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Venus sculpture primitive. Beauty of the Stone Age: "Paleolithic Venuses

VENUS: IN SEARCH OF THE ESSENCE

Every thing that has appeared in the world of people is immediately endowed with two attributes - a name and some, it happens, very far from the truth, designation of its essence. Paleolithic figurines of naked women were no exception to this rule.

As for the name, the word "Venus" stuck to the first figurine discovered. The Marquis de Vibret, who found this figurine in 1864 in Logerie Bass (dep. Dordogne, France), contrasting his find with the Hellenistic "Venus the Chaste", called the bone statuette he discovered "Venus Shameless".

Discovery of the Marquis de Vibre
laid the foundation for a new direction of historical science -
the study of Paleolithic female figurines
(Logerie Bass, France, dep. Dordogne, 13 thousand years BC,
mammoth tusk, 8.0 cm).

For the time being, until the time when the find was the only one, the word "venus" was the name of this particular figurine. However, since the beginning of the 20th century, when researchers had already whole line similar finds, venuses, and already without an unflattering epithet, began to be called all female Paleolithic figurines.

The name, reflecting the eye-catching eroticism of the female image, turned out to be very successful. It has taken root. Moreover, it was precisely in this way - sexually accentuated - that the researchers of that time imagined the prehistoric ideal of female beauty. Let's not forget that the beginning of the 20th century was the time of the rise of Freudianism.

Venuses, as you well know, reader, are called Paleolithic female figurines today. I think we will not object to such a name. It satisfies us quite well.

Giving the figures a name was a relatively simple matter. It turned out to be much more difficult to look into the essence of the phenomenon, or, in other words, to understand why our distant ancestors made such peculiar images of women two decades ago. On this account, over a century and a half, a certain number of points of view, one way or another, differing from one another, have been formed. Let's combine them into several groups and look at critical eye. But first, let's note character traits the statuettes themselves. And let's do it in the form of questions. Moreover, in the future, we will definitely have to answer questions regarding the appearance of Venuses. After all, for sure appearance venus is associated with their purpose, and finding out the purpose of the statuettes is our key task.

So, abstracting from episodic particulars, we review a very solid set of figurines discovered over a century and a half. Do you have questions, reader?

For example, I wonder why the figures are so small? Why do they not exceed the size of a palm? Don't you think that miniature figurines are easy to carry?

Why are the handles of Paleolithic venuses more like thin ropes, and the legs, devoid of feet, resemble some kind of stumps? Such figures cannot be installed in a vertical position. So they weren't meant to stand?

Why don't ancient figurines have faces? Maybe it didn't matter? Or maybe for some reason it was impossible to portray the face?

Finally, why do statuette makers display female attributes? Why are the breasts and buttocks hypertrophied? Why do some figurines have expressive genitals?

In Willendorf Venus exhaustively expressive
all four features of the ancient sculptural
images of a woman (Willendorf, Lower Austria,
23 thousand years BC, limestone with traces of ocher, 11.1 cm).

As you can see dear reader, Venus has many interesting features. Keep them in mind when considering versions that try to explain the purpose of the statuettes (I will leave room for your thoughts in my critical review).

By the way, we have already met with one of the versions. As I noted, many researchers of the early 20th century saw in the Paleolithic Venuses the embodiment of the aesthetic ideal of the distant past, a kind of beauty standard of the Paleolithic era. Indeed, why shouldn't our prehistoric ancestors, weighed down by a still significant burden of the animal worldview, see beauty in an emphatically erotic nature? This point of view seems quite plausible.

But we must reject it. Why? I will name two reasons.

The first is that simply admiring, simply obtaining aesthetic satisfaction could not and did not exist at that time far from us. In deep primitiveness, the spiritual and the practical did not exist separately. They were closely intertwined, moreover, soldered to each other. Aesthetic sense, art, ideal perception of the world, theoretical assessment of being are separated from the consumer, practical, gross materialistic only with the transition to a class society or, which is more familiar to the ear of an archaeologist, with the transition to the era of civilization.

Paleolithic figurines, due to their "location" in history, could not be objects of aesthetic satisfaction, could not be works of art designed to evoke aesthetic feelings. The use of venus had to be inscribed in the circle of the immediate needs of being. In a primitive - communist - society, female figurines were supposed to serve the implementation of some social function. By virtue of the nature of the collectivist system, they could in no way be tied by ownership to an individual person, they had to be in the public domain and, of course, be used in collective action. Finally, Venus had to be an object of a well-defined practical application. What? Such a question could not be raised by the adherents of the considered point of view. To stage it, it was necessary to go beyond the ordinary, ahistorical view of the past, it was necessary to understand that history, especially its period, which is essentially opposite to the current one, cannot be measured with its own - modern - meter. Unfortunately, the approach to history, in which aesthetics, art, or any other modern spiritual and ideological phenomena are automatically transferred to the past, is exceptionally tenacious and almost dominant.

The same group should include the views of our contemporaries, who see - a century later - in frank Paleolithic Venuses the same prehistoric "Playboy". Here, too, there is a transfer of the inactive erotic perception, which is quite natural today, into the distant past. I repeat, Venuses could not but be inscribed in some practical activities people, in some ritual that has developed on objective grounds.

