A 30,000-year-old sculpture's origins are being illuminated by new knowledge. The Venus of Willendorf, a 4.4-inch-tall figure made between 30,000 and 25,000 BCE, is called after the town of Willendorf, Austria, where it was discovered. However, the stone from which it is fashioned was not found anywhere in the vicinity.
For years, the object was shrouded in mystery due to this characteristic. Now, researchers believe they have found an answer to the statue's origins, tracing the unusual rock to northern Italy.
Venus figurines are tiny sculptures of female shapes made during the Upper Paleolithic period. They are usually thought to have served ritualistic reasons and honored fertility-related notions such as femininity, goddesses, and sensuality. While the majority of the discovered Venus figurines were fashioned of ivory or bone, the Venus of Willendorf was notable for its use of oolite—a rock that was not found anywhere near its discovery site in Austria.
Finally, high-resolution scans of the statuette's substance assisted in tracing its origins to an area above Lake Garda in northern Italy. An anthropology team from the University of Vienna, geologists Alexander Lukeneder and Mathias Harzhauser, and prehistorian Walpurga Antl-Weiser from the Natural History Museum of Vienna all contributed to this unique discovery. The sculpture's unique topographical data was matched to thousands of samples until they found a match in the northern Italian region.
This discovery also raises issues about how the artwork ended up in Austria. It's possible that the piece was carried by the people as they travelled through the countryside. "People in the Gravettian—the time's tool culture—sought out and occupied suitable positions." "When the temperature or prey situation changed, they migrated forward, particularly near rivers," anthropologist Gerhard Weber explains.
While the research clearly suggests that the Venus of Willendorf originated in northern Italy, there is sufficient evidence to show that it could also have originated in eastern Ukraine. However, the large distance of over 1,000 miles makes this scenario less feasible.
