All 18 Ice Age figurines from one Ukrainian site follow the grain of the tusk

Eighteen small carvings from one campsite in northern Ukraine share a trait that a 2026 digital analysis has now documented: each figure’s long axis runs along the long axis of the mammoth ivory it was cut from. A paper in npj Heritage Science states it without exception, writing that the morphometric axis of all 18 anthropomorphic figurines from Mizyn aligns with the longitudinal axis of the mammoth ivory core.

The team, led by Simon Radchenko of the University of Stavanger, dates the figures to between 18,800 and 17,400 years ago. Their reading is that the carvers did not simply pick up a piece of tusk and cut; they took account of its internal structure first, a conclusion built on three-dimensional models of every figure in the assemblage.

Eighteen figures, two finds, one axis

The assemblage is a known one. Eleven of the figurines came out of the ground in excavations in 1908 and 1909, and seven turned up about four years later, according to the Sci.News account of the paper. All eighteen were digitally analysed, which let the team test a question that handling the objects could not answer: how the shape of each figure sits inside the shape of the tusk.

The paper, “Internal structure of Mammoth ivory inspired the design of Mizyn (Ukraine) Upper Palaeolithic figurines”, appeared on September 11, 2026. Its authors are Radchenko, Oleksandr Naumenko of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in Kyiv, Dmytro Kiosak of the Leibniz Centre for Archaeology in Mainz, Anja Mansrud of Stavanger, and Andy Needham and Aimée Little of the University of York.

Schreger lines, Owen’s lines and the carved patterns

Ivory is not a uniform material. A tusk carries natural patterns in cross-section known as Schreger lines, and finer growth rings called Owen’s lines. The abstract states that Palaeolithic artists used these natural patterns “to inform the geometric compositions engraved on many of the figurines.” Zigzag ornaments on several figures resemble Schreger lines, while meanders and parallel lines on others echo Owen’s lines. The abstract says “many”, not all, for the engraved patterns, so the sweeping claim in the paper is about the orientation of the figures, and the engraving link is a statement about a subset.

To get there the team built photogrammetric 3D models and examined the surfaces under a digital microscope, measuring 97 engravings in total.

Alignment with the core axis is the quieter half of the result, and the sturdier one. A carver working a tusk blank has a choice of direction. Cutting along the core keeps the figure inside the tusk’s structure; cutting across it fights the structure. All 18 figures from Mizyn take the first option, which is why the paper can state the alignment as a rule for the whole assemblage rather than as a tendency, and why the 11 figures from the 1908-09 digs and the 7 found about four years later fall under the same sentence. The sources read for this account do not give a separate measurement for each figure, so the per-figure angles remain in the paper’s figures and tables rather than in any summary.

York’s reading of the Mizyn carvings

The University of York release, dated September 16, 2026, carries the interpretation. Aimée Little of York calls it “an extraordinary window into how Palaeolithic peoples perceived and engaged with their material world.” Andy Needham of York says that when figurine-making re-emerged around 18,000 years ago, it began earlier in Eastern Europe than in the West. Dmytro Kiosak of the Leibniz Centre says the findings challenge the long-held assumption that ancient art simply evolved in a straight line from basic to complex forms.

The paper itself calls the Mizyn figurines “an independent stylistic phenomenon in the chronology of art-style development during the Palaeolithic period,” and ranks them among the earliest anthropomorphic European images after the Last Glacial Maximum. Good News Network’s account of the York release adds that Eastern European artists produced such work 1,000 to 3,000 years before comparable Western European figurines appeared.

The work was done digitally partly because physical access is limited by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, a point the York release makes about the scanning approach, with support from the Ukrainian heritage NGO Archaïc.

The dating itself is worth a caution. The National Museum of the History of Ukraine’s online catalogue entry for the Mizyn figurines gives an age of about 15,000 years before present, and the museum notes it is temporarily closed. The 18,800 to 17,400 year range belongs to the 2026 paper, and the gap between the two numbers is the part of the Mizyn story the carvings themselves cannot settle. Both ranges place the figures in the Upper Palaeolithic, but only one of them puts the carvings among the earliest anthropomorphic images in Europe after the Last Glacial Maximum.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.