A History Of The World In A 100 Objects: No. 4

A History Of The World In A 100 Objects
Number 4
Swimming Reindeer
Sculpture carved from Mammoth tusk, found in Mantastruc, France
11,000 BC

With the adavancement in toolmaking & the ending of the last ice age Humans were able to spread out from their African origins, this created trade routes & societies moving out of Africa to the Middle East, Asia & Europe.
As Humans spread they created trade routes, found new materials & advanced in terms of health, intelligence, technology, social structure & creativity.
Item no. 4 is a carving of two reindeers swimming, it was found in a cave in France & is made of Mammoth tusk. Mammoths and Reindeer were vital for ealry European settlers because they provided lots of meat, warm fur & their bones could be used as tools. They could sustain a community for quite a while. This object is the earliest example of a thing seemingly to have been created purely as a decorative object.
It's relevance isn't the same as the last two objects, it has a more aesthetic quality. It shows the spiritual nature of early Humans & the way they saw the world. There are also examples of Mammoths being carved out of Reindeer & this shows that our earliest European ancestors placed a great importance on creatures.
The carving it's self is of two Reindeers, a male & a female, crossing a river. The fact that the female Reindeer has antlers means that it must have been carved during autumn & it's believed that as the weather would have been turning colder as it headed towards winter the sculptor was trying to place a spiritual meaning on the object. Winter obviously being a very perillous time for folk who didn't have double glazing.