The Venus of Willendorf is a small stone figure of a naked woman, 11.1 cm (4.4 in) high, carved about 29,500 years ago by an unknown sculptor of the Ice Age. She has heavy breasts, a round belly and wide hips, thin arms laid over her chest, and a head wrapped in bands of carved relief where a face would be.
Excavators digging on a terrace above the Danube in Austria uncovered her in 1908, and she is kept today at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. When she was found, no older complete human figure was known, and she has since become one of the most familiar figures of the Paleolithic, the Old Stone Age.
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What does the Venus of Willendorf show?
Seen up close, her limestone skin is dotted with small round hollows, and one of them sits exactly where her navel should be…
What You'll Discover
What covers her head instead of a face
Why her age jumped by thousands of years
What a scanner found inside the stone
How far her stone may have traveled
Which older figure shares her room in Vienna
Why a social network took down her photo