Ice Age carvings
Mammoth ivory works from the region's caves.
Carsten Steger — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Martin Engelbrecht / Friedrich Bernhard Werner — Public domain · Matthäus Merian — Public domain · Unknown authorUnknown author — Public domain
Because it is among the oldest three-dimensional artworks known at all: carefully carved from mammoth ivory some thirty-five thousand years ago, at a time when modern humans had only recently reached Europe. Accomplished abstract art of that age changed scholars' understanding of when symbolic thought began — and the same region produced the oldest known musical instrument, a flute made from bird bone.
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Hohentübingen Castle rises above the university town of Tübingen and today belongs to the University of Tübingen, housing its Museum of Ancient Cultures. The combination is odd and fruitful: a Renaissance castle holding one of the most important archaeological collections in Germany. The object that makes the visit exceptional is the Vogelherd horse: a small figure carved from mammoth ivory, only five centimetres long, and around thirty-five thousand years old — among the oldest three-dimensional works of art known in human history. It was found in the caves of the nearby Swabian Jura, a region inscribed on the World Heritage list in 2017 precisely because it produced the oldest known art and musical instruments. The museum also shows Egyptian, Near Eastern and Greek antiquities, and the castle's own laboratories carry scientific history: in its cellars in 1869 the physician Friedrich Miescher discovered what we now call DNA, from the pus on surgical bandages. The journey from Stuttgart is about an hour by train.
Mammoth ivory works from the region's caves.
A riverside university town worth half a day.
Burgsteige 11, 72070 Tubingen