The two bird figurines are as big as a fingernail. Credit: Ralf Ehmann / University of Tübingen.

The two bird carvings are remarkably intricate. One crouches as though warming a clutch of eggs, while the other spreads its wings. Together, the two figures weigh just two grams — and spent roughly 40,000 years buried in darkness.

Carved from mammoth ivory at the dawn of modern human life in Europe, the birds are among the smallest surviving artworks of the Ice Age. But for all their small size, they offer big evidence that people did more than hunt through a harsh landscape. They watched animals closely, mastered a difficult material and carried images of the living world into stone-age society. The hunters were also artists.

Birds in a Cave

Archaeologists from the University of Tübingen recovered the two birds during the 2025 excavation season at Hohle Fels, a limestone cave in southwestern Germany’s Swabian Jura.

The figures lay in the same archaeological layer, about 1.5 metres apart. Both came from lower deposits belonging to the Aurignacian, a cultural period associated in this region with some of Europe’s earliest modern humans. The resting bird is depicted in great detail with prominent eyes, while the bird with outstretched wings has a distinctive beak and clear markings representing feathers.

“The figurines demonstrate that the earliest artists were skilled ivory-carvers, who could depict delicate motifs in miniature form. Additionally, it seems that specific depictions are associated with specific sites,” says the director of excavations from the University of Tübingen, Professor Nicholas Conard.

It’s not the first ancient carving found in that area, but the birds are striking for two reasons. First, how small they are, and second, how detailed the carving is. In one carving, the artist marked prominent eyes and shaped the body into a compact form, suggesting a bird brooding over eggs.

“The carvings are not highly stylized but instead include many specific and unique features,” says Conard. “Here the artist has recorded detailed observations that allow us to consider which kind of bird is represented and what the bird could be doing.”

What the Evidence Says (and Doesn’t Say) View from Hohe Fels Cave. Image via Wiki Commons.

There’s always going to be some uncertainty when something is 40,000 years old. In this case, even the age itself isn’t 100% settled.

Researchers haven’t performed a radiocarbon measurement taken directly from either bird. Instead, the estimate of roughly 40,000 years comes from stratigraphy: the position of the objects within the cave’s sequence of accumulated sediments and artefacts.

Previous work at Hohle Fels has produced 57 radiocarbon dates across its Aurignacian sequence. The lower Aurignacian horizons fall mainly between about 41,700 and 39,000 calibrated years ago, although one possible date extends the beginning of the occupation closer to 44,000 years ago.

Directly dating ivory artwork would require removing material from it. On objects this small, even a tiny sample could destroy information. Archaeologists therefore often rely on dated charcoal, bone or other material from the same secure layer.

Archaeologists also aren’t certain what bird species these are.

The resting figure resembles a ptarmigan, a cold-adapted bird in the grouse family whose bones occur among the animal remains at Hohle Fels. The winged figure might also show a ptarmigan, another grouse or perhaps a bird of prey. Its missing wing and the unavoidable simplification of a two-centimetre carving limit certainty.

A sculpture (left) next to a ptarmigan bird. The sculpture was slightly edited to highlight what the artistic vision may have been. Image credits: Ralf Ehmann / University of Tübingen. A Bird Cult?

Turns out, these aren’t the first remarkable bird carvings from the cave. Hohle Fels had already produced one famous ivory bird.

Nicholas Conard reported that earlier figure in Nature in 2003, alongside a horse-like head and a human-animal sculpture. Archaeologists interpreted the bird as a waterfowl, perhaps shown diving. At the time, it was among the oldest known representations of a bird.

The two new discoveries bring the cave’s known bird carvings to three, which suggests a trend more than a coincidence.

It’s still too small a number to prove a religious cult, artistic school or fixed symbolic code. But it’s pretty striking nonetheless. . Researchers have found numerous ivory animals in other art-bearing caves of the Swabian Jura — including mammoths, lions, horses, bears and bovids — yet the known bird figurines come from Hohle Fels.

The pattern hints that different caves may have carried different social associations. A group might have returned to one place for particular ceremonies, stories or seasonal activities. Certain animals might have marked a community, family or landscape. Artists might simply have followed local traditions.

Depiction of a bird with outstretched wings from the site Hohle Fels Cave. Image Credits: Ralf Ehmann / University of Tübingen.

The birds could have served as talismans. Someone might have worn or carried them, although they don’t seem to have any holes or fittings that would demonstrate use as pendants. They might have helped tell stories, teach children, recall migrations or represent social identities. They might also have been toys or valued objects whose meanings crossed several of those categories.

Researchers have proposed that such shared cultural practices helped early modern humans build stronger social networks as they spread across Europe. That’s plausible, but still a hypothesis (and will need more than two birds to prove). We know that art can strengthen memory, identity and communication. but archaeological objects rarely reveal exactly how people used them.

For now, we don’t know exactly what the birds were for. But we do know that the hunters in Germany, 40,000 years ago, also had a soft side. They had the imagination and the skill to create intricate bird sculptures from ivory. Maybe there’s some value in that alone.

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The discovery does have a formal scholarly publication behind it, but not yet a standalone research article in an academic journal: Nicholas J. Conard, Alexander Janas, Mohsen Zeidi: Hochwertige Funde aus dem Mittelpaläolithikum und zwei aurignacienzeitliche Vogeldarstellungen aus dem Hohle Fels bei Schelklingen.
In: Archäologische Ausgrabungen in Baden-Württemberg 2025, July 2026, p. 46-52.