The Venus of Willendorf is one of the earliest images of the body made by humankind. It stands just over 4 � inches high and was carved some 25,000 years ago. It was discovered on the banks of the Danube River, in Austria, and it was most likely made by hunter-gatherers who lived in the area. The environment at that time was much colder and bleaker then present-day, a remnant of Europe’s last ice age.
The people who made this statue lived in a harsh ice-age environment where features of fatness and fertility would have been highly desirable.
The question is why were prehistoric humans stimulated by an exaggerated image such as this? The answer, according to neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran and others, lies in the workings of the human brain, in a neurological principle known as the “peak shift.”
The people who made this statue lived in a harsh ice-age environment where features of fatness and fertility would have been highly desirable. In neurological terms, these features amounted to hyper-normal stimuli that activate neuron responses in the brain. So in Paleolithic people terms, the parts that mattered most had to do with successful reproduction – the breasts and pelvic girdle. Therefore, these parts were isolated and amplified by the artist’s brain.
- venus figurines
Upper Paleolithic European representational art began by at least 35,000 years ago and became intense 15,000-10,000 years ago. Perhaps, the most prominent portable art was in the form that has become known as Venus figurines. These are sculptures of women. They are not portraits but rather faceless idealized representations of well fed, healthy, usually pregnant nude women with exceptionally large buttocks and breasts. Because of these exaggerated sexual characteristics, they are thought by most paleoanthropologists to be ritual objects symbolizing female fertility. Many of these stylized carvings are reminiscent of modern abstract art. Venus figurines were made from around 35,000 years ago down to the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. They have been found from Western Europe all of the way to Siberia. Most were small enough in size to be easily hand held. The Venus of Laussel shown below on the right is a rare exception.
