Venus figurines are some of the oldest works of art that have survived from the Late Stone Age, but we still don’t know a lot about them, other than the fact that they have appeared across a wide swath of Europe and Eurasia over at least a 20,000-year period.
Many were likely intended to be handheld and depict female figures carved out of a variety of materials including clay, ivory, bone or soft stones, often with wide abdomens and exaggerated reproductive organs.
The first-known statuette of this kind to be uncovered by archaeologists was the so-called Venus impudique, a headless, footless and handless figure discovered in 1864 at a site in southwestern France.
But the most famous is perhaps the Venus of Willendorf, a limestone figure depicting a faceless woman with plaited hair or some kind of headdress. This artifact was found in Austria in 1908 and dates to roughly 25,000 years ago. The Venus of Hohle Fels, on the other hand, is between 35,000 and 40,000 years old, making it the oldest known among all Venus figurines. Made of mammoth ivory, Hohle Fels was found in a German cave in 2008.
