The Ancients - Lion Man: The First Myth?

Episode Date: July 2, 2023

Discovered in a German cave, days before the Second World War broke out, the Lion Man statue remained an enigma for decades. A figurine that represents a hybrid creature with the body of a human and the head of a lion, the statue is made from mammoth ivory and is estimated to be over 40,000 years old, making it one of the oldest known examples of figurative art. But who carved this detailed figurine, and more importantly - why?In this episode, Tristan welcomes back Palaeolithic Archaeologist John Mcnabb to the podcast, to delve into this small statuette's big history. With the Lion Man considered a significant archaeological find, providing insights into the artistic abilities and symbolic thinking of our ancient ancestors, and delving into mythology from millenia ago - what was the Lion Man statue doing in the depths of a German cave, and what was it protecting it's creator from?Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsely, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code ANCIENTS. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here.For more Ancient's content, subscribe to our Ancient's newsletter here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode, where we're going back deep into the Ice Age,

we're talking about an extraordinary arte extraordinary artifact first discovered in hundreds of fragments in a cave in Germany in the late 1930s, later pieced back together to reveal what looks to be a half-lion, half-human figure. A mythical creature, a creature from a story. It is what some believe to be the first myth or the first mythical creature that we know of from the human record, from our history. It's tens of thousands of years old. Now, there is still quite a lot of speculation around this figure, around Lion Man, but it is an amazing artifact. And to tell its story, I was delighted to get back on the podcast Professor

John McNabb, aka Mac, from the University of Southampton. Now, that name should ring a bell because Mac was our expert for our Homo Erectus episode that we released a few months back. Both Mac and I have a great fascination with this object, so it was wonderful to get him back on the pod to talk through its story. I really do hope you enjoy, and here's Mac. Mac, wonderful to have you back on the podcast, man. Nice to be here. And we're doing it again in person in the same place,

in Southampton University, in this lab. But we're not talking about homoeratis today, homo sapiens, and this extraordinary object here, I mean, lion man. Now, first of all, this isn't your main area of interest. However, this particular object you really love. Yeah. I'm not an expert in any shape or form about modern human archaeology or the Paleolithic art, which is a real specialist area. This is just something I've had a long interest in because the lion man figure absolutely fascinates me.

There's something bewitching about it. And I've always wanted to know more about it even though it's not the kind of archaeology I do. I mean of all prehistoric early modern human homo sapien artifacts to survive this piece it is absolutely stunning. It is, it's beyond stunning actually considering it's something we really don't understand, we can know a little bit about its archaeological context, where it comes from, but what it meant to the makers, how much it was a part of their society, whether it was a religious object or whether it was some other item of social standing.

Was it the possession of it gave prestige to individuals? We really don't know. That's part of the mystery of it as well, part of the the possession of it gave prestige to individuals we we really don't know that's part of the mystery of it as well part of the fascination of it is that it is something you can let your imagination you know run away with and explore which is absolutely great so let's delve into the background of this object almost what's the story of its discovery? Okay, well it comes from a cave site called the Hollenstädel, which is in southern Germany in the Swabian Alps, the Swabian Jura, which is a limestone part of the world, much dissected by rivers with lots of tributaries flowing into the Danube. And in one of the tributaries, the Ach, or the Ach, I don't know how you pronounce it, the cave which the lion man comes from is situated.

It was excavated by Germans just before the beginning of the Second World War and literally within weeks of the war breaking out. I think they stopped digging towards the end of August. And as you know, the Second World War began formally on the 3rd of September. So it was literally on the 3rd of September. So it was literally on the cusp of war. It was found smashed into pieces, possibly as much as a thousand little bits or more, some of them larger, some of them smaller. It was recognised as a statuette at the time, but it was never pieced together. That happened in the late 1960s when somebody came along, not quite rediscovered it, but rediscovered its potential and began to refit it together,

