Ice Age Carvers in Ukraine Engraved 18,000-Year-Old 'Venus' Figurines With the Growth Rings of the Mammoth Tusks They Were Cut From. Scientists Only Saw It After Scanning Them to Save Them From the War.

The geometric patterns engraved on a set of 18,000-year-old female figurines from northern Ukraine were copied from the natural growth structure of the mammoth ivory they were carved from, according to a study published in npj Heritage Science. The finding, made from high-resolution microscopy and 3D digital models of 18 figurines from the Mizyn campsite, suggests that Ice Age artists looked closely at the material in their hands and let it dictate their designs.

Mammoth tusks, like elephant tusks, are built from layers of dentine that leave two characteristic signatures. Schreger lines are the crosshatched pattern visible on a cut surface, and Owen lines are the concentric growth rings. The researchers found that the carvers at Mizyn explicitly incorporated both into the ornamentation of the figures, structuring their chevrons and meanders around the lines they could see in the raw ivory. "This discovery offers an extraordinary window into how Paleolithic peoples perceived and engaged with their material world," said Aimée Little, director of the Center of Artifacts and Materials Analysis at the University of York. "Identifying visual evidence of how mammoths were integrated into artistic traditions, both through the use of their ivory and the deliberate inscription of its natural patterns, represents a genuine breakthrough in our understanding of prehistoric art and material culture."

The figurines are held at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in Kyiv, and the Russian invasion is what pushed the project forward. Access to the physical objects has been limited since 2022, so the Ukrainian NGO Archaïc led an urgent digitization effort to create permanent records of the collection. Those scans became the raw material for the analysis, which brought together researchers from York, the University of Stavanger in Norway, the Kyiv museum and the Leibniz Center for Archaeology in Germany. "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," said Oleksandr Naumenko of the National Museum.

The study also reshapes the timeline of European figurine art. So-called Venus figurines are famous from sites across the continent, but the team's chronology shows a gap of 1,000 to 3,000 years in their production coinciding with the Last Glacial Maximum, the coldest peak of the last Ice Age. When the tradition re-emerged around 18,000 years ago it did so first in Eastern Europe, not the west. "While later Western European styles also featured abstracted female forms, none reproduced the internal tusk patterns seen at Mizyn," said Andrew Needham of York's Department of Archaeology. "This indicates that Ice Age artists in Eastern Europe forged their own independent artistic path rather than simply following trends from Western Europe."

Dmytro Kiosak of the Leibniz Center said the results "challenge the long-held assumption that ancient art simply evolved in a straight line from basic to complex forms." Theories about what the figurines were for, from fertility charms to portraits to ritual objects, remain unresolved, but the new work at least establishes how they were designed. Simon Radchenko of Stavanger, the lead author, said the team expects further digital work to reveal "an even more complex and intriguing picture than we have now" of how artistic expression emerged in Europe.