The pieces of the sculpture were discovered by a French engineer, Peccadeau de l’Isle, in 1866 while he was trying to find evidence of early man on the banks of the
River Aveyron, although contemporary accounts attributed the find to Victor Brun, a local antiquarian. At the time, de l'Isle was employed in the construction of a railway line from
Montauban to
Rodez, and while digging for
artefacts in his spare time he found some
prehistoric flint tools and several examples of late
Ice Age prehistoric art The finds took the name of the rock shelter : "abri Montastruc" (Montastruc rock shelter). The hill was estimated to be high, and the artefacts were found beneath an overhang that extended for about along the river and enclosed an area of 298 square yards (249 m2). De l'Isle had to dig through of material to get to the level where the artefacts were found. At this time it was thought that there were two separate carvings of reindeer as it was not obvious that the two pieces fitted together. De l'Isle wrote a paper on his discovery, and his finds were exhibited in 1867 at the
Exposition Universelle in
Paris. People were intrigued to see the sophistication of his finds and this sculpture in particular. The carvings were remarkable in that they illustrate
reindeer, which no longer live in France. Dating was possible as the two reindeer were carved in the ivory of an extinct animal. This dated the find as ancient and required a re-evaluation of the life of humans in the late Ice Age. In fact it was only the work of
Henry Christy and
Edouard Lartet that had recently persuaded informed opinion that mankind had lived during the ice age and coexisted with mammoths. The reindeer sculptures were again exhibited in 1884 in Toulouse, when it is speculated that a French buyer might have been found, but they were eventually procured by the British Museum in 1887. De l'Isle initially offered his finds to the British Museum for the large sum of 150,000 francs, which would have a value in excess of half a million pounds in 2010. The offer was considered much too high and was not accepted by
Augustus Franks, an enthusiastic antiquarian who was in charge of the north European collection at that time. Franks had been known to fund the museum's acquisitions himself, and he sent
Charles Hercules Read to negotiate with de l'Isle. Read successfully managed to bring the price down to £500 (about £30,000 today). The purchase was funded by the Christy Fund, a £5,000 bequest by
Henry Christy who had also left his own collections to the museum. , also in France It was not until 1904 when
Abbé Breuil saw the sculptures whilst visiting the British Museum that he realised that the two pieces fitted together, and were in fact two parts of a single sculpture. The sculpture is kept in a controlled atmosphere and is rarely moved. The ivory is now very fragile and it is feared that it could "turn to dust" if it were treated roughly. Unlike the mammoth spear thrower, the reindeer sculpture has no practical purpose, and is considered to be the oldest piece of art in any British museum. ==Age==