A good illustration of the approach that emphasizes the aesthetics of erotica is the repeatedly shown on TV BBC film "Sex before our era." You may remember these shots, reader.

On the screen in the glow of the fire appears the profile of a hairy cave master, who has just made another erotic toy. He carefully holds it in his hands. The primitive esthete looks at his product with delight and lust...

Nothing to say, juicy and quite naturalistic. Only here is the trouble, the historical truth in this episode is twice turned inside out. Along with primitive aesthetics, we cannot accept the personality, or rather, the gender of the master. This is the second reason why we should reject the view that female figurines embodied the aesthetic, erotic ideal of primitiveness.

The fact is that primitive men (namely, they are seen by all authors who write about Venus as manufacturers of figurines) in principle could not be producers of erotic products, as well as its consumers. In the primitive era, eroticism and sex were taken out of the genus, which at that time was everywhere the only form of human coexistence (in the future, we will come to grips with this side of the vital activity of primitive society and explain why sexual activity was excluded from the interaction of relatives). Consequently, erotic figurines could only be produced by women. But for whom? Not for my own use. After all, not female, but male eyes tend to “consume” female nudity. For whom, then, were the erotic figurines intended? There can be only one answer to this question: the figurines were intended for men of other tribal organizations.

Isn't such an assumption too bold? No, it seems quite appropriate and logical: the primitive genus was exogamous ( exogamy means external marriage ), men and women of the clan entered into sexual relations, respectively, with women and men of another clan organization ... But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's wait a while with the formation of our own hypothesis and return to the topic of the chapter.

I think that the first group of versions that try to explain the purpose of female Paleolithic figurines can hardly satisfy us. However, in saying so, I cannot but agree with the idea of the sexual-erotic purpose of the figurines. It would be extremely unreasonable to deny the eroticism of Paleolithic products - just look at the expressive forms of female figurines. I reject only a primitive and ahistorical view of ancient erotica, and not the idea of erotica (and sex) as such. We reserve it for further consideration. And now we will continue the review of points of view on the problem of interest to us.

In the second group, I will include versions according to which female figurines were a reflection of reality and were portraits of real women. No doubt, the source of any more or less plausible image can only be the real world, real things and people. But why were female portraits made? Maybe for sensual contemplation? No, the time of portraiture and the attitude to the portrait known to us has not yet come. Just like admiration and aesthetic satisfaction, a reverent and impractical attitude to the image arises only during the transition to the era of civilization. The separation of the ideal from the practical requires enough high level development. As in the consideration of the first group of versions, here we find the same disease - an assessment of the world that is essentially opposite to ours through modern paradigms.

Female figurines could not be portraits for another reason. Where have you seen, dear reader, portraits without a face? But with pronounced sexual attributes. The "portrait" versions, with their naive simplicity, involuntarily push us to think about the erotic purpose of "portraits" and their use by men.

Finally, the "portrait" versions do not answer the question: why were male images not replicated? Why were the hunters on whom the existence of the clan depended not honored to be immortalized in stone or ivory? Maybe because at that time men were relegated to the background? According to the popular point of view on matriarchy, the society of that time was characterized by such gender social inequality. But is it? I will express my view on matriarchy a little later.

Let's move on to the third group of versions. In this group, I propose to unite seemingly heterogeneous, but upon closer examination, they turn out to be related views. By the way, the versions of this group are the most common and, one might even say, legalized.

What are these versions? These are the versions according to which the Paleolithic venuses are images of the ancestors, patrons of the clan, keepers of the hearth, the embodiment of the cult of fertility, a symbol of unity and family ties, the personification of prosperity, sculptures of priestesses, a receptacle for collective spirits, and even statues of the mother goddess. Venus and venerable authors (from A. Beguin to A.P. Okladnikov, P.P. Efimenko, Z.A. Abramova, A.D. Stolyar, R.F. Its and many others) endow such qualities (often several at once) ), and - after them - young researchers, and history students [see, for example: Efimenko P.P. Primitive society. Essays on the history of the Paleolithic time. - Kyiv, 1953; Abramova Z.A. Images of a person in the Paleolithic art of Eurasia. - M.-L., 1966; her own: Animal and Man in the Paleolithic Art of Europe. - St. Petersburg, 2005; Stolyar A.D. Origin of fine arts. - M., 1985 (A.D. Stolyar even sees in venus some abstract generalized idea, the result of "understanding the phenomena of social life" and believes that female figurines "were addressed to social thought much more than to the feelings of the individual")] . In the same vein, female Paleolithic figurines are perceived by non-professionals - readers of books and articles, where in one way or another the topic of interest to us is touched upon.

Maybe our assumption about the use of statuettes by men is wrong, and we should join the authoritative majority? No, let's not act so recklessly. First, let's think, look for flaws in the arguments of the representatives of the third group of versions. Scientific problems are solved not by the weight of the majority and the height of the syllable, but solely by the power of arguments and facts.

But before we take up the arguments, we must probably find what unites the ancestors, the patrons of the family, the keepers of the hearth and all the other figurants of the above list. "Calculate" such a common denominator is not difficult. They are the special role of women in primitive society and her (women) veneration.

