When the Earth was in the middle of the last Ice Age, still in the stone age, with vast glaciers covering northern regions, when there were no cities, agriculture, metal tools or writing systems, but only foragers of edible plants and hunters using stone blades on spears to kill such creatures as woolly mammoths, saber-toothed cats, giant ground sloths, and woolly rhinos, when sea levels were low enough to leave land bridges between continents . . . there were artists, who painted fascinating cave art and made beautiful body ornaments out of shell beads and animal teeth, and who carved small figurines such as Venus of Willendorf, long before any concept of Venus and before any place named Willendorf.
Today in the mail I received a replica of the Venus of Willendorf. The original was found in 1908 by a worker during an excavation near the village of Willendorf in Austria, carved from oolitic limestone that came from far away, and covered in red ochre pigment. It now sits in the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna. Its replica now sits in the Lund Library.
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| The Original |
I'm so fascinated that I seem to see this art wherever I go.
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