Ivory carving may be oldest sculpture of human form

Source: AP




Ivory carving may be oldest sculpture of human form
Last Updated: Thursday, May 14, 2009 | 9:54 AM ET
The Associated Press

Side and front views show the six-centimetre, 35,000-year-old ivory carving found in Germany's Hohle Fels cave. (H. Jensen/University of Tuebingen) (*Picture at link)


A 35,000-year-old ivory carving of a busty woman found in a German cave may be the oldest known sculpture of the human form, according to archeologists who unveiled it Wednesday.

The carving, found in six fragments in Germany's Hohle Fels cave, depicts a woman with a swollen belly, wide-set thighs and large, protruding breasts.

"It's very sexually charged," said University of Tuebingen archeologist Nicholas Conard, whose team discovered the figure in September.

Carbon dating suggests it was carved at least 35,000 years ago, according to the researchers' findings, which are being published Thursday in the scientific journal Nature.

"It's the oldest known piece of figurative sculpture in the world," said Jill Cook, a curator of paleolithic and mesolithic material at the British Museum in London.

Stones in Israel and Africa almost twice as old are believed to have been collected by ancient humans because they resembled people, but they were not carved independently.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/05/14/venus-hohle-fels-statue-ivory-carving-first.html

of course.

How things have changed, and not for the better.

breasts that can feed the child.

One question: How does one carbon date a carving of a stone? The stone has its own carbon apart from when it was carved doesn't it?

So you're dating the mammoth (so to speak).

On edit: if you mean the other stones, the dating could be from some other method.

why there were smooth rocks in the middle of an area.... it turned out it was covered with water and they could determine when the rocks were deposited in their location. it was 'how the earth was made' but i can't remember exactly where it was that they were investigating these things.

fertility goddess you morons. they cannot bear the thought of the concept of Goddess.

it is virtually the same Goddess figure that has been found before at ancient sites,
evidently from Matriarchal times.

"

figurine is a woman, giver of life. Some of them are even in the shape of uterus, but supposedly ancient man/womankind was not suppose to have known where 'babies came from', which explains (supposedly) why it was so easy for people to believe that men could give birth, i.e., Zeus giving birth to Athene from his 'head' or 'thigh'(penis).

The ancients made voteries of their god/desses and the oldest of them are of women/goddesses. See Bird Goddess, Nile Goddess, Astarte of (ooh, ooh, is Phoenicia? forgot), Diana of Ephesus, Cybele of Anatolia (who's voterie was a meterorite, which was taken to Mecca, and a piece of it is the Kabbah).

Merlin Stone, Jean Markle tell us that Goddess worship lasted over 30,000 years. It's only been the last 2.5 that been the problem :)

of the gods at that. As such, he could do anything, including turn into a swan that impregnates a woman with a human looking child and give birth from his head to a goddess known for wisdom. She was the creation of his mind.

for your thoughtful reply.
:-)

And the only things protruding are bones.

Don't confuse matrilocality (married couples live with the woman's family) and matrilinearity (emphasis on a maternal line of descent) with notions of gender equality. In fact true gender equality (as opposed to "seperate but equal" notions found in many cultures that are mere lip-service) is a very Western thing.

It is interesting to compare and contrast Western culture with the Graeco-Roman culture that the West is descended from. There seems to be very few female historical figures in the Classical world while in the Middle Ages and in the Modern West influential women are everywhere (Eleneor of Aquitaine is the archetypal Medieval example). The views the Ancient Greeks had towards women were extremely negative and almost Taliban-like. This is in stark contrast to Western culture; there is a straight line from the romantic songs of the troubadours and the veneration of the Virgin Mary to Gloria Steinem and Hilary Clinton. Western Civilization was born with a Feminist streak, it just took the industrial revolution and it's neutralizing of men's advantage in physical strength compared to women for the lid on the tea-pot to blow off.

I was speculating that a culture that saw 'God" as feminine, would be matriarchal in structure.

The times you are speaking of, btw, come later.

I've looked at the picture two or three times now, and it evokes fertility much more than being "sexually charged."

I guess it's lonely work, being an archaeologist.

I blame the journalists.

or else she may not be doing much with all that fertility.

so YOU don't find the figure sexually appealing? in many cultures, zaftig women are revered and highly prized, as it equals health. most likely it was so 35,000 years ago too.

...shown in the portrayal of the culture's fertility deities. being slightly overweight was considered attractive in pre-modern times because it meant you weren't malnourished and were healthy enough to bear children.

the earth is only 6000 years old.It must be the devil's doing to confuse the christians!

Reminds me of this book. Mankind could have taken a different direction.
http://www.amazon.com/Chalice-Blade-Our-History-Future/product-reviews/0062502891

History is like a unfinished puzzle, we're always looking for and finding more pieces.

"Perhaps the cave was a sexual hiding place. In 2005, researches found a 20cm-long 28,000-year-old piece of stone shaped like a penis in the same cave"

http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/bild-english/world-news/2009/05/13/worlds-oldest-human-carving/35000-year-old-sculpture-found-in-german-cave.html

that is a long period of time, could the same culture live that long ?

the same cave.

but how do they know when it was carved? Is it not possible some ancient artisan to happened upon an ancient chunk of ivory that was, say, was used for a doorstop for eons and past down from parent to child?

Arrest the artist!

Whatever they called her back then. The swollen breasts and jutting abdomen - it has nothing to do with having sex and everything to do with having offspring.

They may just as likely have been possessions
of WOMEN hoping for fertility.

:eyes:

very adolescent when it comes to things like <tee hee hee giggle giggle> breasts.

As if THAT'S the "norm"...

OUR reactions and perceptions
are widely ignored.