and suddenly began to realise what it was that they had. So let's talk about this. So they've got all of these fragments, they know it's a statuette, they've come back to it. So they've got all of these fragments. They know it's a statuette. They've come back to it. What do they create when they start putting the pieces together? Well, what they create is a figure. It's about 30, 31 centimetres tall. It has two back legs on which it's standing. So it's a bipedal lion. And that's the first thing that's really quite unusual about it, obviously, because, you know, as far as I know, at least, there are no such things as bipedal lions, unless I've missed something completely. So they realised that they had something really quite special as they were going through and rebuilding it. It's not figurative art in the sense that it is depicting something in the real world, which a lot of the art, whether it be cave paintings on the wall or the small little statuettes that

are made, for example, in this part of the world at that time. They tend to be figurative in many ways. But this one was clearly not because it was neither wholly human nor is it wholly a lion either. It's something in the middle. It's a fusion. Archaeologists call them therianthropes, which is part human, part animal. So they really did think, oh, well, we've got something really quite unusual here. The first reconstruction, which we have an example here in Cahoe,

is partially rebuilt, as you can see. It's missing a lot from the right-hand side, the right arm, et cetera, is missing. And there are bits from the back and the inside where again pieces were not able to be reconstructed. The German archaeologists went back to the storehouses where it had been kept and found more bits in a box that had not been identified as part of the statuette and then later on they went back to the site as well and began to excavate they were

able to identify the backfill of the original excavation and lo and behold they found more bits in there and they were able to excavate what was left and there's very very little left and were able to identify the layer from which the lion man is now believed to come and were also able fortunately to date it as well based upon material that was in that layer and the date is somewhere between 35 and 40 41 thousand years in age that's a really interesting discovery and the data on that is quite good because it's part of a very new technique called AMS radiocarbon with something called ultra filtration, which is a way of making sure that the sample you date is really very pure, it's not being contaminated

by older or younger organic material, so you can rely on the date. It was a really interesting date because it's quite early. We used to believe that the first modern humans into Western and Central Europe carried a culture with them called the Aurignacian. Now we know that's not quite true, but the Aurignacian begins around about 40, 41,000 years ago. So this at that date is right at the cusp

of where this Aurignacian is beginning to appear in Central and Western Europe in the archeological record. So it means that when these people arrived, more than likely, they arrived with a full suite of abilities that you and I would expect modern humans to have. Symbolism, metaphor, an understanding of the abstract. You know, there's nothing more abstract than something which is part human and part lion. So, you know, it shows that they're arriving there with the full behavioural package, if you like, of what modern humans would have and we would expect them to have.

And also in regards to the environment that these modern humans are living in, say some 40,000 years ago. And actually this depicts a lion and we'll go through some of the key details of the latest version of it in a second. But lions in general, now we think of lions living in Africa, but back then lions, they would have been sites, common sites in this area of Europe. Yeah. From the depictions that you get on cave walls, particularly in France, the amazing Chauvet cave, for example, we know that these are a species of lion which is now extinct. It's the cave lion. And we believe, for example, males did not have a mane in the same way that the modern African lion does. All of the depictions show males and females as having no manes at all, which is kind of significant really, therefore, because this one, the statuette, doesn't have a mane either. So it's an idea of part cave lion and part human. The period of time in which we find this, it's a slightly warmer period.

We're in the Ice Age, we're in the very last Ice Age, and it's gradually getting colder over time until it gets to about 20, 22 thousand years ago and then it'll be really the coldest period of that last Ice Age. But the period of time we find this in is a'r blip ychydig yn fwy mwy mwy. Maen nhw'n ei alw fel stage 3 o isotopau marinau. Mae'r climate yn cofnodi ychydig, nid i ddiweddau heddiw ond yn unigol, ychydig yn fwy mwy mwy na'i bod yn y blaen ac yn fwy mwy mwy na'i fod yn y blaen. Byddwch yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall eich bod yn deall e with a fairly open and fairly bleak landscape. The Swabian Dura would have open areas of tundra, small shrubby plants. You probably wouldn't have a great many trees. The ones that you did would be fairly dwarfed and just kind of struggling to hang on in there. The animals you would see therefore on the

