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 modern humans arrived in Europe. But it exhibits characteristics of fertility 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.
The figurine was excavated at Hohle Fels, a large cave in the Swabian Jura region of Germany near 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 — all dating from about 30,000 to 31,000 years ago.
The new figurine was found in September.
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,” said archaeologist John J. Shea of Stony Brook University in New York, who was not involved in the study. That suggests the objects were very important to them.
Possibly a neck ornament
The Venus figure, about 2.4 inches tall, was carved from a mammoth tusk. It has broad shoulders, prominent breasts and intricately detailed buttocks, all grossly exaggerated.
The figure has no head. Instead, it has a carefully carved ring above the left shoulder. The polished surface of the ring suggests the figurine was worn as an ornament around the neck.
