An international group of archeologists, anthropologists, and paleontologists reported the discovery of the world’s oldest ivory carving workshop found at the mammoth hunting site of Breitenbach near Zeitz Germany in a press release at the Alpha Galileo web site on September 26, 2012.
The site dates to 35,000 years ago and is the oldest known evidence of mammoth tusk carving operations in the world.
The scientists found three separate locations at the dig site that included a storage facility for mammoth tusks, a tusk splitting operation, and a carving shop. The researchers also discovered beads and decorative rods that the researchers consider art forms.
Venus de Brassempouy fragmentary ivory figurine from the Upper Palaeolithic discovered in a cave at Brassempouy, France
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The site is considered to be the work of early modern man because the dating precludes work done by Neanderthals. The level of organization and the art infers a mental capacity equivalent to modern men.
The Breitenbach site is one of the largest Upper Paleolithic human habitations ever found. The site is at present known to be 20,000 square meters in area.
This site is uniquely not a cave dwelling. The open space allowed more freedom of development of highly involved manufacturing than a cave environment could.
Archeologists from the Monrepos Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for the Evolution of Hominin Behaviour, part of the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, (RGZM), the Landesamt für Denkmalpflege and Archäologie in Saxony-Anhalt, the Faculty of Archaeology at the University of Leiden (NL), the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology (ArchPro) in Vienna, the Institute of Geoinformatics i3mainz of the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz, and the Institutes of Geosciences at the universities of Mainz, Tübingen and Cologne.collaborated in the discovery.
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