Carved figurine dating back 35,000 years oldest-known sculpture (... and yes it is of a naked woman)

Scientists have discovered the oldest piece of sculpture ever created - and it depicts a voluptuous 'pin-up' woman. The 35,000-year-old carving shows a woman with enormous breasts and other sexual characteristics like an enlarged stomach and large thighs.The six-centimetre carved mammoth tusk, which is thought to have been a symbol of fertility for early man, is known as 'Venus' and was discovered in several fragments which were then pieced together. The carved ivory female figurine, found in 2008 in a cave in southern Germany, is possibly the world's oldest reproduction of a human, at least 35,000 years old. Radiocarbon dating showed that the figurine, which was found in a German cave, is at least 35,000 years old, predating later similar finds by 5,000 years or more. The fragments were recovered along with stone, bone and ivory tools used by the first Home Sapiens populations to settle in Europe. According to scientists, this Venus, found last year in the Hohle Fels cave near Schelklingen in south-west Germany, is thought to be the earliest example of its kind. The figurine is believed to be of a woman with wide thighs and protruding breasts - and a loop which could have allowed it to be kept on a chain. Other 'Venuses', which experts believe are symbols of fertility, have been found, but they belong to a much later culture called the Gravettian. Dr Nicholas Conard of Tubingen University in Germany, who described the find in the journal Nature, wrote: 'The new figurine from the Hole Fels radically changes our view of the origins of Palaeolithic art.'

(Daily Mail)