And now - to the arguments. Adherents of the third group of versions see this special role and veneration of women as such. What are they derived from? Of course, from matriarchy, which is understood as a system in which a woman, being the central figure, towered over society, enjoyed special respect and even exercised power. However, such a matriarchy, to put it mildly, bears little resemblance to the system that existed throughout the primitive stage of human history. Rise above society or some of its members, praise of individuals, religious veneration, development of abstract generalized ideas, understanding of the phenomena of social life divorced from practice, finally, power appears, at first still in an undeveloped, rudimentary form, only on the outskirts of the class, political society. All this is a product of the division of labor and the division of society into various social groups.

In the monolith, which is the primitive society both economically and socially, there is not and cannot be a special role for anyone, be it a man or a woman, there is no reverence and all other attributes of the class structure. If anyone rules and is honored in a primitive society, then this is just a custom and tradition, but by no means a person. Both men and women perform their functions there, not in the least deforming or infringing on the functions of the opposite sex. In a primitive society, a person can stand out from the environment of relatives only as a conductor of some function, for example, as a beater on a hunt, a scout for sources of food and materials, or as a coordinator of actions in an unfamiliar environment. But such a distinction makes him nothing more than an agent, if you like, a servant of custom, without turning other people into his servants and admirers. One and the same person can be “dedicated” for different areas of activity. Moreover, in the vast majority of cases, due to the specifics due to gender, it must be a man [see: Iskrin V.I. The dialectic of the sexes. – SPb., 2005]. Let him be called the leader. But this is not the leader of the Redskins of the period of military democracy from the novels Fenimore Cooper, is the leader of the primitive communist community. The primitive leader and the leader of pre-class and early class society are very different figures and social phenomena distinct from one another. This is evidenced in some places by the surviving rudiments of the primitive social order.

Thus, to appeal to matriarchy, into which traits are transferred political structure, means to use low-quality arguments. Whether this is done out of ignorance or with intent, we will not understand, reader.

What is matriarchy really? And did he even exist? Let us try to briefly answer these questions (in the future, the picture of the functioning of a non-political society will be supplemented).

Marriage primitive society was a group. Moreover, groups of men and women belonging to different tribal organizations entered into sexual relations. Their meetings were infrequent and short-lived. There was no question of any kind of acquaintance, courtship and other innovations of the period of civilization in such conditions. The result of such meetings, of course, were children. But people of ancient times did not yet know that the birth of children is associated with the well-known role of a man (however, even now ethnographers observe such a gap in knowledge among some peoples who are lagging behind in development). It is clear that the birth of children by women was not a secret. Children born to women remained in the family of mothers.

How could generations be compared under such conditions? On what line could kinship be counted? No need to explain that only maternal, feminine. This is precisely the essence of matriarchy (literally translated matriarchy means women power which is completely false and unscientific). Matriarchy, therefore, would be correctly called not a form of social organization, but, so to speak, a technical tool for counting kinship and drawing a line in the history of the clan. From such an order, from the method of counting generations, the special role and veneration of women in no way follows.

Against the idea of exalting and honoring the primitive woman, I have one more argument in store. It turns out that the female figurines were not only carefully preserved, but, and this, however, concerns some of the discovered figurines, they were deliberately broken. Very authoritative archaeologists come to this conclusion. BEHIND. Abramov, assuming in the splitting of figurines constituent part some rituals, notes that at the present level of knowledge we cannot yet say why this happened. Perhaps we, dear reader, will be able to solve this riddle. Let's take note of this fact. However, let's not digress from the topic.

Perhaps this fragment of a female figurine
is the result of a deliberate blow to it
(Kostenki, Russia, Voronezh region, 22.7 thousand years BC, marl, 13.5 cm).

Are reverence and destruction of what is revered compatible? I think no. But if the smashing is a fact, and the veneration is the fruit of an imagination torn off from historical reality, what must we discard in order to get out of this conflict? Fact or illusion? Of course, the last one.

The "theory" of reverence and the special role of women does not bring us any closer to finding out the truth. The truth is not always on the side of the majority. The views of the representatives of the third group, like those of the first two, also sin by transferring modern realities into the depths of history, during the reign of an order that is fundamentally opposite to the current one. As you can see, the disease we are facing has the character of an epidemic.

In conclusion, I will mention one more group of views. Representatives of the fourth group believe that naturalistic figurines were used in antiquity to teach girls, to initiate the younger generation into women's mysteries. Earnestly? I don't think so. For the question immediately arises: is not a real, living woman the best nature? And one more thing: why were no male figurines made to train future women, as well as future men? By the way, boys are not mentioned at all as trainees by representatives of this group. But these are nitpicks that lie on the surface.

It is much more important to ask: did training exist in that distant era as special kind activities? I must disappoint the doctors of ancient pedagogy. In a society that does not know the social division of labor, education, as well as education, was woven into the functioning of the social organism, was literally poured into the process of production of things and people and formed a single whole with it. In that distant time, life itself was a school and a teacher, and visual aids were people, their interaction, social labor and the results of such labor. Human activity branches out only in the era of transition to a class society. And only in such a - divided, class - society does education appear as a special branch of activity, with a whole arsenal of special means, including visual aids. So, in the absence of it, Venus has nothing to do with the special education of girls (and boys).

