The so-called Teutoburg Engraving, found during an archeological dig in 2003 by a team from the University of Freiburg, but not put on display until last year when the Neues Museum opened a new permanent exhibit on Germanic resistance to Roman occupation, has been causing a considerable stir online.
The stone, which measures three feet high and two feet in diameter, and is theorised to have been used as a tribal boundary marker, depicts what appears to be sequential images of a man transforming into a wolf.
But is this proof of ancient pre-Christian werewolf myths, as some have claimed? Or is it even, as a viral youtube video asserts, a depiction of aliens?
Professor Heidi Goldstein, curator of the Neues Museum exhibit, says not.
"There is a tendency to take images such as this literally," the Professor told me, when I met her in her office below the museum. "To forget that our ancestors understood metaphor and symbolism just as well as we do today. I am sure a wonderful film could be made about Ancient Germanic werewolves battling Roman Soldiers, but that is not what is being depicted here."
