What are Venus figurines?
Q: What are Venus figurines?
A: Venus figurines are figurines that show women, usually pregnant with visible breasts. They have been found in Western Europe to Siberia and most of them are around 30,000 years old.
Q: How old is the oldest known Venus figurine?
A: The oldest known Venus figurine is the Venus of Tan-Tan which has been dated to 500,000 to 300,000 years ago and was found in Morocco.
Q: What materials were used to make the figurines?
A: Different kinds of stone, bones and ivory were used to make the figurines. Some were also made of clay which was then burned in a fire - one of the earliest known traces of ceramics.
Q: What is not known about these figures today?
A: It is not currently known what these figures meant for the people who made them or why they were created.
Q: What are two interpretations for why they may have been made?
A: Two basic interpretations for why they may have been made include representing human fertility or being linked to goddesses as symbols of fertility.
Q: Why do scientists believe that they weren't linked to fertility fields? A: Scientists believe that these figures weren't linked to fertility fields because agriculture had not yet been discovered at this time period.
Q: How can it be determined if natural processes formed some of these figures? A: It can be determined if natural processes formed some of these figures by looking at traces left on them such as paint containing Iron and Manganese on the Venus Of Tan-Tan or tool marks on the figure from Berekhat Ram which suggest someone worked on it with a tool according to a study done in 1997.