open plains would be a classic tundra step kind of animal. So you'd have mammoth, you'd have your big carnivores, you'd have cave bear, you'd also have horse, reindeer, and we even find smaller animals like foxes, for example, are quite important. And apparently, although I've never seen a picture of this, there's a small statuette of a hedgehog as well. But I've never seen a picture of this there's a small statuette of a hedgehog as well but I've never seen a picture of it so I can't I couldn't actually confirm that wow I mean that's still really that's still a great statement to include in this podcast I'm glad you mentioned it but you also did well meat eaters as well apart from the big herbivores well I mean absolutely I mean you did mention one of those big herbivores just then the mammoth the mammoth yeah what is the link

between mammoths and this particular object we've got in front of us? Well, that's a really good question. That's probably where you'd need a paleolithic art expert properly. They are clearly important in the mindset of these people because they make statuettes of both of them, of mammoths and of normal lions as well, normal cave lions, not just the therianthropes. They were clearly important. Are they symbols of power? Were they part of a landscape in which people identified with creatures of strength, of carnivores? Some scholars have talked about, you know, the mammoths are the animal of the day, the lion are the carnivores, the animals of the night. Do you have a difference in that, you know, that sort of playoff? We don't really know other than there is clearly some significance to them. And some scholars have

talked about, in just the same way as Australian Aboriginal people have this amazing landscape, they don't look at hills and valleys and trees. They look at songs and stories and ancestors and things like that. Perhaps the lion, perhaps the mammoth and some of the other things that they make were part of something like that. And they observed and experienced their world in different ways. And am I right in assuming that lion man, this statuette, once again, that link with the mammoth, it's carved from a mammoth tusk? Yes. Yeah. It's carved from probably the upper end of the tusk as well. So we're coming towards the tip.

If you imagine mammoth tusks, unlike African elephants today, they're big and they curve round back up towards the head. So it's from the sort of growth area of where the tip of the tusk would be. And the carver's been quite clever because the two legs, which are separated and set apart, actually the outer ivory part where the pulp cavity would have come in. So rather than carve all the way through solid ivory, the carver's quite cleverly used the pulp cavity to define the legs and then just carve the outside and then the rest of the body and the head are part of the tip or getting on towards the tip of the tusk itself

there's a modern experiment there was several experimenters but there's a guy called i think his name is wolf hein or hein which is an excellent name he's an experimental archaeologist and he's done a lot of work trying to replicate many of these statuettes. And he reckoned on doing a replica on modern African elephant ivory, it could have taken anywhere up to 360 hours to actually make. And that's him as a modern guy setting time aside each day. We can't assume that the maker had that kind of time. day. We can't assume that the maker had that kind of time. So this could be a project that maybe lasts anything up to half a year, done piecemeal every now and again. Do you think they would have been using some sort of very advanced hand axe by that time?

No, almost certainly the tools of the Aurignacian culture, which is what this belongs to, would have been things like blades, end scrapers, which are blades where the end has been blunted by a little bit of retouch. It's strong and it will gouge, but it won't cut. Also something called a burin, which is a small blade, which has had a sliver taken off down the long edge and creates a very, very sharp right angle point, which you can then use for carving bone, antler, ivory,

anything like that, wood. And we think they're carving bone, antler, ivory, anything like that, wood. And we think they're making bone and antler tools using these burins and these small scrapers and blades and things like that. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb. And on not just the Tudors from History Hit, my guests and I run through the full gamut of human emotion and experience. From the heartbreak of the Virgin Queen. Elizabeth not being able to marry arguably the only man in the world she ever really wanted to marry, may have for that reason not married anyone else.

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Subscribe now to Not Just The Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. So we've got two replicas of Lion Man in front of us. One from the original putting back together and then the next one when they came back and they found there's more pieces and then they've added those extra fragments. So is this the Lion Man, the most complete version of Lion Man that we have today? Yes, it is. So talk us through some of the details of it, from top to bottom, bottom to top. What features have we got of the Lineman?

