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Venus of Willendorf


Venus figurines is an umbrella term for a number of prehistoric items in statuette form, of women (whether obese or pregnant is disputed) from the Aurignacian or Gravettian period of the upper Palaeolithic, found from Spain to Siberia. These items were carved from stone, bone or ivory, or molded in clay and fired. The latter are among the oldest ceramics known.

Like many prehistoric artifacts, the cultural meaning of these figures will never be known. Archaeologists speculate, however, that they may be emblems of security and success, fertility icons, pornographic imagery, or even direct representations of a Great Goddess or Mother Goddess or various local goddesses. The apparent obesity of the figures strongly implies a focus on fertility as, at the time of their construction, human society had not yet invented farming and did not have ready access to rich or plentiful foodstuffs. An image of excess weight may have symbolized a yearning for plenty and security.

The first known discovery of a Venus figurine occurred in Austria in 1908, when the Venus of Willendorf was found. The figurines continue without a major break, on through the Neolithic and into the Bronze Age high cultures. [1]

Examples of Venus figurines include: Two much older finds are also often categorized as Venus figurines — the Venus of Berekhat Ram, dating to between 800,000 and 233,000 BCE, and the Venus of Tan-Tan, which dates to between 500,000 and 300,000 BCE, the Middle Acheulean period. Found in Asia and Africa respectively, these were made of stone. Both pieces are very rough, and may have been given approximate human form by natural geological processes. However, the Venus of Berekhet Ram has striations suggesting human stone tool-work, and the Venus of Tan-Tan bears evidence of having been painted; "a greasy substance" on the stone's surface has been shown to contain iron and manganese and indicates that it was decorated by someone and used as a figurine, regardless of how it may have been initially formed.[2]

See also

Notes

1. ^ Walter Burkert, Homo Necans (1972) 1983:78, with extensive bibliography, including P.J. Ucko, who contested the identification with mother goddesses and argues for a plurality of meanings, in Anthropomorphic Figurines of Predynastic Egypt and Neolithic Crete with Comparative Materioal from the Prehistoric Near East and Mainland Greece (1968).
2. ^ [1]

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An umbrella term is a word that provides a superset or of related concepts, also called a hypernym. Thus cryptology is an umbrella term that encompasses cryptography and cryptanalysis.
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Prehistory (Latin, præ = before Greek, ιστορία = history) is a term often used to describe the period before written history. Paul Tournal originally coined the term Pré-historique
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statue is a sculpture depicting a specific entity, usually a person, event, animal or object. Its primary concern is representational.

A small statue is called statuette. A statue of just a head and shoulders is a bust.
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Obesity
Classification & external resources

Silhouettes representing healthy, overweight, and obese.
ICD-10 E 66.
ICD-9 278

DiseasesDB 9099
MedlinePlus 003101
eMedicine med/1653  

MeSH C23.888.144.699.
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Pregnancy is the carrying of one or more offspring, known as a fetus or embryo, inside the body of a female mammal such as a human. In a pregnancy, there can be multiple gestations (for example, in the case of twins or triplets).
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Aurignacian is the name of a culture of the Upper Palaeolithic located in Europe and southwest Asia. It dates to between 32,000 and 21,000 BC. The name originates from the type site of Aurignac in the Haute Garonne area of France.
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Gravettian was an industry of the European Upper Palaeolithic. It is named after the type site of La Gravette in the Dordogne region of France. It dates from between 28,000 and 22,000 years ago and succeeded the Aurignacian.
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Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. Very broadly it dates to between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, roughly coinciding with the appearance of "high"
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Siberia (Russian: Сиби́рь, Sibir); is a vast region on the eastern and North-Eastern part of the Russian Federation constituting almost all of Northern Asia and comprising a large part of the
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Clay is a naturally occurring material, composed primarily of fine-grained minerals, which show plasticity through a variable range of water content, and which can be hardened when dried or fired.
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ceramic is derived from the Greek word κεραμικός (keramikos). The term covers inorganic non-metallic materials which are formed by the action of heat.
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Fertility is the natural capability of giving life. As a measure, "Fertility Rate" is the number of children born per couple, person or population. This is different to fecundity, which is defined as the potential
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mother goddess is a goddess, often portrayed as the Earth Mother, who serves as a general fertility deity, the bountiful embodiment of the earth. As such, not all goddesses should be viewed as manifestations of the mother goddess.
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mother goddess is a goddess, often portrayed as the Earth Mother, who serves as a general fertility deity, the bountiful embodiment of the earth. As such, not all goddesses should be viewed as manifestations of the mother goddess.
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goddess is a female deity. Many cultures have goddesses. Most often these goddesses are part of a polytheistic system that includes multiple deities. Pantheons in various cultures can include both goddesses and gods, and in some cases also intersex deities.
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society is a grouping of individuals which is characterized by common interests and may have distinctive culture and institutions. Members of a society may be from different ethnic groups.
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Agriculture (from Agri Latin for ager ("a field"), and culture, from the Latin cultura "cultivation" in the strict sense of "tillage of the soil". A literal reading of the English word yields "tillage of the soil of a field".
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Venus of Willendorf, also known as the Woman of Willendorf, is an 11.1 cm (4 3/8 inches) high statuette of a female figure. It was discovered in 1908 by archaeologist Josef Szombathy at a paleolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria near the
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Neolithic[1] or "New" Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology that is traditionally the last part of the Stone Age. The Neolithic era follows the terminal Holocene Epipalaeolithic
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The term Bronze Age refers to a period in human cultural development when the most advanced metalworking (at least in systematic and widespread use) consists of techniques for smelting copper and tin from naturally occurring outcroppings of ore, and then alloying those metals in
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Venus of Lespugue is a Venus figurine, a statuette of a nude female figure from approximately 25,000 BC. It was discovered in 1922 in the Rideaux cave of Lespugue (Haute-Garonne) in the foothills of the Pyrenees.
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Venus of Willendorf, also known as the Woman of Willendorf, is an 11.1 cm (4 3/8 inches) high statuette of a female figure. It was discovered in 1908 by archaeologist Josef Szombathy at a paleolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria near the
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Venus of Brassempouy, also known as the Brassempouy Lady is a miniature bust of a female, approximately 22,000 years old, carved from ivory. It was found at Grotte du Pape, near Brassempouy, Landes in France, and is stored at the Musée des Antiquités nationales, in
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The Venus of Laussel is a Venus figurine, a 1.5 foot high limestone bas-relief of a nude female figure, painted with red ochre, and is approximately 20,000 years old (Aurignacian).

The figure holds a wisent horn, or possibly a cornucopia, in one hand, which has 13 notches.
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The Venus of Berekhat Ram is a proposed Venus figurine that was found in the Summer of 1981 by archaeologist Goren-Inbar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on the Golan Heights.

The base object is an anthropomorphic red tuffic pebble, 35mm (1.
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The Venus of Tan-Tan was found in Morocco. It is 6 centimeters long, gender indeterminate and headless, and has been dated between 300,000 and 500,000 BC. It and its contemporary, the Venus of Berekhat Ram, might be the earliest representations of the human form.
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Acheulean (also spelt Acheulian, pronounced /ætʃuːlɪən/ or /ætʃuːleɪən
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Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area (or 29.4% of its land area) and, with almost 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's current human population.
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Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30,221,532 km² (11,668,545 sq mi) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area, and 20.4% of the total land area.
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Balanced Rock stands in Garden of the Gods park in Colorado Springs, CO]] A rock is a naturally occurring aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids. The Earth's lithosphere is made of rock. In general rocks are of three types, namely, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic.
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