Iron Age Mickey.

One thousand years before Disney created Mickey Mouse, a French artist got the same idea:

One thousand years before the cartoon character Mickey Mouse was even a glint in Walt Disney’s eye, a French artist created a bronze brooch that looks remarkably like the famous rodent, according to archaeologists at Sweden’s Lund Historical Museum, which houses the recent find.

The object, dated to 900 A..D., was excavated at a site called Uppåkra in southern Sweden.

Although made of bronze, the brooch ornament likely adorned the clothing of an Iron Age woman. Excavations at nearby sites, such as at Järrestad, have yielded other unusual pieces of jewelry, such as a necklace with a pail fob at the end and another necklace strung with 262 pieces of amber.

The bronze brooch may remind modern viewers of Mickey Mouse, but archaeologist Jerry Rosengren from Lund University told Discovery News that it actually represents a lion.

Link – via Boing Boing