The research was carried out by an international team from the University of York, the University of Stavanger and the National Museum of the History of Ukraine, with collaborators from Germany, supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action grant. Using high-resolution microscopic analysis and three-dimensional digital modelling, the researchers recorded the surfaces of eighteen figurines in extraordinary detail. That level of documentation would have been difficult under any circumstances, but it became urgent because access to the physical artefacts in Kyiv has been severely limited by the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war. Digital scanning, undertaken as part of preservation efforts led by the Ukrainian NGO Archaїc, ensured that the objects could continue to be studied even while the war threatens the country’s cultural heritage.

The key discovery concerns two distinctive features of mammoth ivory that are invisible to the casual observer unless the surface has been carefully prepared: Schreger lines and Owen lines. Schreger lines are the shimmering, intersecting arcs that appear when elephantid ivory is cut in cross-section, produced by the spiralling arrangement of dentine tubules within the tusk. Owen lines, meanwhile, mark growth increments laid down as the animal matured, recording the rhythm of the mammoth’s life in stacked layers of mineralised tissue. Because a mammoth tusk is essentially an enormously elongated upper incisor, its material properties vary dramatically across the curve: dentine density, fibre orientation and the visibility of internal structure all change from the tip to the pulp cavity.

What the microscopic analysis showed is that the Mizyn carvers did not treat ivory as a passive blank canvas. Instead, they appear to have observed how these natural lines emerged as they shaped the material, and then deliberately reinforced, extended and organised them into the dense geometric ornamentation that distinguishes the Mizyn figurines. Rather than erasing the traces of the tusk, the engravers made the tusk’s biography visible, folding the animal’s growth history into the figure’s decorated skin. The result is that each figurine, carved from a different section of a different tusk, carries a unique internal topography that shaped its finished appearance.

Dr Aimée Little, of the University of York’s Department of Archaeology and Director of the Centre of Artefacts and Materials Analysis, described the discovery as an extraordinary window into how Palaeolithic peoples perceived and engaged with their material world. 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, she said, a genuine breakthrough in understanding prehistoric art and material culture. The observation implies that Ice Age aesthetics were not purely symbolic inventions imposed from outside, but collaborative outcomes between maker and material.

The Mizyn figurines belong to a distinctive episode in the deep history of European art. Figurine-making flourished across the continent before the Last Glacial Maximum, the coldest peak of the last Ice Age, when generations of sculptors produced the well-known female forms of sites in France, Germany, Austria and beyond. The new analysis highlights a striking gap of roughly 1,000 to 3,000 years in the creation of human figurines across Europe, coinciding with that glacial peak, when much of the continent’s population retreated into southern refugia and long-distance social networks contracted. When figurine-making re-emerged around 18,000 years ago, it began earlier in Eastern Europe than in the West, and it looked different.

Dr Andrew Needham, also of the University of York’s Department of Archaeology, explained that while later Western European styles likewise featured abstracted female forms, none of them reproduced the internal tusk patterns seen at Mizyn. This, he noted, indicates that Ice Age artists in Eastern Europe forged their own independent artistic path rather than simply following trends transmitted from Western Europe. The finding challenges a long-standing assumption, articulated by Dr Dmytro Kiosak of the Leibniz Centre for Archaeology, that ancient art evolved in a straight line from basic to complex forms. Instead, the eastern tradition developed its own sophisticated technical logic rooted in the material properties of ivory, suggesting that the spread of Palaeolithic art was not a one-way diffusion of style from a handful of centres but a patchwork of local innovations.

The technical achievement implied by the figurines is considerable. To exploit Schreger and Owen lines, a carver must understand how ivory behaves when scraped, polished and engraved, and must anticipate which internal structures will become visible as material is removed from particular parts of the tusk. The Mizyn engravings, with their rhythmic zigzags, chevrons and meandering bands, appear to have been composed so that the decorative scheme harmonised with the underlying grain rather than fighting it. That kind of material literacy implies close observation, accumulated craft knowledge passed between generations, and an aesthetic sensibility that valued the dialogue between natural pattern and human design. In effect, the carvers were doing a form of applied anatomy of the tusk, turning growth biology into ornament.

