a black lesbian, of which I am not. I still felt that I needed to comment on these issues, and I do thing writers can explore other issues if they do so carefully, but I might have been clumsy, so sensitivity reading might be needed. The second lead is ace and autistic, as I am, and I felt less unsure about writing him. Both of them in the first chapter are used to comment on abuse towards queer folks of color and abuse towards the mentally ill. The scene is a bit dark for me, with police attempting to fake first one, then both lead’s suicides. Again I may be intruding and should move cautiously.
Both survive of course and star in the rest of the story, as they try to understand this skinless monster who seems to infect wood with muscle tissue and pus with a touch, including desks and doors. I must admit I thought out the “logic” of this creature and the god it survives, so I must admit I am worried that the eldritch horror makes far too much sense for the genre. There are internal rules, they are not explained exactly but they are there. Which might ruin any otherworldly quality too it. I do think late in the book I did a good description of the horror, a hero has a vision of the god behind the monster and I try to slowly reveal how terrible it looks, with him gradually realizing how terrible it was.
Inspirations for the setting included many “towns” with recent civil rights truggles, from Flint to Ferguson. Other elements drew from my hometown of Fredericksburg Virginia, one thing based off my hometown is that the fictional town in the story is obsessed with its history during the Civil War, Revolutionary War, and the like. In real life Fredericksburg literally has laws about building any buildings downtown that are over a certain height or in a modern style, there are regular trolleys downtown, albeit used for sightseeing tours, and there are like twelve antique shops downtown as well. The town is obsessed with history, the local bus network are decorated with simplistic and stylized pictures of historical things too. (some of these pictures are pictures of steamboats or cannons, and then there are the portraits of Confederates like Robert E. Lee) The strange out-of-time look of my hometown, thanks to a friend’s suggestion, was incorporated to help show a “wrongness” with the fictional town. Though I need to stress these details more next draft. Also another thing I plan to focus on next draft? Potholes. (Fredericksburg’s roads are currently incredibly uneven, thanks to the large amount of recent rain, as well as just plain poor maintenance of roads)
The primal god behind the monster on the other hand was inspired by a archaeological find first found in Germany in 1939. Yeah. The object has taken decades to reassemble as it was shattered, and it appears to be a human with a lion’s head. this is now called the Löwenmensch, or the lion-man. This is the earliest known example of figurative art, dating back 40,000 to 35,000 years ago. Modern humans were just evolving at this time, and I believe white skin was not in the genome yet. This Ice Age figure was carved out of mammoth ivory, which alone suggests its age. Stone tools were a bit refined then, prepared cores not flakes, and atlatls were used. This was the time of what we now call the Aurignacian. And as this find is 40,000 to 35,000 years old, there is a lot we do not know about it or its people. I figured that since these people were long dead with their descendants utterly divorced from their culture, I was freer to toy around and play with horror, without making crap up about documented gods whose people had traceable modern descendants, like Dagon for instance. This find is too far removed I suspect for me to worry about butchering a real life people’s beliefs, and as it is the oldest piece of figurative art recovered it has a primal “at the dawn of man” quality documented religions lack.
Other influences might be an interview I read on the book The Ballad of Black Tom, which inspired me with the concept that an eldritch horror might be less malicious to the oppressed than human bigotry, though I think I took it in a different direction (definitely didn’t copy it, as I haven’t read the book yet because executive dysfunction) Other inspiration came from Red of Overly Sarcastic Productions, as her Halloween episode on Lovecraft really drove home how bigoted and horrible Lovecraft was. My story was in part written in response to Lovecraft, grappling with his prejudice by starring the oppressed and showing their struggles, as well as showing how institutions of white cishet neurotypical order are a greater threat to people than a terrible monster from before recorded history.
So yeah, that’s my wall of text on that story, haven’t written about it in a while so I thought I should give a summery and reminder. Enjoy.
Lowenmensch, a lion-headed person, found in Germany, has been dated to 35,000 to 40,000 BCE, making it the oldest sculpture so far known. Carved out of mammoth ivory, it is found in a cave at Hohlenstein-Stadel, part of an Upper Palaeolithic Cultue, the Auringnacian.
The sculpture, preserved in a museum in Ulm town, is 31.1 cm high. There is a dispute about whether it is a male or female.
A…
The intersecting lines on the ivory form patterns scientists can use to determine whether the material came from a mammoth or from a modern day elephant.
These images are public domain.
From Don's Maps:
If the angle of the cross-hatch pattern is less than 90 degrees, the ivory is fossil mammoth (mammoth forms angles of 87 degrees on average). If the cross-hatch angle is more than 90 degrees, the ivory could be modern elephant (modern elephant ivory forms angles greater than 115 degrees.) On the other hand, Mastodons cross-hatch angle is 125 degrees on average.
