Venus Figurine Sheds Light On Origins Of Art By Early Humans
Bianca:
The figurine, found in 2008 in a cave in Schelklingen, southern Germany
is thought to be the world's oldest reproduction of a human.
Venus figurine sheds light on origins of art by early humans
By Thomas H. Maugh II
May 14, 2009
A 40,000-year-old figurine of a voluptuous woman carved from mammoth ivory and excavated from
a cave in southwestern Germany is the oldest known example of three-dimensional or figurative representation of humans and sheds new light on the origins of art, researchers reported Wednesday.
The intricately carved headless figure is at least 5,000 years older than previous examples and dates from shortly after the arrival of modern humans in Europe. It exhibits many of the characteristics of fertility, or Venus, figurines carved millenniums later.
The figurine "radically changes our views of the context and meaning of the earliest Paleolithic art,"
its discoverer, archaeologist Nicholas J. Conard of the University of Tubingen in Germany, wrote in
the journal Nature.
Experts are excited about the find because of what it tells us about early humans -- and about ourselves.
"The origin and evolution of figurative art, portable art, appear on most lists of what constitutes modern human behavior," said archaeologist Daniel Adler of the University of Connecticut, who was not involved in the research.
"Any time you can push the clock back on some of these behaviors, we get a better understanding
of why these were important and were developed, where they were developed . . . and the roles
they played in the social glue that holds groups together," he said.
"For European archaeologists, it marks the appearance of behaviors they find familiar, modern human behavior," said archaeologist John J. Shea of Stony Brook University in New York, who was also not involved. "It suggests the same values and ways of seeing the world existed among the earliest
humans that migrated to Europe" as among humans today.
The figurine was excavated at Hohle Fels, a large cave in the Swabian Jura region about 14 miles southwest of the city of Ulm. The cave shows evidence of a long period of prehistoric occupation
and is probably best known for three ivory carvings previously discovered by Conard: a horse's or
bear's head; a water bird that may be in flight; and a half-human, half-lion figurine, all dating from
about 30,000 to 31,000 years ago.
The new figurine was found in September in six pieces about 9 feet below the cave floor. Nearby
were flint-knapping debris, worked bone and ivory, and remains of horses, reindeer, cave bears, mammoths and ibexes. Radiocarbon data indicate that the layer originated 35,000 to 40,000 years
ago.
The figure, about 2.4 inches tall, was carved from a mammoth tusk.
It has broad shoulders, prominent breasts and intricately detailed buttocks and genitalia, all grossly exaggerated.
Those features "are clearly more exaggerated than on others that come later," Adler said, "but many
of the basic features that are seen later are already there. . . . It's a prototype for what you see
later" from the Gravettian culture, which existed in France 28,000 to 22,000 years ago.
"The stylistic attributes are being carried on for many, many generations."
The figurine has two short arms with carefully carved hands resting on the upper part of the stomach; part of the left arm and shoulder are missing. One hand has five fingers, the other four.
The legs are short, pointed and asymmetrical, with the left noticeably shorter, typical of later Venus figurines. Also typical, the figure has no head. Instead, it has a carefully carved ring above the left shoulder. The polished surface of the ring suggests that the figurine was worn as an ornament around the neck.
The intricate detailing achieved with primitive stone tools indicates "the amount of energy these guys were willing to invest in these little objects -- tens if not hundreds of hours," Shea said. That suggests the objects were very important to them.
Many researchers believe that they were fertility totems, but their ultimate meaning may remain
a mystery.
thomas.maugh@latimes.com
Bianca:
A grotesque carving in mammoth ivory is arguably the
world's oldest depiction of a human figure, scientists say.
German 'Venus' may be oldest yet
By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter,
BBC News
May 13, 2009
A grotesque carving in mammoth ivory is arguably the world's oldest depiction of a human figure, scientists say.
The distorted sculpture, which portrays a woman with huge breasts, big buttocks and exaggerated genitals, is thought to be at least 35,000 years old.
The 6cm-tall figurine, reported in the journal Nature, is the latest find to come from Hohle Fels Cave in Germany.
Previous discoveries have included exquisite carvings of animals, and an object that could be a stone "sex toy".
Moreover, the range and sophistication of similar materials found across the Schwabian region of southern Germany has led some researchers to believe cave complexes such as Hohle Fels could have been early artists' workshops.
The Venus of Hohle Fels was found in six fragments in September 2008. It is still missing its left arm and shoulder, but researchers are hopeful these will emerge in future excavations of the cave's sediments.
The figurine does not have a head. Rather, it has a carefully carved ring located off-centre above its broad shoulders.
The polished nature of the ring suggests the Venus was probably suspended as a pendant.
The hands have precisely carved fingers, with five digits clearly visible on the left hand and four on the right hand.
The pronounced breasts, buttocks and genitals familiar in later Venuses are usually interpreted to be expressions of fertility.
The Venus shows no signs of having been covered with pigments. It is, though, marked by a series of cut lines.
The Hohle Fels object is of an age where radiocarbon dating techniques become somewhat uncertain. Scientists say, however, that it is unquestionably older than previous finds associated with, for example, European Gravettian culture.
These typically date from between 22,000 and 27,000 years ago, with the most famous item probably being the Venus of Willendorf which was discovered in 1908.
Professor Nicholas Conard, from the department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, at Tübingen University, is the author of the scientific paper reported in Nature magazine. He has described many of the extraordinary finds at Hohle Fels.
