Lion Man: The First Myth?
The Ancients
History Hit
4.7 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2023
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Discovered in a German cave, days before the Second World War broke out, the Lion Man statue remained an enigma for decades. A figurine that represents a hybrid creature with the body of a human and the head of a lion, the statue is made from mammoth ivory and is estimated to be over 40,000 years old, making it one of the oldest known examples of figurative art. But who carved this detailed figurine, and more importantly - why?
In this episode, Tristan welcomes back Palaeolithic Archaeologist John Mcnabb to the podcast, to delve into this small statuette's big history. With the Lion Man considered a significant archaeological find, providing insights into the artistic abilities and symbolic thinking of our ancient ancestors, and delving into mythology from millenia ago - what was the Lion Man statue doing in the depths of a German cave, and what was it protecting it's creator from?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Ancients from History Hit. |
| 0:05.0 | To listen to all of our episodes Add Free and watch hundreds of history documentaries |
| 0:10.0 | download the History Hit app or go to historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. |
| 0:16.0 | And if you're an Apple listener, you can subscribe for new Add Free episodes within the app. |
| 0:30.0 | It's the Ancients on History Hit. |
| 0:38.0 | I'm Tristan Hughes, your host and in today's episode where we're going back deep into the |
| 0:43.0 | Ice Age. |
| 0:44.0 | We're talking about an extraordinary artifact first discovered in hundreds of fragments in a cave in Germany in the late 1930s |
| 0:54.0 | later he's back together to reveal what looks to be a half lion, half human figure. |
| 1:03.0 | A mythical creature, a creature from a story. |
| 1:07.0 | It is what some believe to be the first myth or the first mythical creature that we know of from the human record from our history. |
| 1:19.0 | It's tens of thousands of years old. |
| 1:22.0 | Now there is still quite a lot of speculation around this figure, around Lion Man, but it is an amazing artifact. |
| 1:30.0 | And to tell its story, I was delighted to get back on the podcast Professor John McKinnab, aka Mac from the University of Southampton. |
| 1:39.0 | Now that name should ring a bell because Mac was our expert for our Homo erectus episode that we released a few months back. |
| 1:47.0 | Both Mac and I have a great fascination with this object so it was wonderful with getting back on the pod to talk through its story. |
| 1:55.0 | I really do hope you enjoy and here's Mac. |
| 2:04.0 | Mac, wonderful to have you back on the podcast man. |
| 2:08.0 | Nice to be here and we're doing it again in person in the same place in Southampton University in this lab. |
| 2:14.0 | But we're not talking about Homo erectus today, Homo sapiens. |
| 2:18.0 | And this extraordinary object here, I mean Lion Man. |
| 2:23.0 | Now first of all, this isn't your main area of interest. |
... |
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