After 35,000 years, erotic art for cavemen discovered
With its grotesquely exaggerated features, this could easily be the work of one of the 20th century's great figurative artists. But this voluptuous Venus was carved out of a mammoth's tusk more than 35,000 years ago.
The two-and-a-half-inch statuette was found buried 10 feet below the floor of the Hohle Fels Cave in the Schwabian region of south-west Germany, where archaeologists have already discovered a gallery of early art objects dating to the same period of the Stone Age. Carbon dating has shown that the female figurine predates other similar Venus carvings by about 5,000 years.
"This figurine was produced at least 35,000 calendar years ago, making it one of the oldest known examples of figurative art," said Nicholas Conard of the University of Tubingen, who describes the statuette in Nature. He added that it "radically changes our views of the context and meaning of the earliest Palaeolithic art".
The oldest known works of art are abstract engravings – geometric designs in red iron oxide – found at a cave site in southern Africa and dated to about 75,000 years ago. Figurative cave paintings in southern France of Stone Age animals such as bison, horses, deer and rhinos, have been dated to about 37,000 years ago.
But the Venus figurine unearthed from the cave in Germany is the oldest known statuette depicting the human form. As the earliest example of three-dimensional figurative art, it could represent the birth of true sculpture in the global artistic tradition, according to scientists who have studied the piece.
The carving was made from a solid piece of mammoth ivory and depicts a naked woman with grossly protruding breasts, swollen thighs and belly, and a greatly enlarged and explicit vulva. A disproportionately small head was probably used to hang the figurine, according to Paul Mellars, of Stony Brook University in New York.
"The figure is explicitly – and blatantly – that of a woman, with exaggerated sexual characteristics... that by 21st-century standards could be seen as bordering on the pornographic," said Dr Mellars. "As if to emphasise the sexual characteristics, the figure's arms and legs are severely reduced to the form of a carefully carved ring, evidently to allow the figure to be suspended from a string or thong."
Similar Venus figurines with exaggerated sexual features and diminutive arms and legs have been found at a range of Stone Age archaeological sites stretching from the Pyrenees to southern Russia. These examples of early figurative art have been linked with the so-called Gravettian toolmaking culture dating to 25,000-29,000 years ago.
The latest Venus figurine is also adorned with enigmatic and possibly symbolic markings in the form of repeatedly incised lines that might conceivably represent the depiction of clothing, according to Dr Mellars. Other Venus figurines from the later period also show criss-cross designs or patterns etched on to their surfaces.
"The feature of the newly discovered figure that will undoubtedly command most attention is its explicitly, almost aggressively, sexual nature, focused on the sexual characteristics of the female form," said Dr Mellars.
Europe, 35,000 years ago, was in the process of being colonised by anatomically "modern" man, Homo sapiens, who had migrated from Africa via the Middle East. This species was gradually replacing Europe's Neanderthal man, a species that had inhabited the continent for thousands of years.
Four sites in southern Germany have produced a total of 25 mammoth-ivory carvings depicting a range of animals, from mammoths and horses to bison and cave bears. "The same sites have also yielded numerous small, carved ivory beads or pendants and the world's oldest unmistakable musical instruments," said Dr Mellars. "These take the form of perforated flutes manufactured from segments of bird wing bone."
The cave paintings of southern France may be older than the Venus figurine, "but the cornucopia of small, carved ivory statuettes from the south German sites must be seen as the birthplace of true sculpture in the European artistic tradition," added Dr Mellars.
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http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/cien
This is a surprise?
This is the earth mother - She who, at the dawn of time, gave birth to all living things, which emerged into the light and life from this very cave.
"Erotic Art", my fancy mammoth-skin nickers! I supposed these "scientists" used their super time machine they bought on Al Gore's Interweb to go back and interview the original craftsman. Give us some real science (like the gravely increased danger of genetically-modified global warming from carelessly cloned sheep - from the credible likes of Nobel Prize winner Al Gore) for crying out loud. But enough about cave men winning Nobel Prizes, for Pete's sake, already.
Isn't real science what got us in the mess Al complains about. Chances are it's a not an erotic symbol, the typical interpretation of the repressed neurotic nature of myopic misogynistic scientists, but rather a cultic or votive object of veneration. While your science plays shoot em up with endless considerations on how to strip mine the planet and kill more and more people at the push of a button you might consider that todays, four thousand year, phallus centric culture, be it science, art or religion focuses primarily on means of destruction, a fact easily demonstrated though written histories of mans obsession with war, weapons and the supremacist worldview that he can control man, woman, nature and the essence of god. Science, schmience. Wisdom and philosophy are left banging on the door while science goes with the begging bowl of funding to the likes of sleazeball Alfred Nobles' guilty legacy of bombs, mines and dynamite. The figure likely hearkens to a day when the feminine principle of creation and regeneration was held more noble than Nobles' principal of destruction and degeneracy. I find it refreshing to consider that once upon a time men had the balls to admit that. Long lived the goddess.
35k years ago we didn't know nearly as much about biology and women and childbirth were hailed as a miracle. They also didn't have as much 'decorum' as we like to think we have now, which is why you think it is crude, Steve.
Today, the miracle of life is old news and carvings of Goddesses are misinterpreted as cave-porn.
Good one.
Slight problem with this as women use men as sex objects, or is that all right from your point of view?
The use of the term 'caveman' is used to lead us to think these were primative, lower IQ people.
They were the same as us, just did have todays gadgets or infrastructure. Also there were very few of them - so in some what they must have lived like the todays African 'Sans' people (expect in Europe that differed in that they didnt live in the bush).
Almost all traces of Her- story were eliminated, in the hope that our collective consciousness would forget Her forever.
We have Sheela Na Gighe in Ireland too.
So, the system destroyed the Virgin- the woman who had her own property- not that she was a virgin in the biblical sense- that is a lie.
Next the old crone- menopausal wise women were demonised as witches- to get their property too, as they lived longer than men.
Marriage was created by patriarchal religions to keep women and children as possessions and under control.
Now his and her stories will be written and male and female energies finally balanced.
Otherwise, it is an interesting find, although I question the use of the term "cave man" as others have said, this only shows that the people who carved this figurine weren't much different than us. Afterall, there are people today who live in caves and carve objects out of whatever materials are available to them.
And you would think that it's conotations as sculpture would be more down to the expertise of archeologists, historians and artistic scholars rather than scientists.
http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/cien
We seem to discovering a lot on the skull and the old Flintstones yet we have tried so much to get one drop of water and failed in every direction. Is this not the verdict of the creator to show that we are but weaklings.
I thank you
Firozali A.Mulla
PS Have you really got a Phd? Law, medicine or philosophy? Don't answer....please....