He says the Venus is perhaps the earliest example of figurative art worldwide.
"The most noteworthy figurative representations of roughly comparable age outside Swabia are limited to the schematic, monochrome, red paintings on rock fragments from Fumane Cave in northern Italy; the standing figurine from Stratzing in the Wachau of Lower Austria; and the impressive paintings from Grotte Chauvet in the Ardeche in southern France," he writes.
Jonathan.Amos-
INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
Bianca:
Sexy "Venus" may be oldest figurine yet discovered
May 13, 2009
LONDON
(Reuters)
– A sexually suggestive Venus figurine with oversized breasts and thighs dates back at least 35,000 years and shows ancient humans had sex on their minds, researchers said on Wednesday.
The 60-millimetre-long figurine may be the oldest piece of its kind yet discovered and suggests Palaeolithic art was far more complex than many had thought, Nicholas Conard of Tubingen University in Germany wrote in the journal Nature.
Radiocarbon dating indicates the figure excavated from an archaeological dig in southern Germany, near the Danube valley, was at least 35,000 years old, the researchers said.
"The discovery predates the well-known Venuses from the Gravettian culture by at least 5,000 years and radically changes our views of the context and meaning of the earliest Palaeolithic art," Conard wrote.
"Before this discovery ... female imagery was entirely unknown."
The figurine's enlarged breasts, bloated belly and thighs also make clear that sexual symbolism was alive and well tens of thousand of years ago, Paul Mellars of the University of Cambridge, wrote in a commentary.
"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," he wrote.
"Whichever way one views these representations, it is clear that the sexually symbolic dimension in European (and indeed worldwide) art has a long ancestry in the evolution of our species."
(Reporting by
Michael Kahn;
Editing by
Julie Steenhuysen)
Bianca:
Side and frontal views of the Venus of Hohle Fels show off the
35,000-year-old figurine's highly exaggerated sexual features.
She's still a pin-up after 35,000 years
Exaggerated Venus-like figurine found in cave in Germany
By Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
May 13, 2009
VIDEO
http://www.archaeologynews.org/link.asp?ID=438292&Title=She's still a pin-up after 35000 years
An ivory figurine with prominent breasts and buttocks and other exaggerated sexual characteristics is the world's oldest known depiction of a woman, and likely that of any human being, according to research published in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
Named the Venus of Hohle Fels after the cave in southwestern Germany where it was recently excavated,
the object dates to at least 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, based on more than 30 radiocarbon measurements conducted at the site.
Although tiny — just over 2 inches long — the intentionally headless figurine is remarkably detailed, with pronounced genitalia visible between open legs.
"As one male colleague remarked, nothing has changed in 40,000 years," Nicholas Conard, who reported the find and led the project, told Discovery News. "It is the oldest example of figurative art in any class, making it all the more surprising that the figurine presents such a powerful, sexually aggressive image," added Conard, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tubingen.
Conard and his team recovered the artifact in six pieces at the cave site, where the scientists had previously found miniature statues of a horse, diving waterfowl and a human-like lion with male sexual features. The bones of various animals, including cave bears, deer, rhinos and horses, were also excavated.
The scientists attribute all of these finds, including the ancient Venus, to one of the earliest human populations in Europe — the Aurignacian culture — suggesting that figurative art is a European phenomenon that arose before Neanderthals went extinct, when modern humans may have been evolving more complex linguistic, representational skills.
Conard said there are striking similarities between the Hohle Fels figurine and other "Venuses" that appeared 5,000 years later in the Gravettian period, so there may have been a shared cultural tradition.
"All place an emphasis on sexual attributes and lack emphasis on the legs, arms, face and head, made all the more noticeable in this case because a carefully carved, polished ring — suggesting that the figurine was once suspended as a pendant — exists in place of a head," he said.
The carver, who painstakingly shaped the object out of a mammoth tusk, included fingers on the hands and even a navel. Deeply incised horizontal lines, which Conard thinks might have represented clothing or straps, were cut over the bulging abdomen.
Paul Mellars, a University of Cambridge archaeologist who is currently at Stony Brook University's Turkana Basin Institute, wrote a commentary about the Venus that appears in the same issue of Nature.
Mellars told Discovery News that he fully agrees with Conard's analysis of the object, which he described as "remarkable" and "an archaeological discovery of considerable significance."
Bianca:
Obsession with Naked Women Dates Back 35,000 Years
By Clara Moskowitz,
LiveScience Staff Writer
13 May 2009
If human culture seems obsessed with sex lately, it's nothing new. Archaeologists have discovered the oldest known artistic representation of a woman — a carved ivory statue of a naked female, dating from 35,000 years ago.
The figurine, unearthed in September 2008 in Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany, may be the oldest known example of figurative art, meaning art that is supposed to represent and resemble a real person, animal or object. The discovery could help scientists understand the origins of art and the advent of symbolic thinking, including complicated language.
"If there's one conclusion you want to draw from this, it's that an obsession with sex goes back at least 35,000 years," University of Cambridge anthropologist Paul Mellars told LiveScience. He was not involved in the new finding. "But if humans hadn’t been largely obsessed with sex they wouldn’t have survived for the first 2 million years. None of this is at all surprising."
The fixation wasn't just for naked women, though. Early carvings of phalluses appeared in Europe at about the same time.
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