Description
The oldest known sculpture of the human race, about 25,000 years old! The original is about 11 cm from limestone and is now kept at the Natural History Museum Vienna. The Venus of Willendorf, also known as the Woman of Willendorf, is an 11 cm (4.3 in) high statuette of a female figure estimated to have been made between 24,000 and 22,000 BCE. It was discovered in 1908 by archaeologist Josef Szombathy at a paleolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria near the city of Krems.[1] It is carved from an oolitic limestone that is not local to the area, and tinted with red ochre. Since this figure’s discovery and naming, several similar statuettes and other forms of art have been discovered. They are collectively referred to as Venus figurines, although they pre-date the mythological figure of Venus by millennia.
