Description : The Vogelherd Cave (German: Vogelherdhöhle , or simply Vogelherd) is located in the eastern Swabian Jura, south-western Germany. This limestone karst cave came to scientific and public attention after the 1931 discovery of the Upper Palaeolithic Vogelherd figurines, attributed to paleo-humans of the Aurignacian culture. These miniature sculptures made of mammoth ivory rank among the oldest uncontested works of art of mankind. In 2017 the site became part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura". Riek defined nine cultural horizons. The oldest scattered objects - stone artifacts - date back to the Middle Paleolithic - older than 40,000 years, representing traces and remains of occasional occupation by late Neanderthals. Although hundreds of tools and artifacts made of stone, bone, ivory and antler are documented in all sediment layers beginning in the Eemian (ca. 130,000 years ago) to the top strata of the Bronze Age, human fossil discoveries are rare and most are attributed to the late Neolithic (ca. 5,000 years ago).
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