Well, there's a curious difference between the two sides. For example, the left-hand side seems much better finished. It's more polished, it's smoother, the definition is greater. The right-hand side seems a little rougher. It's not as well polished, it's not as well smooth, and it looks like it's still being worked on. So maybe it actually wasn't finished in that sense. There's been a long argument about whether it was male or female. I think most scholars now agree that it's probably male, though I think it's still open to interpretation. And that's because down in the pubic area, you've got this triangle coming down, and that's thought to be more indicative of male than female. But to be honest, I think you pay your money and take

your choice on that one. There's a dot there, which is supposedly the navel, whether it's true or not. Some people have argued that it's a shaman in a suit wearing a mask or something like that. And I think that's certainly possible. I don't buy into that one myself. There's too much of the lion and the fusion and the human in there for it to be what would effectively be kind of an Aurignacian onesie more than anything else. There's been suggestions that it may be a bear by very experienced art experts. Again, I don't really buy that. I do understand some of the arguments about it standing more like a bear, the horn shoes at the back are more bear-like, and the ears don't look all that much like the ears of a lion or the cave lion depictions anyway, which tend to be a little bit more pointed.

I think the stance is probably that's because it's the curvature of the tusk more than anything. But for me, when you look at that, I don't see that as a bear. I see that as a lion. Bears' muzzles are narrower anyway. So for me, that one doesn't work. But as I said, it's up to your audience to make their own minds up really on what they think. For me, that one doesn't work. But as I said, it's up to your audience to make their own minds up really on what they think. One of the other things is that it was found in the back of the Holenstädel cave, right at the very back, up against the wall. It's a very dark, very small enclosed chamber. There's no natural daylight penetrating that far. It was found, as I said, in pieces, possibly as much as a thousand, up to perhaps. That means it was probably broken. I think the consensus is by the weight of the sediments building up on top of it over time.

So it was placed there, possibly deliberately, as a whole creature. There are very few stone tools or other cultural artifacts associated with it, where it was from. artifacts associated with it, where it was from. But there was, well, a necklace or some kind of collection of carnivore teeth, which had been pierced in order to suspend them and wear them as a bracelet, perhaps, or some kind of a necklace or something like that. So it was found with other objects of a personal nature that would perhaps be significant as well and they were close enough to be probably part of the same period as well. So those other things may have been also placed there deliberately. And these other objects are really interesting in their own right aren't they? But it does feel like this statuette was almost the main piece that was put right at the end.

Yeah I think we have to be quite careful when we sort of go down that line of argument yes it is certainly different most of the statuettes from the four main caves in this big cave complex settled on the two tributaries are about five six centimeters or something you know this one at 31 just a little bit over 31 centimeters is, it's clearly something different. Yes. But again, you've got to be kind of fairly careful about where you're going to go. What does it actually mean? How special is it? It may have been carved by somebody who never intended it to be seen by anybody else. So it wasn't something for public display. It may have been some private ritual or engagement with whatever. Fair enough. You're the expert. I'm the idiot, so I'm allowed to answer questions like that. I'm not the expert on this stuff.

It's just my opinion. Well, I mean, one other key thing on the details that I found so fascinating, and you mentioned it earlier, but it is when you look at the head, isn't it? Because you can see eye holes, the nose, almost the mouth. And what I find fascinating is you have the little ears too. Someone has evidently, the carver of this, just those details of the face, so they had it really emphasised the time and effort this person or these people put into creating this object.

And it also shows you these animals were an important part of their lives in some way because they're absorbing the detail of them in a very, very precise and very detailed way. So yes, they are important in that sense, the detail. There's even, if you look on the completed version, on the left arm, the upper arm, there's scarification. Yes. Now that is really interesting. Is that a reflection of something that was part of the human world? Is it something that they did themselves?

Tattooing, for example, is very ancient. And scarification as well may be a part of that. If you look at a lot of the other art pieces, whether they be the Venus figurines from this period and this area, whether it be the small mammoths or something like that, they also have small amounts of scarring on them. And even little mammoths and things have scarring on them. So you've got a little mammoth right in the palm of your hand there. It's easy to pick up between two fingers. Oh, yeah. You could carry this around with you.

You could hide this in clothing. Maybe it was a totem animal and it was, you know, you only brought it out with your group who are part of your totem group. This is really very different. You can't hide 31 centimetcm tall statuette. So it brings on, you know, is it private or is it something that was more public? So just quickly before we go on to the purpose, what we think the whole purpose of Lion Man was, talk to me a bit more about these other artefacts at a date of similar time that are found in different caves.