Teaching the Rising Generation the "Sacraments"
sexual properties and related visual aids
appear only with the transition to a class society
(Nizhny Novgorod province, Russia, Russians, fabric, 17.0 and 16.0 cm,
reconstruction, izg. N.Larionova).

Such are the views that existed in the past and are currently in circulation regarding the purpose of the Paleolithic Venuses.

You are probably tired of parsing these fruitless versions, dear reader. What to do, we had to drink the cup to the bottom. Starting work, it is necessary to represent the state of the issue taken for research. We have covered almost all views on the purpose of the Paleolithic figurines. And what? Among the various points of view, we do not find a single one that could serve as an aid to our work. Maybe it's even for the best. We start positive work, not being bound by any attitudes, stereotypes, so-called authoritative opinions and the need to check every step with the venereal literature.

But this is not the only benefit we can derive from a critical part of our work. Thanks to the mistakes of our predecessors, we now clearly see what not to do and how to act in order not to miss.

I will present my methodological guidelines as a summary of the chapter.

1. Having considered an almost complete set of views on the purpose of the Paleolithic Venuses, we, with all the differences in the existing interpretations, found something in common that connects them and at the same time makes them completely untenable. This is an inability to approach the past historically, a misunderstanding of dialectics community development, an involuntary desire to transfer modern realities (ethics, art, the rise of the individual over society, worship, religion, etc.) to a completely different world compared to ours primitive man.

In no case should we approach history with today's standards.

2. In social science, a difference of opinion in the assessment of one event or phenomenon is not uncommon. This sad fate did not escape the question of the place of Venuses in primitive society. Where do the differences come from? If the problem under consideration does not affect anyone's interests, there are usually three sources of discrepancies - limited or flawed ideas about the socio-economic structure of the society under study, the inability or unwillingness to study the phenomenon chosen for analysis in the context of this structure, and the notorious "common sense", on verification turns out to be elementary subjectivism. All the troubles with finding out the purpose of Venus are connected with this trinity.

In order to solve the problem facing us, we must have an adequate understanding of the social relations and lifestyle of the primitive society, proceed from these relations in our analysis, conduct an objective investigation, firmly adhering to the materialistic line.

And, I must say, in this chapter we have already done something in this direction. We drew attention to the fusion of the spiritual and practical in the worldview of primitive man, stated group marriage and exogamy of the genus, raised the question of a person in an egalitarian primitive society, and defined matriarchy as a tool for accounting for kinship.

In the future, the blanks made by us will be developed.

Finally, we began to develop the topic chosen for the study. Based on the essence of the primitive system, we have identified a number of functional characteristics of female Paleolithic figurines. This is, firstly, their involvement in the practice of being and the need to participate in some kind of ritual, secondly, the focus of figurines on solving certain social problems, their belonging to the public domain and involvement in some kind of collective action, and thirdly , the obligation to make figurines by women of one clan for use by men of another clan organization.

3. If the object of study is not random and single and stands out with catchy features, then history needed it for something, and it is needed, most likely, for its intended purpose. Since Venuses are sexually expressive, we should take this clue and pay attention first of all to the order of interaction of the sexes in primitive society. Perhaps this step will lead us to the road leading to the solution of the problem we have set.

At the same time, we must consider the sphere of relations between the sexes in the closest connection with the whole complex of social relations.

4. In our critical examination of approaches to the Venusian problem, we managed with a minimum of arguments. It seems that this minimum was quite enough to recognize the current decisions as frivolous. All of these arguments were of a logical nature. Only once, and then in passing, did I refer to ethnographic data.

History is not something that has completely disappeared into time. The past leaves and remains, remains in the form of customs, traditions, remnants. The past lives in everyday life, customs and ideas of peoples.

We cannot fail to take advantage of the richest source of ethnographic knowledge (as well as knowledge of other sciences). And not only for the purpose of a better study of the phenomena of the distant past. Who knows, maybe the trace of the Venuses stretched through the millennia and in our days.

On Monday I was going to tell about this sculpture that stands near the Latvian Academy of Arts, but there was so much material that I drowned in it. Looks like it needs to be split up. In painting, for example, there is no more iconic painting, replicated in reproductions and adorning a variety of objects, even far from art, like Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. She's already a part modern subculture in its new capacity. There are several such iconic objects in sculpture. The most famous, of course, is the armless ancient Venus de Milo. But the glory of another Venus in the Western world is no less. So, get acquainted - Venus of Willendorf. Now in Riga. What is it - I will tell under the cut.

Back view:

The history of this Paleolithic Venus from Austria needs to be told in order to better understand why she looks the way she does.

First, a little historical digression.
From the height of our time, it is difficult to imagine that already in the Stone Age people aspired to art, to reproduce their own kind. About 40 thousand years ago, during the Great Ice Age, an event occurred that marked the beginning of a new page in the history of mankind. On the ice-free expanses of Europe, a man of the modern type appeared (Homo sapiens - a reasonable person).

The era of the Upper (Late) Paleolithic began (from the Greek "palailos" - ancient and "lithos" - stone). Its upper limit is determined by time global warming(about 10 thousand years ago), when the territory of prehistoric Europe was completely freed from the ice shell.

