The Gravettian Venus figurines (Willendorf and beyond)

Date

c. 30,000–25,000 years ago

Category

Culture, arts & philosophy

Region

Europe (Austria and across Gravettian Eurasia)

Era

Prehistory

Significance

Across Ice Age Europe, from France to Siberia, hunter-gatherers of the Gravettian period carved small female figurines now collectively known as 'Venus' figurines.

The most famous, the 11-cm oolitic-limestone Venus of Willendorf from Lower Austria, dates to around 30,000-25,000 years ago; the stone itself appears to have been sourced hundreds of kilometres away, hinting at long-distance movement of people or materials. Similar figures, with emphasised breasts, hips and bellies and often faceless heads, occur at sites such as Dolní Vestonice (where some were modelled in fired clay, among the earliest ceramics) and Kostenki. The remarkable consistency of style over a vast geographic range suggests shared symbolic conventions and networks of contact spanning the continent. Their meaning remains debated, fertility symbols, self-portraits, depictions of specific women, or ritual objects, but as a body of work they constitute one of the earliest widespread artistic traditions in human history.

Related culture, arts & philosophy events

• Behavioural modernity and major Out-of-Africa dispersal
  c. 70,000–50,000 years ago
• Göbekli Tepe – monumental architecture by hunter-gatherers
  c. 9,600–8,000 BCE
• Upper Paleolithic art and symbolic explosion
  c. 40,000+ years ago
• World's earliest figurative and narrative cave art on Sulawesi
  c. 51,000 – 45,500 years ago
• Chauvet Cave: early masterworks of figurative cave art
  c. 36,500 years ago
• Earliest Indus Script Signs Appear at Harappa
  c. 3300 BCE

Further reading

The Story of Art

The wider story

The Story of Art

E. H. Gombrich

The best-selling art history ever written, from cave paintings to the modern age.

Get it on Amazon →

As an Amazon Associate, Human Saga earns from qualifying purchases.