Two tiny bird carvings sat hidden in a German cave for about 40,000 years. Now archaeologists have pulled them from the sediment at Hohle Fels Cave, one of the sites known for some of the oldest figurative art ever found.
The mammoth ivory figurines are each less than an inch long and weigh only a fraction of an ounce. One shows a bird with its wings spread, though parts of its body are missing. The other was found intact and appears to be lying down, possibly tending to its eggs.
“The carvings are not highly stylized but instead include many specific and unique features,” Nicholas Conard, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany, says in a statement. “Here, the artist has recorded detailed observations that allow us to consider which kind of bird is represented and what the bird could be doing.”
The artworks include carved eyes and feather markings. Researchers think one may depict a ptarmigan, from the grouse family. They are less certain about the other, which may be another ptarmigan or a bird of prey.
Researchers say the two objects were made around the same time and may have been carved by the same artist. They were found about 1.5 metres apart during excavations in 2025 at Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany.
Hohle Fels is one of six caves in the Swabian Jura protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Excavations in the area began in the 1860s and revealed artifacts dating to between 43,000 and 33,000 years ago, including animal figurines and early musical instruments. UNESCO says these are “some of the oldest figurative art worldwide.”
The new finds came from Aurignacian layers associated with some of the earliest known modern human cultures in Europe. Hohle Fels has also yielded early bone flutes and the Venus of Hohle Fels, one of the oldest surviving examples of figurative art depicting a human.
Researchers previously found another bird figurine at the cave about 25 years ago. Its body was discovered in 2001, and its head and neck were identified in 2002. Researchers think that nearly 5-centimetre sculpture represents a water bird such as a cormorant or duck. Soon after, Conard wrote in Nature that it was the “oldest known representation of a bird.”
According to Schwäbische Zeitung’s Christoph Schneider, the wings-spread figurine is the smallest Ice Age artwork found in the region. Other artworks from the same period typically measure between 2.5 and 10 centimetres long.
Both new bird figurines are now on display at the Museum of Prehistory Blaubeuren. At a presentation there earlier this week, Conard said three bird sculptures have now been found at Hohle Fels, while nearby sites have only produced figurines of other animals, according to Schwäbische Zeitung.
The researchers say they do not know what the figurines were used for. According to the statement, they are considering if they were “personal talismans” or symbols tied to their owner’s identity. Daniel Adler, a paleolithic archaeologist at the University of Connecticut who was not involved in the research, told Nature, “These objects were created with a purpose other than simple enjoyment.”
Conard’s team has been working at Hohle Fels for nearly 30 years, removing sediment and sifting it through fine mesh. Elisa Luzi, a paleontologist at the University of Tübingen, identified one of the bird figurines during that process.
“You see this figurine, and you feel the humanity of it all,” she tells Nature. “No one has seen these things for 40,000 years, and we are the first ones to do it. It’s a privilege.”
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