Ice Age Artists Turned Mammoth Tusks Into Figurines by Following Patterns Already Inside the Ivory

Digital scans reveal a distinctive artistic tradition that emerged in Ice Age Ukraine.

Eighteen tiny Ice Age figurines carved from mammoth tusk have been hiding a secret in plain sight for more than a century.

Carved around 18,000 years ago at Mizyn in northern Ukraine, the figures represented the human body with only a few bold features: narrow torsos, swelling hips and surfaces crowded with zigzags, curves, and looping geometric designs.

Archaeologists have previously tried to fit them into the broader tradition of Europe’s famous Ice Age “Venus” figurines. But recent analysis of the carvings, using microscopes and high-resolution 3D scans, revealed that many of those elaborate patterns simply follow the natural growth lines running through mammoth ivory.

The carvers, it seems, were paying close attention to the tusk in their hands. They shaped and polished the ivory, then followed or recreated patterns already inside it. And when researchers compared the Mizyn figures with hundreds of dated figurines from across Europe, another surprise emerged. This unusual style showed up in eastern Europe before comparable Venus figures became widespread farther west.

As such, Mizyn had its own Ice Age artistic tradition—one that developed thousands of years ago from an intimate familiarity with mammoths and the material they left behind.

Avantgarde?

The figurines are unusual even by Paleolithic standards. Their makers carved elongated three-dimensional bodies, then added stylized human features and dense geometric designs. On many pieces, zigzags, curves, and meanders imitate Schreger and Owen lines—the natural crosshatched and concentric patterns inside mammoth ivory.

That was not accidental, the researchers argue. The most elaborate engravings occur where those internal structures would have been especially visible, sometimes after the ivory surface had been deliberately smoothed. Microscopic traces also show that craftspeople planned designs with fine marks before cutting deeper grooves with flint tools.

The team then compared Mizyn artifacts with female figurines from across Europe, using 650 published radiocarbon dates to work out where the Ukrainian carvings fit in the broader Ice Age timeline. Europe has much older examples, including a mammoth-ivory female figurine from Hohle Fels Cave in Germany that dates to at least 35,000 years ago. But the researchers found a hiatus in known female figurines around 23,000 to 20,000 years ago, near the Last Glacial Maximum.

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When female figurines began appearing again after that gap, examples from Mizyn and nearby Ukrainian sites were among the first. Similar simplified female forms did not become common in Central Europe until later, between about 17,000 and 13,000 years ago.

“This indicates that Ice Age artists in Eastern Europe forged their own independent artistic path rather than simply following trends from Western Europe,” Andrew Needham of the University of York said in a statement.

What Were the Figurines For?

That remains the hardest question.

Archaeologists have previously grouped the Mizyn carvings with Europe’s so-called “Venus” figurines because many appear to depict female bodies, with emphasized hips or buttocks and triangular markings often interpreted as pubic areas.

There are clues that the figurines may have had a special meaning. Three were found beneath or inside a mammoth skull, suggesting they may have been placed there deliberately. But archaeologists still do not know what the figures represented or howpeople used them. The new study is much clearer about how they were made than what they meant.

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Digital Rescue

Instead of cutting into ancient objects, researchers can now scan them in 3D or look inside them digitally. In 2022, for example, a micro-CT study of the roughly 30,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf revealed the internal structure of the figurine and helped trace where its stone likely came from.

At Mizyn, necessity made this approach all the more useful. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has restricted access to collections at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in Kyiv. In 2022, the museum granted limited access so researchers could digitally record the figurines. Photogrammetry produced submillimeter-scale 3D models, while microscopy and software allowed the team to examine 97 individual engraved lines without repeatedly handling the fragile ivory.

In fact, the scans formed part of the Preserving Ukrainian Legacy project, an effort to create digital records of archaeological collections threatened by the war.

“Projects like this not only deepen our understanding of the past but also create new opportunities for research,” Oleksandr Naumenko of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine said. “At a time when war continues to threaten Ukraine’s cultural heritage, creating high-quality digital records of artifacts is a crucial step in preserving them.”

The study was published in the journal npj Heritage Science.