Venus figurines have long been the subject of intense debate, with many theories proposed regarding their spiritual or ritualistic purpose, from fertility symbols to teaching aids, identity markers or objects of exchange. The new study does not resolve those questions, but it demonstrates the crucial elements of the artistry involved, showing that whatever the figurines meant to their makers, their appearance was inseparable from the medium. The mammoth, the largest animal of the Ice Age steppe, was present not only as raw material but as an organising principle of the artwork itself, its life history inscribed in the patterns that still cover the figures today.

The digital recording of the Mizyn collection also opens a path for future scholarship that is not hostage to war, politics or fragile museum storage. Simon Radchenko, a researcher at the Archaeological Museum of the University of Stavanger, said the team is optimistic that future digital research will shed more light on the emergence and development of artistic expression in Europe, revealing an even more complex and intriguing picture than the one currently known. Oleksandr Naumenko, a researcher at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine, added that projects like this not only deepen understanding of the past but also create new opportunities for research, and that at a time when war continues to threaten Ukraine’s cultural heritage, creating high-quality digital records of artefacts is a crucial step in preserving them. As the models are re-examined, the meandering lines of the Mizyn figurines may yet yield further secrets about the minds of the people who, eighteen millennia ago, looked into a mammoth tusk and saw art waiting to be released.

Subject of Research: Analysis of 18,000-year-old mammoth-ivory Venus figurines from Mizyn, Ukraine, showing Ice Age carvers incorporated natural tusk growth patterns into their engravings.

Article Title: Ice Age carvers used mammoth tusk patterns to create unique art, study finds

Article References: Ice Age carvers used mammoth tusk patterns to create unique art, study finds. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: Ice Age art, Venus figurines, mammoth ivory, Schreger lines, Owen lines, Mizyn, Ukraine, Palaeolithic archaeology, Last Glacial Maximum, Heritage Science, 3D digital modelling, prehistoric engraving

Mammoth ivory is not simply an ancient analogue of elephant tusk used as a passive raw material. It is a biological composite with a highly ordered internal architecture. A tusk grows from the pulp cavity outward, depositing concentric layers of dentine marked by fine incremental lines, and is sheathed in an outer rind of cementum. In cross-section the material reveals radial features known as Schreger lines, the angle of which differs between the outer and inner zones of the tusk, while in longitudinal section the growth layers run in directions dictated by the natural curvature of the tusk. Any craftsperson who worked ivory repeatedly over a lifetime would have encountered these structures: the split that follows a growth layer, the fibrous pull of the dentine, the hard, dense cementum shell that behaves differently from the interior. The new analysis suggests that the Mizyn carvers did not treat such features as obstacles but as affordances, working with the grain of the material so that the natural zoning of the tusk became part of the design itself.

The Mizyn assemblage, excavated from a well-preserved Upper Palaeolithic dwelling complex, includes several small figurines carved from mammoth ivory, most famously a group of female statuettes interpreted by many archaeologists as representations of the female form, together with decorated objects that carry dense networks of meandering lines, chevrons and bands. These ornaments have long been discussed in the archaeological literature as some of the earliest examples of complex geometric design in Europe, and competing explanations have been offered for their meaning, from calendrical notations and symbolic counting systems to purely aesthetic or social functions. The new study reframes the question by directing attention away from iconography alone and toward the interaction between carver and material, asking what the ivory itself contributed to the finished forms.

The central claim of the research is that specific anatomical zones of the tusk map onto specific elements of the figurines. The outer cementum layer, which is thin, hard and texturally distinct, is proposed to correspond to the banded and ribbed elements of the decoration, so that the carver deliberately exposed or accentuated the natural surface zone rather than removing it. The underlying dentine, with its layered and fibrous character, is linked to the smoothly modelled volumes of the figurine bodies, where the material could be shaped along its growth lines with less risk of splitting. Where the pulp cavity once lay, the carving in some cases produced hollows or depressions that were then incorporated into the design. In this reading, the sinuous ornament that covers the Mizyn figurines echoes the very layering of the tusk from which they were made, a formal echo produced by following the internal architecture rather than fighting it.

