Sexy Venus 'oldest figurine yet'
2009-05-14 10:11
London - 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 Tübingen
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."
