Nobody knows what Ice Age Venus figurines meant, including why we call them Venus
More than 200 small carved women survive from the last Ice Age, found from the Pyrenees to Siberia. Most have broad hips, tiny faceless heads and no feet. Their makers left no explanation, and the name we use comes from a 19th-century French marquis making a joke about a Greek statue.
In 1864 Paul Hurault, Marquis de Vibraye, found an ivory figure at Laugerie-Basse in France's Vézère valley, the first Palaeolithic sculpture of a woman known in modern times. He called it the immodest Venus, contrasting it with the Aphrodite of Knidos, who shields her body with her hands. The label spread to the whole category, though there is no link to the Roman goddess, and scholars such as the anthropologist Randall White object to it. The Venus of Willendorf was dug from loess in Austria's Danube valley in 1908.
Most figurines date to the Gravettian, 26,000 to 21,000 years ago, but the range is wide. In September 2008 University of Tübingen archaeologists found a 6-centimetre mammoth-ivory carving at Hohle Fels, at least 35,000 years old and the earliest known figurative artwork of any kind. Makers used soft stone, bone and ivory, and some fired clay versions rank among the oldest ceramics known. Sizes run from about 3 to 40 centimetres. Some bear detailed hairstyles or hints of clothing, and the Willendorf figure carries traces of red ochre.
Interpretations vary widely. Suggestions include fertility charms, mother or grandmother goddesses, symbols of security, or objects shaped to be held during childbirth. McCoid and McDermott proposed that women carved them while looking down at their own bodies, which would explain the missing faces and foreshortened proportions; Michael Bisson countered that puddles could have served as mirrors. Johnson and colleagues linked the heavier figures to colder times, finding they grew slimmer farther from the ice sheets, where food stress eased.
Styles shifted over time: rounder forms dominate Gravettian and Solutrean finds, while later Magdalenian ones are slimmer and more detailed. Where the category ends is disputed, since similar figures appear in the Neolithic, including a reworked fossil shell from Norway around 6,000 BCE. Sardinia's Neolithic Venus of Macomer is a close cousin.
Source: Venus figurine
