Art 100 Exam 2 Woman of Willendorf or Venus of Willendorf

Conny Waters – MessageToEagle.com – The ancient Venus Of Willendorf figurine has intrigued scientists for many years. Carved some thirty,000 years ago, the figurine dated to the Upper Paleolithic era represents the earliest examples of fine art that depicts humans and was created by nomadic hunter-gatherers.

The so-chosen 'Venus of Willendorf', an xi.1-centimeter-tall (iv.iv in) figurine was unearthed in excavations at a paleolithic site near Willendorf, a hamlet in Lower Austria in 1908. The depictions of obese or pregnant women, which announced in most art history books, were long seen as symbols of fertility or beauty.

The original Venus from Willendorf. Left: lateral view. Right-height: hemispherical cavities on the right haunch and leg. Correct bottom: existing pigsty enlarged to form the bellybutton. Credit: Kern, A. & Antl-Weiser, Due west. Venus. Editon-Lammerhuber, 2008

In 2020, Richard Johnson, MD from the University of Colorado School of Medicine said he thought he had enough evidence to solve the mystery backside this curious totem.

Co-ordinate to Johnson, the key to agreement the statutes lies in climate change and diet.

"Some of the primeval fine art in the globe are these mysterious figurines of overweight women from the fourth dimension of hunter-gatherers in Ice Age Europe where you lot would not expect to see obesity at all," said Johnson.

"We show that these figurines correlate to times of extreme nutritional stress."

Now, according to a new written report, a inquiry team led by the anthropologist Gerhard Weber from the University of Vienna and the 2 geologists Alexander Lukeneder and Mathias Harzhauser as well as the prehistorian Walpurga Antl-Weiser from the Natural History Museum Vienna has found out with the help of high-resolution tomographic images that the textile from which the Venus was carved probable comes from northern Italian republic. This sheds new low-cal on the remarkable mobility of the get-go modern humans south and n of the Alps.

The 30,000-twelvemonth-sometime Venus figurine is fabricated of a rock chosen oolite that is non plant in or around Willendorf.

The Venus von Willendorf is not only special in terms of its design, only also in terms of its material. While other Venus figures are unremarkably made of ivory or bone, sometimes also of different stones, oolite was used for the Lower Austrian Venus, which is unique for such cult objects.

The figurine found in the Wachau in 1908 and on display in the Natural History Museum in Vienna has and then far only been examined from the outside. At present, more than 100 years later, anthropologist Gerhard Weber from the Academy of Vienna has used a new method to examine its interior: micro-computed tomography. During several passes, the scientists obtained images with a resolution of upward to 11.five micrometers—a quality that is otherwise but seen nether a microscope. The first insight gained is: "Venus does not await uniform at all on the inside. A special property that could be used to determine its origin," says the anthropologist.

Along with the ii geologists Alexander Lukeneder and Mathias Harzhauser from the Natural History Museum in Vienna, who had previously worked with oolites, the team procured comparative samples from Austria and Europe and evaluated them. A complex project: Rock samples from France to eastern Ukraine, from Deutschland to Sicily were obtained, sawn upwards, and examined under a microscope. The team was supported by the state of Lower Austria, which provided funds for the time-consuming analyses.

The inside also gives information well-nigh the outside

The tomographic data from the Venus showed that the sediments were deposited in the rocks in unlike densities and sizes. In between, in that location were also small remnants of shells and six very dumbo, larger grains, so-called limonites. The latter explains the previously mysterious hemispherical cavities on the surface of Venus with the same bore: "The difficult limonites probably broke out when the creator of the Venus was carving it," explains Weber. "In the case of the Venus navel, he then manifestly made information technology a virtue out of necessity."

Another finding: The Venus oolite is porous because the cores of the millions of globules (ooides) of which information technology is comprised had dissolved. This is a great explanation for why the resourceful sculptor chose this material thirty,000 years ago: Information technology is much easier to work with. The scientists as well identified a tiny shell remnant, just 2.five millimeters long, and dated it to the Jurassic period. This ruled out all other potential deposits of the rock from the much later Miocene geological era, such every bit those in the nearby Vienna Bowl.

The research team also analyzed the grain sizes of the other samples. Hundreds, sometimes even thousands of grains were marked and measured with epitome processing programs or even manually. None of the samples inside a 200-kilometer radius of Willendorf fifty-fifty remotely matched. The assay finally showed that the samples from the Venus were statistically indistinguishable from samples from a location in northern Italia about Lake Garda. This is remarkable because it ways that the Venus (or at to the lowest degree its material) started a journeying from due south of the Alps to the Danube due north of the Alps.

"People in the Gravettian—the tool civilization of the time—looked for and inhabited favorable locations. When the climate or the prey situation inverse, they moved on, preferably along rivers," explains Gerhard Weber. Such a journey could take taken generations.

Pictures derived from micro-computed tomography scans of the Venus. Left: Segmented bivalve (Oxytomidae) that was located on the right side of the Venus head; scan resolution 11.5 μm; characteristic features are theumbo and the wings. Eye: Volume rendering of the virtual Venus; 6 embedded limonite concretions: neck right (orange), neck left (blue), breast left (ruby), belly left (yellow), hip left (green), leg left (imperial); iii mollusc fragments: bivalve head right (blue, only 2.5 mm long, run across white line from label "Bivalve" for position), shell chest middle (orange), shell leg left (turquoise). Right: Unmarried μCT-slice showing the porosity and layering of the oolite; annotation the relative density of the limonite concretion; scan resolution 53 μm. Credit: Gerhard Weber, Universityof Vienna

One of the 2 possible routes from the south to the north would atomic number 82 around the Alps and into the Pannonian Plain and was described in simulations by other researchers a few years ago. The other way to get from Lake Garda to the Wachau would be via the Alps. Whether this was possible more than xxx,000 years ago is unclear due to the climate deterioration that began at that time. This would be a rather improbable variant if there had already been continuous glaciers at that time. However, the 730 km long path along the Etsch, the Inn and the Danube had always been below i,000 meters above sea level, with the exception of 35 kilometers at Lake Reschen.

Possible, simply less likely, connection to eastern Ukraine

The statistics clearly point to northern Italy as the origin of the Venus oolite. Nonetheless, there is another interesting place for the origin of the rock. Information technology is in eastern Ukraine, more than 1,600 kilometers linear altitude from Willendorf. The samples there do not fit as clearly every bit those from Italian republic, but ameliorate than all the residual of the sample. An interesting connection here: Venus figures were found in nearby southern Russian federation, which are somewhat younger, only expect very similar to the Venus constitute in Republic of austria. Genetic results too show that people in Fundamental and Eastern Europe were connected to one another at this time.

Meet too: More Archaeology News

The exciting story of the Lower Austrian Venus could exist continued. Only a few systematic studies accept so far dealt with the beingness of early on humans in this time frame in the Alpine region, and with their mobility. The famous "Ötzi," for example, but comes into play much later on, namely 5,300 years ago. "Nosotros desire to employ these Venus results and our new Vienna enquiry network Homo Evolution and Archaeological Sciences, in cooperation with anthropology, archaeology and other disciplines, to further analyze early history in the Alpine region," concludes Weber.

Written by Conny Waters – MessageToEagle.com – AncientPages.com Staff Author

clarkjonan1955.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.messagetoeagle.com/mystery-of-the-30000-year-old-venus-of-willendorf-solved/

Share this post