Wednesday, April 27, 2011

World’s Oldest Erotic Sculpture Found


Archaeologists unveiled a 35,000-year-old ivory sculpture of a rather buxom woman that was discovered in a German cave. The sculpture depicts a woman with large breasts, curvy thighs, and a full belly, but she has no feet or head.


The archaeologists believe it to be the oldest known carving of the human form. The sculpture suggests that ancient humans, who settled in Europe around 40,000 years ago, were smart enough create symbolic representations of themselves, much they way modern humans do, said University of Tuebingen archaeologist Nicholas Conard, who along with a team discovered the figure in September. Archaeologists don’t know for sure about the purpose of the figure, but they have some ideas….

“It’s very sexually charged,” said Conard. Archaeologist Paul Mellars, of the University of Cambridge, agreed with Conard. “These people were obsessed with sex,” said Mellars. However, Jill Cook, a curator of Paleolithic and Mesolithic material at the British Museum in London, said the carving could be a symbol of fertility portraying the act of giving birth. Whatever the case may be, if this is the way ancient humans viewed the female form, it’s possible this says a lot about what they considered, well, sexy. How we interpret the 2.4-inch-tall figure says as much about us as it does the people 40,000 years ago, doesn’t it? At least our erotica has become more sophisticated with this discovery.

For more interesting topics related to archaeology, visit archaeology excavations.

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