TÜBINGEN, GERMANY — A generously endowed female totem found in a cave in southern Germany has added support for the argument that pornography indeed may be the world’s oldest obsession.Archeologists believe the Venus of Hohle Fels, named for the southern Germany cave in which she was found, is at least 35,000 years old. Standing 2.4 inches tall and carved from mammoth ivory, the figure has oversized breasts and buttocks and displays exaggerated genitals between her spread legs. Scientists believe she may have been worn as a pendant.
“There can be no doubt that the depiction … results from the deliberate exaggeration of the sexual features of the figurine,” Dr. Nicholas Conrad of the University of Tübingen, told the journal Nature.
Dr. Paul Mellars of the University of Cambridge said even older sexually explicit artifacts exist, although none in three dimensions. Vulva scratched on cave walls in France, images etched into African ochre and phallic symbols made of bone have been dated to 75,000 years ago. The Venus, however, is at least 5,000 years older than other the earliest known examples of figurative art.
“It is clear that the sexually symbolic dimension in European, and indeed worldwide, art has a long ancestry in the evolution of our species,” Mellars wrote in Nature.
