Germany
Date of Issue: 8th May 2025
one souvenir-sheet (0.95 €)
A world cultural leap 40,000 years ago on the edge of the Swabian Jura:
40,000 years ago, a huge leap in the development of modern man took place at the point where the Swabian Jura meets the foothills of the Alps. In the caves of the Ach and Lone valleys near Ulm, Ice Age man began to conceive and create figurative representations of animals, humans and hybrid creatures as well as the world's first musical instruments. Nowhere else in the world have older comparable artefacts and musical instruments been found.The delicately crafted sculptures are evidence of the emergence of the modern human spirit, which was expressed in art, symbols, music, rituals and beliefs. They show us the central and universal significance that art and music have always had for mankind.
The best-known finds of Ice Age art include figures such as the ‘Lion Man’, a mysterious hybrid of cave lion and human, the ‘Venus of Hohle Fels’, the oldest depiction of a human in the world, and the ‘Mammoth of Vogelherd’. The skilfully crafted sculptures made of mammoth ivory are around 40,000 years old and measure between four and six centimetres in size. The lion man stands out from the group of figures with its exceptional size of 31 centimetres.Numerous high-calibre originals, such as the Venus or the Lion Man, are on display in the Prehistoric Museum Blaubeuren and the Museum Ulm. In addition, the Württemberg State Museum in Stuttgart and the Museum of the University of Tübingen also present Stone Age artefacts from the caves of the Swabian Alb.
The oldest figurative artworks and musical instruments known to mankind were discovered in the Hohle Fels, Geißenklösterle and Sirgenstein caves in the Achtal valley and in the Bockstein, Hohlenstein-Stadel and Vogelherd caves in the Lone valley. In July 2017, UNESCO awarded these six caves and the surrounding landscapes the title of UNESCO World Heritage Site ‘Caves and Ice Age Art of the Swabian Jura’.
To this day, the two valleys of the Ach and Lone rivers remain largely unspoilt and invite you to take a journey back to the last Ice Age on a variety of hiking and cycling trails.
