The oldest yet discovered venus figurine has been recovered from the archaeological cave site of Hohle Fels, Germany, and reported in the May 14, 2009, issue of Nature.
Venus figurines are sexy (sorry, there is no other word for it) small carvings of women with exaggerated features, found in Upper Paleolithic sites between about 31,000 and 9,000 years ago in Europe. There are venus figurines of men and asexual humans, but that's a side issue best dealt with elsewhere.
Hohle Fels is an Upper Paleolithic cave site in the Swabian Jura of southwestern Germany, and it is known for mammoth ivory carvings and the evidence of their manufacture, dated to the Aurignacian, between about 31,000 and 33,000 years ago. Excavator Nicholas Conard at the University of Tubingen has been working at Hohle Fels since the 1990s, and he has recovered three other ivory carvings, including a waterbird, a horse's head, and a strange half-human, half lion figurine.
But last fall Conard discovered the venus figurine illustrated above, and although the radiocarbon dates are a little flaky from the Swabian Jura, he reckons based on the stacked five Aurignacian layers above it that it dates to the earliest Aurignacian period of about 35,000—40,000 years ago. The next oldest venus figurine (that I'm aware of anyway) is from Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic, between about 28,000 and 31,000 years ago.
Sometimes I think I have the greatest job in the world, because I happen to have two more pictures of the Hohle Fels figurines from the 2003 Nature article, and together with the new ones from 2009, they make a fabulous, um, photo essay.
More Information Main Sources
Venus of Hohle Fels, side and front views. Photo by Photos by H. Jensen; Copyright University of Tubingen
Comments
more photos of the Hohle Fels venus figurine can be found in the local german newspapers:
http://www.szon.de/news/fotoreportagen/overview.html?fid=12248&SZONSID=247e98526cb34718184e4740525060a6
Incredibly cool. Thanks.
Thanks for the link to the German newspaper–it includes pictures of the lion/human figurine, a mammoth figurine and a flute. Very neat!
That waterbird has to be one of the most unusual Upper Paleolithic objects I have ever seen! It looks so life-like in flight! By the way, I strongly recommend the book Cave Paintings and the Human Spirit: The Origin of Creativity and Belief by David. S. Whitley as an excellent piece of work on the possible meanings of Upper Paleolithic cave art. He has brought together many strands of a very complex story into a quite enjoyable book.
Dick Diehl