What sorts of artefacts are they? Well, they are mixtures of human and human representation, though there are very few of those, and then other animals. Here in my hand I have a small head of a lion. The rest of it's been broken off. These were a common motif. Lions were very important in some way to them. They appear in the statuettes, the mammoths, as we've already talked about. But also other things, you know, I mentioned the hedgehog. This is a small bird, possibly in flight. And again, these are all, you know, five to six centimetres or smaller. The delicacy of carving something like that is really quite impressive. And the delicacy of

carving something like this, the small mammoth is really, again, very, quite impressive. And the delicacy of carving something like this, the small mammoth, is really, again, very, very impressive. So there evidently is a desire by these people to carve animals, nature, things that they see around them. And then you get the lion man, which is almost a blend of the two with this bipedal lion, which is really strange. So what, therefore, do we think is the purpose is the reason behind the creating of a bipedal lion there are lots of theories my own personal take on this is that it's part of a story and it's a story that they told around the firelight you know in the caves at night it's part of a legend or a myth and we are as a species a storytelling species We define ourselves by our stories. We root ourselves into history through our origin stories very often the origin myths that we create

I think this was part of a story. It's an insight into the way they thought about their world But what the detail of that insight is is very difficult. There's another little insight here I've got a small statuette from from the whole of that insight is, is very difficult. There's another little insight. Here I've got a small statuette from the whole of Fels, which is a Venus figurine. It's a female with the classic features of the breasts are enlarged, the buttocks are enlarged, the vulva's been enlarged, but there's no head. There's a hook for suspension. You can carry it around with you as a necklace or something. And very often with these Venus figurines, if they have a head, they don't have a face. Or they don't have a head at all.

And there's something there, there's an insight, again, into the way they thought about themselves in that world of theirs. In that world of lions and of mammoths and of carnivores and cave bears and themselves, and the world of myth and reality crashing together in things like the lion man. There's another one as well from another one of the caves, actually from the small one where the headless Venus figurine came from. But that's a small lion man. and it's probably later on as well it's not as early as the big one so it's a story that has durability in both time and space so that is interesting so this is not the only example of a therianthropeid that dates in the same time so actually as you say so this figure could have been a well-known figure between various communities who lived in that area of the world. That in itself is really extraordinary to know.

The story could have been common to all. And so can we therefore imagine statuettes like this, the people who lived there some 40,000 years ago, gathered around a fire and the statuettes being passed around? And the story, these were how these stories were told over fires. And that's in a sense is how you build your society, isn't it? It's the glue that holds you together. So if you go off on a hunting trip for the whole of the summer and then you come back or something, you've still got that commonality or people from maybe another group marrying into your group. You know, you've got that common understanding because some

of the stories that you hold together will bind you as part of a bigger similarity, if you like. So why do we think a statuette of this figure that may well have been a mythological figure for these people, why potentially might it have been deposited right at the back of this cave? I know, that's a really interesting question and I get asked that by the students and my answer is have you seen Stranger Things on Netflix? What's beyond the cave wall? Was this put there to prevent what's beyond the cave wall coming into our world? Before we realised that it was broken probably from sediment pressure there was a strong theory that it'd been broken deliberately and maybe that had been as part of a ritual for destroying its power,

as it were, to prevent something like that coming through from the other world. We don't know, but that positioning is really significant in some way or other. It could potentially be a guardian. I love that idea, the words that you mentioned there, the other side of the cave wall, because it makes us think of mythology so much earlier than, let's say, the Greek myths or the Norse myths that we commonly perceive when we talk about mythology. 39,000, 40,000 years ago to think that maybe these people believed in this world beyond the cave and was almost trying to protect from those evil spirits who wore them away. It could well be that. A lot of cave art is found in the deepest and the darkest parts, which are very difficult to get to. You're experiencing, you're crawling on your hands and knees sometimes through very narrow passages. You've got the flickering light of an oil lamp, you know, fat or something and just a wick in it so you can't see very much there's

all sorts of noises in caves out in the dark there drip drip drip or you know something happening echoes from elsewhere coming through so it's a lively vibrant it's an immensely sensual world out there but it's different from the world that you know it's not the light it's not outside there's something else in there now these are modern humans who created lion man and still so many mysteries about surrounding this object however modern humans they've got the cognitive ability to think of myths to think of other worlds these great origin stories obviously your main focus is on homo erectus which lived more than a million years before and deeper well not well lasted lived more than a million years before and lasted for more than a million years, didn't it?