Causes cultural revolution, which occurred about 40,000 years ago among the Cro-Magnons who came to Europe, remain mysterious. This was the second breakthrough in the cultural development of Homo sapiens (the first occurred over 70,000 years ago in South Africa). It is curious that the first of two revolutions, during which shell necklaces and abstract geometric patterns, approximately coincides in time with the grandiose eruption of the Toba volcano in Sumatra. The second revolution occurred immediately after the arrival of sapiens in Neanderthal-inhabited Europe. In the Aurignac era, not only painting and sculpture appeared for the first time, but, probably, music as well, as evidenced by bone flutes found in southern Germany. Outside of Europe, all this appears several millennia later.

The Upper Paleolithic era is a period of major changes in material culture ancient man: the technique of processing stone and bone becomes more perfect, the methods of firing clay material are mastered, art. The hand-drawn and sculptural images of both animals (mammoth, reindeer, cave lion, etc.) and humans that have survived to this day are amazing in their craftsmanship and accuracy.

Among the masterpieces of Paleolithic art, a special place is occupied by sculptural images of naked (rarely in clothes) women found at sites, the absolute age of which is 27-20 thousand years ago. All of them are executed in bright realistic manner and convey, as a rule, a naked woman with emphasized signs of sex.

These figurines are carved from bones, tusks, and soft stones (such as steatite, calcite, or limestone). There are also figurines sculpted from clay and fired, which is one of the ancient examples known science ceramics.

Such figurines, called by archaeologists all over the world "Paleolithic Venuses", were found in France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, but especially a lot of them were found on the territory of Russia. The range of finds extends far to the east up to the Irkutsk region, that is, to most of Eurasia: from the Pyrenees to Lake Baikal. Most of the finds belong to the Gravettian culture, but there are also earlier ones related to the Aurignacian culture, including the "Venus of Hole Fels" (discovered in 2008 and dated at least 35 thousand years ago); and later, already belonging to the Madeleine culture.

For the first time, a fragment of such a figurine was discovered by archaeologists in 1894 in the town of Brassempuis in France. Later, similar figurines were discovered in 1908 in Central (Willendorf, Austria), and then in 1923 in Eastern Europe (Kostenki 1 ( upper layer) - Russia). To date, more than a hundred "Venuses" have been discovered, most of which are relatively small in size - from 4 to 25 cm in height.

Whom could these figurines with their hypertrophied volumes of the chest, abdomen and hips represent? Many assumptions have been made by famous archaeologists. Some believed that these figurines were symbols of fertility and the unification of the family (Peter Efimenko), others saw them as attributes of hunting magic (Dr. and. N. Sergey Zamyatnin), others - mistresses of the forces of nature and even "superhuman female beings" (Academician Alexey Okladnikov).

The semantics of the Venus of the Paleolithic has not yet been deciphered. Some researchers see in them images of a deity, an ancestor, a symbol of fertility, as they emphatically express the idea of motherhood, fertility. Others believe that this is an image of participants in ancient magical rites aimed at good luck when hunting or images of real women, different in their constitution and emotional mood.

Another version: in its upper, often faceless “head” part, this image symbolizes the heavenly, masculine nature of the deity, and in the lower part it represents its earthly, feminine essence. The discovery of this material embodiment of the philosophical concept of "a single but dual deity" somewhat changes our understanding of the spiritual life of ancient people, whom we habitually call "primitive".

Well said here:
Another range of Upper Paleolithic finds that have a meaning that goes beyond this ordinary this-worldly life are numerous figurines, reliefs and drawings of women. Of course, this plot was at first interpreted quite materialistically, as a manifestation of the erotic inclinations of ancient man. But, it must be confessed, there is little eroticism in most of these images.

The figurines of the Paleolithic "Venuses", related mostly to Aurignac and disappearing in the Madeleine, show that the interest in women thirty thousand years ago was very different from the present. The face, arms and legs are very poorly worked out in these figures. Sometimes the whole head consists of one magnificent hairstyle, but everything that has to do with the birth and feeding of a child is not only carefully spelled out, but, it seems, exaggerated. Huge ass, hips, pregnant belly, saggy breasts.

Paleolithic Venus is not the graceful creature that captivates the imagination of the modern man, and not the flourishing femininity of the Louvre Aphrodite, but the mother of many children. These are the most famous "Venuses" from Willendorf (Austria), Menton (Italian Riviera), Lespyuju (France). Such is the remarkable relief from Lussel (France), on which a woman standing in the front holds in her right hand, bent at the elbow, a massive horn, very reminiscent of cornucopias, but most likely this is a sign of the presence of the Bison God.

Female figurines made of stone and bone, faceless, but with emphasized signs of a feminine, giving birth nature, were very widespread in the Upper Paleolithic throughout Northern Eurasia. Almost certainly, they reflected the maternal womb of the earth reviving to furnace life. Vestonice "Venuses" are especially interesting because they are made of clay and fired. These are almost the first samples of terracotta in the history of mankind (25,500 lots ago).

