Venus figurine, banana for scale
Inktober, miniature.
Maybe you know about the Venus figurines like this famous Venus of Willendorf. But did you know that they are the absolute oldest representation of human figures that are three dimensional? They aren't hunters or warriors. They are women.
They were mostly made from. 40,000 to 10,000 years ago putting them in the Paleolithic and mesolithic periods covering the stone age right up until the rise of agriculture. They are only found in Europe because any not found in Europe would totally get a different name as that's how we roll.
You might know they were considered fertility gods but we don't actually know that. It's a guess. The people who made them were rude and didn't write down what they were for.
Banana for scale.
A5 paper, Micron 01 - 10.
10 replies
It looks to me like you have a tiny Venus!
I hate puns but I have to admit that was pretty good.
I quite like the theory that they're self-portraits. The otherwise-exaggerated proportions are plausibly a representation of the artist looking down at her own body, and the face is left blank because the artist can't see it. It is only a theory, of course, as much as the fertility goddess one is, and the point about the blank face is arguably weakened due to how people from that time could still use water for reflections, but I think it's a pretty interesting interpretation
(also nice drawing, OP)
You're assuming that a bigger person was smthn someone might look down upon at the time. I'm not sure if that assumption holds true.
Just in case you're misunderstanding, I don't mean "looking down on" as in "thinking poorly of", I mean in the sense of the artist physically looking downward at her own body
Ah yes I was misunderstanding, thanks
It’s not a fetish idol…it’s an early your momma joke
Used for religious purposes of course
everything's a ritual object in archeology... even things fashioned to be phallic in size and shape and with detectable traces of lubricating oils...
Sometimes a banana is just a banana.