The sculpture was made in what is now modern-day France by an unknown sculptor who carved the artwork from the tip of a mammoth tusk.

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[1] in a rock shelter of Bruniquel.

[4] 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.

[5] 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.

[1] 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.

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.

That fixes the co-existence of reindeer, mammoths and man at a time that the area had a climate similar to that of Siberia today.

[6] Later, this period became known as Magdalenian, named after a French cave, Abri de la Madeleine, where similar art to the Swimming Reindeer were found.

[9] Former Director of the British Museum Neil MacGregor says of the manufacturing process: If you look closely, you can see that this little sculpture is the result, in fact, of four separate stone technologies.