Paleolithic "Venus" of the Aurignacian time:
a) from Willendorf, Austria. Height 11 cm. Limestone;
b) from Sapinnano, Italy. Height 22.5 cm. Serpentine;
c) from Lespugue, France. Height 14.7 cm. Mammoth bone;
d) from Dolni Vestonice, Czech Republic. Terracotta

And it’s not that the Paleolithic artist simply couldn’t or didn’t want to depict feminine beauty. On several monuments we can see that he did this perfectly in principle - an ivory head (Brassempui), a relief in the La Madeleine cave, discovered in 1952. But the figurines and images of "Venuses" by no means set out to glorify the perfection of female beauty.

For the guardian of the clan, individual "personal" signs are not important. She is a womb eternally pregnant with life, a mother eternally feeding with her milk. It is unlikely that the thoughts of the ancients rose to high abstractions, but if they buried their dead in the ground, then they believed in their resurrection, and if they did, they could not help but worship the Mother-Raw-Earth, which gives food, life and rebirth.

The hopes of the Cro-Magnons were not limited to the earth, they aspired with their souls to the heavenly God-Beast, the all-powerful giver of life. But from the experience of everyday life, they knew perfectly well that the seed of life must find the soil in which alone it can germinate. The seed of life gave the sky, the soil - the earth. Worship of Mother Earth, so natural among agricultural peoples, actually turns out to be older than agriculture, since the goal of worship for ancient man was not the earthly harvest, but the life of the future age.
http://storyo.ru/history_rel/05_06.htm

In general, you understand ...

As an esoteric symbol:

Here is one of such theories about Makosh (see the link below): http://www.litsovet.ru/index.php/gallery.view?gallery_id=14092

I want to say that modern stereotypes of beauty, following the example of Twiggy, do not allow us to notice that the figure of these Venuses may not necessarily be fat or pregnant. For example, compare:

In general, it's all about proportions:

People of art also worship these Venuses, various monuments are erected to the same Venus from Willendorf, in Austria, the USA and other countries:
http://www.donsmaps.com/willendorf.html
http://www.mikebikes.org/07trip/traismauer.htm
Monument in Austria: http://www.travel-club.com.ua/index.php?mo=image&id=5699
Tom Chapin "Manna" 2007, DeCordova Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Massachusetts
Reminiscent of Neolithic fertility statuettes like the Venus of Willendorf, Manna makes reference to the duality of base desires and the richness of life sustaining gifts.
From DeCordova Sculpture Park's homepage. http://www.flickr.com/photos/hanneorla/2761242150/
From papier-mâché http://laurietobyedison.com/discuss/?p=3417
http://artbydelilah.blogspot.com/2010/10/venus-of-willendorf-project.html
Venus of Willendorf - made of old recycled Halogen lamps http://asketchaday.blog.com/

Venus from halogen bulbs and Venus on prostheses:

Venus with bunny ears and a hole in her side:

This is also an artistic interpretation of the forms of the Venus of Willendorf:

Some believe that she had such hands:

Venus of Willendorf is often carved out of ice http://foto.mail.ru/mail/sergii_59/21/1428.html
http://www.twinoaks.org/community/leaves/leaves-94/lvs94-p5.html

But the Riga monument, in my opinion, is one of the most interesting:

Venus as a bachelor's work
Jun 9, 2010
Such a sculpture appeared yesterday near the Academy of Arts. This bachelor's work of one of the students is called "Venus of Willendorf"
http://olgai2.livejournal.com/62685.html
http://www.bezhin-lug.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=103&start=180#p7113

Initially, Venus was inside the building of the Academy of Arts:
And this, I think, is simply an unsurpassed masterpiece of domestic sculpture! The author has created a copy of the famous Willendorf Venus - a figurine, which is about 3000 years old. How much grace and grace!
True, the original, located in the Vienna historical museum(see photo), has a size of about 11 cm. But we are used to thinking big! There should be a lot of good Venus!
My colleague specifically decided to pose so that everyone could appreciate the scale of the work. Nightmare and horror, to be honest! And it still stood on the square in front of the academy for quite a long time!
March 2011
http://gaviota15.livejournal.com/25751.html

Venus was also seen in a shopping center in Old Riga:
Shopping Mall with Venus of Willendorf Sculpture - Riga - Latvia http://www.flickriver.com/photos/adam_jones/5833438330/

And here is what the author of this sculpture herself writes (translated from English as best she could):
The Venus of Willendorf of the 21st century is my search for the depth of female identity. It is a [sculpture] 4.5 m high of glued corrugated sheets and covered with particles of mirror plastic, created as a kind of replica of a masterpiece of the Stone Age. The 21st century Venus of Willendorf is a conceptual work that allows women in our time to shine in her reflection, while Venus shines for herself. She is amazing with her feminine forms. It may even be shocking to some. This work is about a woman, but not about feminism.

About four years ago I visited the Hermitage and there in some distant nooks and crannies I photographed ( the photo is not posted, it turned out not very good) one of the "Paleolithic Venuses", these are one of the most ancient human products found by archaeologists, the average dating of any of them ( Hundreds of them have now been found.) 20 thousand years BC Think about this figure, one such figurine contains the entire human civilization, all the achievements of which humanity has achieved can easily fit into the age of one such figurine..

Venus Brassempuiska
This is the second "Venus" of all found on this moment. Discovered in France in 1894 near the village of Brassempui. Made of ivory, dated between 26,000-24,000 BC. considered one of the earliest realistic images human face.