Well, yes. So the Schirlian culture of Homo erectus and Homo heidelbergensis is a million and a half or more. And the oldest Homo erectus we've got is about, well, it's now over two million. Well, it therefore begs the question, do you think that this cognitive ability, this cognitive thinking, to create other worlds, do you think that it might have been able to stretch back as far as another human species like Homo erectus? Or do you think that only really emerges with modern humans, with Homo sapiens? That's a really hard question. There are one or two art objects which are supposedly associated with hand axes of the heidelberg hand axes is that an indication that there was a sort of a like nascent ability that it was just beginning there

if so it takes a very very long time to take off now we know for example neanderthals are now understood to have made abstract art we know that that they did body decoration. We know that they wore things which are very colorful, feathers, eagles, talons, and things like that. So there was a sense of body decoration and personality amongst the older species. The thing with this upper Paleolithic stuff in the Aurignacian is that it just takes off at a huge scale. And it's the scale of difference, whether it's some package of genes that suddenly switches on, or some cultural complexity that finally kind of leads to ideas like this, which emerge as a property from it. Whether it's a slow and gradual thing, we just haven't found all the bits yet. I think it's very, very hard to say one way or the other.

More discoveries need to be made. Absolutely. Do you think that we will have future discoveries, maybe similar to Lion Man, which give more hints as to how back maybe this ability to conjure up mythological places, mythological beings and represent them in art, that those discoveries will come to light in the future? Oh yeah, I don't doubt it. I think the focus will also have to move to Africa, where the human species, Homo sapiens, has been around for a long time.

So we're talking about, you know, say, 35,000, 40,000 years ago here. The oldest modern humans we have, or at least even all, you know, you could say begin to look like modern humans, about 300,000. We see our own proper shape of skull with a rounded back of the skull at around 200,000 and 160,000. So there's a long period of time when we as modern humans with that brain size are there, but we're not making art. Finding what counts as art to those people, if it's there, and then identifying it, will be a major focus of people who look for the answers to those kind of questions. Why is the Lion Man statuette, this incredible piece of prehistoric art, just exactly, why is it so significant, so important?

Because it's a mystery. It's a big question mark. And you know what humans are like. The minute there's a question mark, it's, oh, what the hell was that? I need to know. I need to know. I think it's mystery will always catch people. People like me who are not really part of the archeology that this is a part of, and yet can't put it down. I own a copy of this. It was my 60th birthday from my wife. And it's one of the best presents I've ever had. It sits in my study and I talk to it when I need inspiration, which is quite often. German archaeologists, when they put it together to start with, they talked about the smile of the lion man. And it does look a little bit as if it is smiling. It does. So the question is, what does it know that you don't? Interesting. Is it a wise figurine almost?

Who knows? Maybe. And I guess it's also, and it is always possibly, we don't know. That almost seems to always be part of our discussions isn't it we don't know yeah yeah but looking at that replica what we know so far we are potentially looking at the first myth that we know of in human history possibly i tell the students it's the oldest science fiction story that we have yet found they always write that bit down love it mac this has been absolutely brilliant and it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast my pleasure well there you go there was professor john mcnabb aka mac returning to the podcast to talk through the story of this incredible artifact that is lion man i hope

you enjoyed the episode now last things for me you know what i'm going to say but if you have been enjoying the ancients and you want to help us out well you know what you can do you can leave us a lovely rating on apple podcasts on spotify wherever you get your podcast from it really helps us as we continue to grow the podcast and continue our infinite mission to share these amazing stories from our distant past with you and with as many people as possible. Long may that continue. But that's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode.