From about 25,000 b.c., this image of the
Venus of Lespugue was found in 1922 by Saint Perrier in the cave of Les Rideaux
in the foothills of the Pyrennes. The sculpture is made out of mammoth ivory and
measures 5.75 inches high.
According to textile expert Elizabeth Wayland Barber, the ancient Goddess statue
displays the earliest representation found of spun thread, as the carving shows
a skirt hanging from below the hips, made of twisted fibers, frayed at the end.
This Mother Goddess of the tiny island of Malta represents the fertility of
Earth and female, of abundance and overflowing nurture. Wide-hips and ready
breasts signal an honoring of female pulchritude and sustenance.
Upper Paleolithic female figures such as this one are found from the Pyrenees
mountains to Siberia, indicating that East and West were once united in honoring
The vast majority (over 90%) of human images from 30,000 to 5,000 b.c. are
female. Women were recognized as the life-givers and sustainers and they were
revered as priestesses.
MORE ON THE VENUS OF
LESPUGUE FROM Morning Glory Zell:
"I am that which
began, out of me the years roll..."
The Venus of Lespugue is one of the masterpieces of Ice Age art. She was found
in 1922 by R. and S. de Saint-Perier in the Cave of Rideaux, at Lespugue in the
Haute-Garonne) in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Created from mammoth tusk
ivory, the statuette, measures 5.75" high; the front was badly damaged
during excavation. It comes from an Upper Perigordian level, dated approximately
21,000 BCE, contemporary to the Gravettian cultural period. The original
artifact is part of the collection belonging to the Musee de l'Homme.
More ink has been spilled on the topic of such Venus figurines than on any other
Paleolithic artifacts. Many theories abound in both scientific and metaphysical
circles about their origins, meaning and purpose. They form a tantalizing portal
into our ancient past, which we peer through in an effort to understand our own
origins, meaning and purpose. Speculations have included that they were
fertility fetishes, gynecological teaching devices, primitive erotica, religious
art and/or self portraits...or all of the above.
According to textile experts Elizabeth Wayland Barber, or Olga Soffer of the
University of Illinois, the statue displays the earliest representation found of
spun thread, as the carving shows a skirt hanging from below the hips, made of
twisted fibers, frayed at the end. Soffer says: "It depicts a fiber-weaving
technology that until recently we didn't know existed in the Stone Age."
Margherita Mussi of the University of Rome points out that the Venus of Lespugue
can be viewed as portraying two women, one of them upside down; the skirt is
also the hair of the upside-down woman. The incorporation of multiple images
into a single sculpture was a fairly common artistic convention in Ice Age art,
along with an abstraction of form most prominently recognized in the Venus
LeRoy McDermott asks: "Is the physical point of view represented in these
figures that of the self or of another?" From a self-viewing perspective,
such figurines represent normally proportioned women of average weight at
different stages in their biological lives. What has been seen as obesity or
exaggerated sexual characteristics is actually a strongly foreshortened view of
the woman's own chest and belly while the breasts, being close to the eyes, loom
large in the visual field.
To Paleolithic humanity Mother Nature was no distant abstraction, removed from
the self by layers of concrete, steel and air conditioning. Living immersed in
the urgencies of life: the blood of hunting or birth, the dirt of gathering, the
wet and cold while seeking shelter or building a fire, the pleasant or harsh
social and sexual realities of tribal life, the challenge of raising children in
the snow with cave lions for neighbors, the pride of creating beautiful tools,
clothing and art out of whatever was around you, Stone-Age people were embedded
in Nature, Her sounds and smells and sights surrounded them.
The Earth provided Her bounty and the gift of freedom but life was also lived
close to the edge: a misplaced spear thrust or a misidentified mushroom left a
cold and empty body to give back to the Earth. Birth was a miracle but so was
Death, and both occurred "up close and personal" everyday with no
polite screens drawn. People could not help but make the connection between
everyday life and the sacred, between the world of the flesh and of the spirit,
between Nature and the Divine.
The Lespugue image with her graceful, abstracted curves like a basket of eggs,
demonstrates that connection. She represents the Great Mother Goddess, the
universal female principle in Her most primordial conception. She is the Earth,
the fertility and the continuation of life. Female figures such as this one are
found from the Pyrenees mountains to Siberia, indicating that East and West were
once united in honoring the Goddess. The vast majority (over 90%) of human
images from 30,000 to 5,000 B.C.E. are female. Women were recognized as the
life-givers and sustainers and revered as priestesses and shamans.
Once a woman held a chunk of a mammoth tusk in her hand, which might even have
cost the lifeblood of a beloved partner; she looked down at her own pregnant
body and felt the tides of Nature stirring. She created a perfect image of the
Divine Creative Force as seen from her every vantage point: she made the Venus
--Morning Glory Zell