As you understand, this is only a part of the whole figure, which, alas, has not been preserved, the head and neck are 3.65 cm long.

Reconstruction of a possible appearance. What is interpreted on the head and how schematic representation hair or as it is considered a kind of hood on the reconstruction, the second name of this figure is "Hooded Lady"

An even more unique figure is man-lion.

The statue is considered one of the oldest famous sculptures in the world and the oldest zoomorphic sculpture. The statuette dates back to 32,000 BC! Made of mammoth tusk, 29.6 cm high. There are seven parallel, horizontal lines on the left hand.
The presence of such a figure at that time says exactly two things: this is a statuette of some kind of deity, which means that already at that time there were some kind of religious beliefs, anthropologists, comparing the sizes and scales, rejected the version that this is a man in a lion's skin i.e. shaman. And secondly, let's say, the presence of abstract thinking and imagination is recognized by modern scientists in a person of that time only theoretically and there is a point of view that all known Paleolithic Venuses were made from nature, that is, what the artist saw, then he sculpted ..
An interesting fact is that in South India there is still the worship of Narasimha, the human vulva.

There is also such a Venus, she is interesting in that she is believed to be holding a bison horn in her hand.

Venus Losselskaya. The figure is a bas-relief made in limestone. Dates back to 25,000 BC. The figure is notable for the horn itself, it has thirteen cuts - 13 lunar months in a year. Specialists in prehistoric religion also believe that this horn later became known as the Cornucopia ( I consider it an afterthought and far-fetched, although much later images of goddesses appeared with various objects in hand, including number and horn).

And finally, a very recent find.

Venus from Hole Fels
Discovered in 2008 near Schelklingen, Germany. By the way, in the same area as Chelovekalva.
At the moment, the figurine is the oldest recognized (there are two much earlier "venuses", but the features of a person in general are sketchy there) work of art of the Upper Paleolithic and prehistoric figurative art in general. Its age is dated between 35,000 and 40,000 BC. It dates back to the time when the Cro-Magnons had just begun their migration to Europe. Made from the tusk of a woolly mammoth, 6 cm high, in place of the head there is a hole that gives the right to conclude that the figurine was used as a pendant.

A small clarification about "what the artist saw and sculpted" in the scientific community there is a long-standing dispute - some researchers consider the emphasized anatomical features human body: abdomen, thighs, buttocks, breasts, vulva, as real physiological features, similar to those observed in representatives of the Khoisan peoples (Bushmen and Hottentots) South Africa.

Other researchers dispute this point of view and explain their underlining as a symbol of fertility and abundance.
By the way, not all Paleolithic Venuses are obese and have exaggerated feminine features. Also, not all figurines are devoid of facial features.

The vanity of readers will certainly be flattered when they learn that the first works of art were female figurines. Archaeologists have nicknamed them "Paleolithic Venuses". Of course, with a fair share of jokes, because these "Venuses" look, by our standards, extremely unattractive. The face, arms and legs, as a rule, were not even outlined, but the primitive artist richly endowed the figures with hypertrophied female characteristics - sagging breasts, a sharply defined belly hanging down to the knees and large hips.

However, this does not mean that all Paleolithic women were such “carcasses”. And it is unlikely that these figures were the canons of beauty. When making "Venus", the artist was driven not so much by erotic as by cult motifs: here a respectful attitude towards a mature woman, a kind of "vessel" for pregnancy, was manifested. Considering that the life of the people of the Paleolithic era was difficult and dangerous, such "fertile" women who lived to maturity were at a great price (especially considering the matriarchy that prevailed at that time). According to the descriptions of travelers, in some African tribes brides (!) in the ninth month of pregnancy are still valued, as having proved their “fruitfulness”.

But judging by rock carvings, primitive women were slender, muscular and not very different from men.

The study of various tribes, leading to this day a primitive way of life, most clearly confirms how diverse and extravagant ideas about female beauty can be. Here are just a few examples:

- Women from Myanaung (Burma) are proud of their necks first of all. And there is something to be proud of - the necks of beauties sometimes reach 50 cm! They are pulled out with the help of copper rings worn around the neck since childhood, the number of which is constantly growing.

- Girls from the Ethiopian tribes of Surma and Muzi similarly “roll out” their lip: they implant a clay disc into it, gradually increasing its size. This terrible, from the point of view of a European, decoration also has an “economic” background: the more a girl “rolls out” her lip, the more cattle will be given to her family when the time comes to get married. Some researchers believe that the "mouth" tradition originated as a way to avoid the capture of the women of the tribe by the invaders.

- The inhabitants of the island of Borneo consider the ears drawn to the shoulders to be the height of beauty, which they achieve by hanging bronze weights from the earlobes. Over time, the weight of such "earrings" can reach 3 kg!

- For the Karamojong tribe (on the border of Sudan and Uganda), special curly growths on the body are considered an adornment of a woman. For the sake of these “charms”, women have to endure a painful procedure: the skin of the face and body is cut with iron hooks and then sprinkled with ashes for a month.

- Residents of the Solomon Islands, entering into marriage, lose their upper incisors. They are solemnly beaten out by the maternal uncle of the bride with a stone and a pointed stick.

