The British Museum's exhibition of Ice Age Art includes some astonishing sculptures from 10-20,000 years ago.
British Museim 2013 exhibition
Many functional objects like spear throwers and antler batons for preparing flints were richly decorated.
BBC World Strand on the exhibition is here:
Ice Age Art
Details of the exhibition which runs to 26th May here:
British Museum
Aurochs, Bear, Lynx, Elk
This cave painting from Lascaux gives a hint of what an Aurochs looked like. Ancient cattle, 2 metres high at the shoulder, Aurochs are thought to have died out in Britain around 1000 BC . European Aurochs lived on to 1627 in Poland.
European Brown Bear
Brown bears lived on through Roman times. Bears are thought to have disappeared from Britain before Anglo Saxon times. Medieval performing bears were imported from Europe.
Lynx
Thought to have died out around the Ice Age, new discoveries reveal that lynxes survived in Britain up to 700AD.
Lynx survival
Elk
Elk may have survived the end of the Ice Age and persisted in Britain into the Bronze Age, about 1500 BC
Living memory
Neolithic farmers built longhouses which may have been used for ceremonies as well as providing shelter. Initial Neolithic farming settlements in Poland and Germany belonged to the LinearBandKeramic: LBK culture recognised by the linear incised kitchen pottery.
Early farming and LBK pottery spread from the Danube to the Elbe and Rhine over many decades between 5500 and 4500BC. Later Neolithic farmers must have had a sense of history when they built their longhouses directly over previous houses or buried a child in the foundation of the 'founder's' longhouse which had been left occupied for centuries or even a thousand years in some cases.
More detailed research from Joanna Pyzel, Ph D, Early Neolithic Archaeologist, here:
Early Neolithic longhouses
