Archaeologists'
Surprise Find: Ancient, Busty Statuette
(Newser)
– Archaeologists
in northern France were digging for "tooled flint or bones," they
say, when they came upon something stunning: what ended up being a
23,000-year-old sculpture of a woman. While digging near Amiens over the
summer, they noticed some pieces amid the limestone they had found didn't look
particularly natural, Phys.org reports. "That same night we carefully pieced
together the 20-odd fragments and realized it was a female statuette,"
says archaeologist Clement Paris of the recently announced find. The team used
carbon dating to determine that the object was from the Paleolithic era. Europe
and Russia have yielded about 100 similar figures, called Venus figurines; all
feature similarly-shaped women, with the oldest being the Venus of Hohle Fels,
found in Germany in 2008.
That
35,000-year-old sculpture of a woman with balloon-like breasts and explicit
genitalia was miniature, at 2.5 inches tall, the New York Times reported; the new find measures
a similarly petite 4.7 inches, and also bears large breasts and buttocks. Smithsonian observed that the Venus of Hohle
Fels' head, arms, and legs were poorly defined: As the archaeologist who found
it explained, "Head and legs don’t matter. This is about sex, reproduction."
So too with the latest discovery. "The intent was to produce a symbolic
image of a woman linked to fecundity," says Paris. It's being called the
"Venus of Renancourt," a name which refers to the Paleolithic site
where it was found. (Archaeologists recently found a truly
notable block of stone.)
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