- Mothers from the tribe of Indians Tipo (Brazil) squeeze the faces of their daughters with wooden sticks. And this is not a punishment for bad behavior - just, God forbid, a daughter with a round face will grow up and be a laughing stock! The face should be long and very narrow.

- And in the Tuareg tribe from the Sahara desert, it is considered a shame for women ... thinness! A beauty should have many folds on her sides, a large belly and a shiny face. Achieving this "ideal" is not much easier than losing weight. To "increase beauty" girls from childhood are placed in tents, where they move little and absorb camel milk in abundance.

Paleolithic "Venus" of the Aurignacian time:

A) from Willendorf, Austria. Height 11 cm. Limestone;

b) from Sapinnano, Italy. Height 22.5 cm. Serpentine;

V) from Lespuju, France. Height 14.7 cm. mammoth bone;

G) from Dolni Vestonice, Czech Republic. Terracotta

a massive horn in his hand, very reminiscent of cornucopias, but most likely this is a sign of the presence of the Bison God.

And it’s not that the Paleolithic artist simply couldn’t or didn’t want to depict female beauty. On several monuments, we can see that he did this perfectly in principle - an ivory head (Brassempui), a relief in La Madeleine cave, discovered in 1952. But the figurines and images of "Venuses" by no means set out to glorify the perfection of female beauty.

The finds made in Ukraine by K. Polikarpovich clarify the meaning of the strange figurines. In the sanctuary on the Desna, in addition to skulls and tusks of a mammoth, in addition to howler monkeys, he also found a female figurine made of ivory of the Venus type. It used to be attached to something and was part of the mortuary sanctuary.

A pregnant woman at the feet of a deer.

Large ungulates, bison, mammoths, deer, bulls become in the Upper Paleolithic almost in a universal way Heavenly God. They, the bearers of the male “family” principle, give life, which the “Mother Earth” accepts and bears in her womb. Was it not this thought that directed the chisel of the Upper Paleolithic master from Laugèrie-Basse when he worked on the image of a pregnant woman at the feet of a deer?

Most likely, these "Venuses" were images of "Mother Earth", pregnant with the dead, who still have to be born again to eternal life. Perhaps the essence depicted in this way was the genus itself in its course from ancestors to descendants, the Great Mother, always producing life. In Ukraine, in Gagarin, seven such figurines were located along the walls of the Madeleine dugout. They stood in special niches. It certainly was an object of worship. For the guardian of the clan, individual "personal" signs are not important. She is a womb eternally pregnant with life, a mother eternally feeding with her milk. It is unlikely that the thoughts of the ancients rose to high abstractions, but if they buried their dead in the ground, then they believed in their resurrection, and if they did, they could not help but worship the Mother-Raw-Earth, which gives food, life and rebirth.

Mircea Eliade is very mistaken when, in the introduction to The Sacred and the Worldly, he asserts: “After all, it is obvious that the symbolism

and cults of Mother Earth, human fertility, ... the sacredness of Women, etc. were able to develop and form a widely ramified religious system only thanks to the discovery of agriculture. It is equally obvious that the pre-agrarian nomad society was not able to feel the sacredness of Mother Earth as deeply and with the same force. Differences in experience are the result of economic, social and cultural differences, in a word - History" 1 - "Obvious" is not yet true, the religious scholar should have known this better than others. The cults of the Mother Earth hunters of the Upper Paleolithic force us to assume that the religious is not always a product of the social and economic, but is sometimes their cause and premise.

For a better understanding of all the ambiguity of cause and effect in human culture especially interesting are the "venus" figurines from Dolnja Vestonice. Vestonice "Venuses" are made of clay and fired. These are almost the first samples of terracotta in the history of mankind (25,500 years ago). The ancient mystic must have tried to capture in the material itself the great idea of the earth uniting with the heavenly fire to receive the heavenly seed. Maybe a lightning strike that melted the soil brought him to these images. At least twelve millennia separate these clay figurines of Mother Earth, specially fire-fired, from household ceramics that appeared in the early Neolithic.

Very characteristic and discovered in the late 1950s under the canopy of the rocky shelter of Angles-sur-l "Anglin (Angles-sur-1" Anglin, Vienne, France) is the scene of the Madeleine time. Three women, with clearly underlined signs of their gender, stand close to each other. One - with narrow girlish hips, the other - pregnant, the third - old, flabby. The first stands on the back of a bison, whose tail is raised and whose head is bowed, showing that it is depicted in the excitement of the rut. Doesn't this relief reflect the rhythm of life and emphasize that for the Cro-Magnon this life was not an accident, but a divine gift, a seed of God, which must be properly disposed of in order to gain eternity? Or maybe this is the first of a long series of images of the Great Goddess in her three images - an innocent girl, a mother and an old woman of death, images - so characteristic of later humanity? Death, withdrawal from life in this case turns out not to be a complete disappearance, but only a stage of being, followed by a new conception by a divine seed, a new birth.

1 M. Eliade. Sacred and mundane. M., 1994. S. 20-21 (with correction of mistakes made during translation).

complete disappearance, but only a stage of being, followed by a new conception by the divine seed, a new birth.

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