ARTICLE

HOW DID SUCH HUMAN ACCOMPLISHMENT
 COME TO BE, SO LONG AGO, SEEMINGLY OUT OF NOWHERE?


Turki, along the western fringe of the black sea, Danube River. as far as we know, nowhere along that journey did they leave signs of an artistic inclination, not even a piece of marked ocher. But once settled some 43,000 years ago in the lone and Ach River Valleys of Southern Germany, they suddenly began to create-not crude etchings but fully realistic animal figurines carved out of mammoth tusk.
The sources of most of these objects are four caves: Hohle fels and Geissenklosterle in the Ach Valley, and Hohlenstein-Stadel and Vogelherd in the lone. The caves could easily be missed today by someone driving the backcountry roads that wind through Germany's Southwestern mountains. A period known as the Augrinacian, were frigid steppe landscapes, dotted with herds of horse, reindeer and mammoth. Says Cornard, led them to share customs that spread from one group and generation, to the next. In hard times prized carvings and tools could have smoothed the way toward intertribal marriages, trade and alliances and helped spread new techniques for hunting, building shelters and making clothing.
In hohle fels, Cornard's team recently uncovered some objects a polished rod of siltstone, about eight inches long and an inch in diameter, with a ring etched at one end-likely a phallic symbol, and in Geissenklosterle cave found three other flutes, one made of ivory and two fashioned from a swan's wing bone. they are the oldest known musical instruments in the world.
Of all the findings to emerge from this period in Germany, none is more fascinating than the Lowenmensch of Hohlenstein-Stadel cave, a fantastical sculpture nearly 40,000 years ago old. The original Lowenmensch fragment-some 200 of them-were discovered in 1939, on the eve of World War II, by Robert and a Geologist name Otto Voizing.


Accomplishment: prestasi
Tusk: Gading
Fascinating: Sangat menarik
Frigid: Dingin
Inches: Inci
Carvings: Ukiran
Earlier: Terdahulu
Settlers: Pemukim
Siltstone: Batu endapan
Cave: Gua
Ivory: Gading
Flutes: Seruling
Vaguely: Samar-samar
Steppe: Padang rumput yang luas
Dotted: Burik
Intertribal: Antar suku bangsa
Flare-up: Menyala
Harsh: Keras
Rock: Batu
Fragment: Pecahan