Rosa Rubicondior: Creationism Refuted - Humans Were Carving Birds Out Of Mammoth Ivory 30,000 years Before 'Creation Week'

Friday, 31 July 2026

Creationism Refuted - Humans Were Carving Birds Out Of Mammoth Ivory 30,000 years Before 'Creation Week'

Mammoth ivory carving of a bird, approximately 40,000 years old, from Hohle Fels, Germany

Photo: Ralf Ehmann

Figure of a bird from the Ice Age site of Hohle Fels, approximately 40,000 years old.

Credit: Ralf Ehmann

Two bird figurines found in World Heritage Site of Hohle Fels are declared „Find of the Year” | University of Tübingen

Young Earth creationists insist that Earth—and everything upon it—was created only about 6,000–10,000 years ago, with the entire human population subsequently reduced to eight survivors of a global flood. Unfortunately for that mythology, archaeologists continue to uncover abundant evidence that humans were living, thinking and creating art tens of thousands of years before the supposed “Creation Week”, within cultures whose archaeological remains show no trace of having been interrupted by a planet-drowning flood.

The latest examples are two tiny bird figurines discovered in Hohle Fels Cave in the Swabian Jura of south-western Germany. Carved from mammoth ivory approximately 40,000 years ago, during the Aurignacian period, they were recovered in 2025 from the cave’s well-documented archaeological sequence by a University of Tübingen team led by Professor Nicholas Conard.

Each figurine is scarcely larger than a thumbnail, yet both display remarkable anatomical and behavioural detail. One appears to represent a resting or possibly brooding bird, with its head drawn close to its body and its legs tucked beneath it. The other has its wings spread and its neck extended, perhaps depicting a bird in flight, landing, threatening a rival or displaying during courtship. At just two centimetres long and weighing about 0.7 grams, the latter is the smallest known piece of Ice Age figurative art from the Swabian Jura World Heritage region.

A fictional Neanderthal artist.

Readers of my novel The Way of the Wolf: A Stone Age Epic may be reminded of Tanu, a Neanderthal living among modern Homo sapiens, whose skill includes carving animal figures.

Although this discovery is early in the history of Homo sapiens in Europe and close to the disappearance of Neanderthals, there is no evidence that a Neanderthal carved the Hohle Fels birds: their Aurignacian context associates them strongly with early modern humans.

Nevertheless, Neanderthals were themselves intelligent, technically accomplished and capable of symbolic behaviour. A Neanderthal sharing the life and culture of a modern-human community—and learning or exchanging artistic skills within it—is therefore legitimate historical fiction rather than fantasy.

The precise species cannot be identified with certainty, although ptarmigan or another grouse-like bird is a plausible possibility. Bones of such birds occur in the archaeological deposits, showing that the artists were familiar with them. These were not crude shapes produced by people struggling to represent an unfamiliar animal: the eyes, beak, posture and incised indications of feathers reveal careful observation, skilled ivory working and an ability to capture characteristic behaviour in miniature.

The discovery is especially intriguing because Hohle Fels has now yielded three Aurignacian bird figurines, including a waterbird excavated in 2001, whereas no bird carvings have been recovered from the other major Ice Age art sites in the surrounding region. The researchers suggest that individual ivory-working communities may have developed their own preferred subjects and artistic traditions—something resembling a local cultural signature.

The figurines are described by Nicholas J. Conard, Alexander Janas and Mohsen Zeidi in Archäologische Ausgrabungen in Baden-Württemberg 2025. They join the famous Venus of Hohle Fels, animal sculptures, jewellery and some of the world’s earliest musical instruments as evidence that the people occupying this cave possessed sophisticated technology, artistic traditions and symbolic cultures about 34,000 years before the date traditionally assigned to creation by biblical literalists.

For Young Earth creationism, therefore, the problem is not merely that two little ivory birds are “too old”. They belong within an extensive, ordered archaeological record of successive occupations, changing technologies and developing cultural traditions stretching across tens of thousands of years. To accommodate them within Genesis, creationists must compress that entire record into a few centuries, dismiss its dating, scramble its stratigraphy and somehow insert a worldwide flood that left the cave and its delicate contents undisturbed. Once again, the evidence does not merely fail to support the mythology; it records a human history with which that mythology is entirely incompatible. The discovery was announced in a recent press release from the University of Tübingen:

Two bird figurines found in World Heritage Site of Hohle Fels are declared "Find of the Year"
Archaeologists from the University of Tübingen identify a unique signature in miniature works of Ice Age art

Two bird figurines carved from ivory found at the site of Hohle Fels Cave, approximately 40,000 years old.

Photo: © Ralf Ehmann.

Excavations at Hohle Fels Cave in the UNESCO World Heritage area of the Swabian Jura of southwestern Germany have again yielded two, spectacular 40,000-year-old depictions of birds carved from mammoth ivory. The two figurines are the smallest discovered so far and are the size of a thumbnail, while still including many details. These remarkable finds come from the rich Aurignacian layers at Hohle Fels, which have produced some of the oldest figurative art known, and date to the time of the initial arrival of modern humans in the Upper Danube region. One find is complete and perhaps depicts a brooding bird, while the other incomplete bird has outstretched wings and may be in flight or landing.

In 2025, archaeologists from the University of Tübingen, Germany, recovered the birds in the same layer lying about 1.5 meters away from each other. They are of similar age and may perhaps have been carved by the same person.

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.

Professor Nicholas Conard.
Director of excavations
University of Tübingen

Depiction of a lying bird from the Ice Age site of Hohle Fels, approximately 40,000 years old.

Credit: Ralf Ehmann

The newly discovered birds are extremely small with dimensions of approximately 2 x 1 x 0.5 cm. Most of the other figurines from this period have dimensions in the range of 3 to 9 cm. 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 carvings are not highly stylized but instead include many specific and unique features. 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.

Professor Nicholas Conard.

Although many of the early ivory carvings from the caves of the Swabian Jura depict animals in a static manner with considerable tension, the two birds are shown in specific postures. One of the birds appears to be lying on the ground and could well be brooding over its eggs. The bird with spread wings may be flying, landing, or perhaps posturing in courtship. Ice Age art often leaves multiple avenues of interpretation open, and the same applies for the specific kind of bird depicted. The brooding bird appears to be a ptarmigan, a species that is well-represented in the rich faunal material recovered from Hohle Fels. The bird with spread wings could be a ptarmigan but could also be a bird in the grouse family or a bird of prey.

Depiction of a bird with outstretched wings from the site Hohle Fels Cave, approximately 40,000 years old.

Credit: Ralf Ehmann.

Feather light

The figurines in their present state weigh only 1.3 and 0.7 grams and are the smallest and finest depictions from this period 40,00-years-ago, but despite their size, they raise many new questions.

Professor Nicholas Conard.

Among the open questions are what meaning they could have had for the residents of Hohle Fels Cave. They could have served as personal talismans or as symbols for the identity of the person who carved or carried the diminutive sculptures. Hohle Fels has now yielded a total of three carefully made carvings, while no other site in the region has produced a single bird figurine. At the same time, depictions of other animals are numerous, with mammoths and lions being the most frequently presented, followed by smaller numbers of bears, horses, fish, and bison.

Each of the four World Heritage sites that have yielded figurative art is unique and documents a link between the site, its specific geographic and social context.

Professor Nicholas Conard.

Our region and landscape have always been the home of a vast range of birds, and nearby Lake Schmiechen is today a bird sanctuary. Even 40,000-years-ago birds were here. Their song filled the air, and some species came to the region in the course of annual migrations. Their calls signaled warnings, and the residents of the region often used their hollow bones and even mammoth ivory to make flutes that produced magical sounds.

Stefanie Kölbl
Managing director of urmu.

The figurines will be on display at the Museum of Prehistory and Ice Age Art in Blaubeuren (urmu) in a special exhibit that runs until April 4, 2027 entitled: Feather light, research heavy: Discover the miniature birds in Ice Age Art.

The urmu is located among the region’s caves that were inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2017 under the title: “Caves and Ice Age Art of the Swabian Jura.” Founded more than 60 years ago, this research museum of the University of Tübingen has long displayed the renowned Paleolithic artifacts of southwestern Germany together with the oldest figurative art and musical instruments dating back to 40,000 years ago. The urmu houses exceptional finds such as the Venus of Hohle Fels.

Publication:
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.

These two tiny birds are therefore much more than attractive examples of Ice Age craftsmanship. They are the surviving products of observant, imaginative and technically accomplished people who lived in Central Europe about 40,000 years ago—roughly 34,000 years before the date traditionally assigned to creation by biblical literalists. Their makers recognised characteristic features of living birds and possessed both the tools and the skill needed to reproduce them in pieces of mammoth ivory scarcely larger than a thumbnail.

Nor are the figurines isolated objects to which archaeologists have arbitrarily attached an inconveniently ancient date. They come from a documented Aurignacian deposit within an ordered succession of archaeological layers. Beneath the Aurignacian occupation are older Middle Palaeolithic remains associated with Neanderthals; above it lies evidence of later human activity. The cave consequently preserves a sequence of changing populations, technologies and cultures extending across tens of thousands of years—not the confused wreckage of a recent global catastrophe.

To fit this evidence into Young Earth creationism, the figurines, their archaeological context, the radiocarbon chronology and the entire stratigraphic sequence must all be dismissed, distorted or compressed into the few centuries permitted by biblical mythology. A global flood must somehow have inundated the planet while leaving delicate ivory carvings embedded within recognisable cultural layers, without mixing the deposits or erasing the succession of Neanderthal and modern-human occupations. That is not an alternative scientific explanation; it is the rejection of evidence to protect a predetermined conclusion.

At only a few centimetres long and weighing little more than a gram, these may be among the smallest artworks recovered from Ice Age Europe. Yet for creationism they present an enormous problem. They bear silent witness to a deep human past of migration, observation, craftsmanship and cultural development—precisely the history that archaeology and evolutionary science predict, and precisely the history that the authors of Genesis knew nothing about.

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