From a technical standpoint, the argument rests on the correspondence between the directional properties of ivory and the orientation of the carved features. Ivory splits predictably along and between growth layers, and it behaves differently in tangential and radial planes, so a carver who wished to avoid fracture would align cutting directions with the natural structure of the material. The study’s authors point out that the recurring placement of parallel line groups and banded ornament on the figurines is consistent with the exposure of natural layering planes, and that the overall silhouettes of several pieces can be understood as the result of detaching suitable blanks from particular zones of the tusk. The curvature of a mammoth tusk, which is strongest near the pulp cavity and gentler toward the outer wall, imposes its own geometry on any elongated object cut from it, and the figurines appear to reflect that imposed geometry in their profiles and proportions.

This material-driven interpretation has significant implications for how archaeologists read Upper Palaeolithic art more broadly. If the ornament and form of the Mizyn figurines arose in part from the structure of the raw material, then the designs should not be decoded as if they were arbitrary symbols written onto a neutral surface. Instead, they represent a dialogue between maker and material, in which the carver’s knowledge of tusk anatomy, accumulated through generations of working ivory for tools, ornaments and architecture, shaped what was visually possible and meaningful. The famous meander patterns of Mizyn, sometimes compared to painted decoration on later ceramics, may in this light be understood as design conventions that emerged from the layered appearance of ivory itself, then standardised and repeated across multiple objects because the structure of the material invited that particular visual language.

The claim also speaks to a long-standing debate about the origins of representation. Traditional accounts of Palaeolithic figurines emphasise either naturalistic imitation of the human body or symbolic abstraction, treating the choice of material as secondary. The Mizyn study belongs to a growing body of work that places the material at the centre of the creative process, a perspective sometimes described as material engagement. On this view, the properties of ivory did not merely constrain the carvers; they actively suggested forms. The natural zones of the tusk offered a ready-made differentiation of surface and interior, hard and soft, outer and inner, which the figurines appear to exploit in rendering contrast between the decorated exterior of a body and its smooth volumes. The result, the authors argue, is an art style co-authored by the biology of the mammoth and the skill of the human hand.

The research also carries implications for the study of mammoth ivory exploitation in the East European Plain, where sites such as Mizyn are famous above all for their monumental architecture built from deliberately arranged mammoth bones and skulls. Understanding how the internal structure of ivory guided the design of small carvings adds a fine-grained dimension to what is already known about how intensively these communities engaged with mammoth remains. The same anatomical knowledge that allowed a carver to predict how a tusk would split for a projectile point or an ornament blank also governed the production of figurines, suggesting a unified technological system in which subsistence technology and symbolic production shared a single body of craft expertise. In that sense, the figurines are documents not only of Ice Age belief or aesthetics but of a sophisticated practical understanding of a difficult and highly valued raw material.

For the wider public, the study offers a striking image: an Ice Age artist in Ukraine holding a fragment of mammoth tusk, reading its layered interior the way a carpenter reads the grain of wood, and finding within that ancient biological structure the lines, bands and forms that would become one of the signature styles of the European Upper Palaeolithic. If the authors are correct, the celebrated figurines of Mizyn are, in a very literal sense, portraits of the material from which they were made, and the mammoth that grew the tusk deserves to be counted among the anonymous collaborators who shaped the earliest art of the region.

Subject of Research: The influence of mammoth ivory's internal structure on the design of Upper Palaeolithic figurines at Mizyn, Ukraine.

Article Title: Internal structure of Mammoth ivory inspired the design of Mizyn (Ukraine) Upper Palaeolithic figurines

Article References: Radchenko, S., Naumenko, O., Kiosak, D., Mansrud, A., Needham, A., & Little, A. (2026). Internal structure of Mammoth ivory inspired the design of Mizyn (Ukraine) Upper Palaeolithic figurines. npj Heritage Science. https://doi.org/10.1038/s40494-026-02988-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s40494-026-02988-5

Keywords: Mizyn, Mezin, mammoth ivory, Upper Palaeolithic, figurines, portable art, Ukraine, tusk structure, cementum, dentine, Ice Age art, material engagement