The palaeolithic settlement of Dolní Věstonice in Moravia, then Czechoslovakia, now Czech Republic has been under systematic archaeological research since 1924, initiated by Karel Absolon. In addition to the Venus figurine, figures of animals - bear, lion, mammoth, horse, fox, rhino and owl - and more than 2 000 balls of burnt clay have been found at Dolní Věstonice. Elsewhere at Dolni Vestonice, a grave excavated in 1986 contained the skeletons of two young men and a woman.
The Venus of Dolni Vestonice is a Venus figurine, a ceramic statuette of a nude female figure dated to 29 000 – 25 000 BP (Gravettian industry), which was found at a Paleolithic site in the Moravian basin south of Brno. This figurine, together with a few others from nearby locations, is the oldest known ceramic in the world, predating the use of fired clay to make pottery. It has a height of 111 millimetres (4.4 in), and a width of 43 millimetres (1.7 in) at its widest point and is made of a clay body fired at a relatively low temperature.
S'Armuna. Head carved from mammoth ivory showing a person with an asymmetrical face. Dolni Vestonice This is thought to be of the woman who made all the ceramic figures from Dolní Věstonice.
The third Venus of Dolní Věstonice, made of mammoth ivory (photo property of Moravian Museum)
This may be a portrait of the person with a protruding brow whose skull was found in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1891. Since these photographs were published in the National Geographic in October 1988, and Plains of Passage was published in 1990, Jean Auel could well have used it as the model for Brugar, the person of mixed spirits described in Plains of Passage as having lived at Dolni Vestonice.
Eight centimetre high male head carved of mammoth ivory dated at 26 000 years BP.
Note that the figure has very heavy brow ridges. The figure has been stated to have a beard, but this feature is not obvious from the photographs.
Note also that Paul Bahn writing in 'Journey through the Ice Age', says that the head may be a fake. His main argument seems to be lack of provenance (meaning that it was not found by a recognised and trusted archeologist, or with reliable witnesses to the discovery) and that the style is too modern. He also says that the Lady of Brassempouy (the ivory carving of Ayla) may be a fake.
The following text is from The National Geographic October 1988, and is written by Alexander Marshack.
Alexander Marshack is a professor of Paleolithic Archaeology at Harvard University's Peabody Museum. He is amongst many other things a fine photographer and science writer
The head was an extraordinarily powerful male head with staring eyes, pinpoint holes in the irises, heavy brows, a strong upturned nose and long deeply incised hair. The smaller piece was a lock of longer hair. This lock of hair appeared to have been carved to curve around a staff.
A Czech family living in Australia, who prefer anonymity, had brought the carving to New York for Alexander Marshack to study.
This bust was discovered in the 1890s in a field near Dolni Vestonice, a village in which archaeologists, beginning in the 1920s, had found Ice Age works of art. Excavation continues there today, directed by Dr. Bohuslav Klima
Dr Klima is a distinguished researcher in prehistory, and is at present an associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Brno. He is a specialist in the Upper Palaeolithic in Central Europe, and is also the Director of the Archaeological Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Brno.
The only other human head from the Ice Age that had eye sockets, eyeballs, and lids was the realistically carved female with a bun excavated in a 26 000 year level at Dolni Vestonice. Pieces of the ivory lamellae, like layers of an onion, had flaked off, leaving an uneven surface and an unfinished look. Later when Alexander Marshack reexamined this head in Czechoslovakia, and cleaned it he found incised nostrils, a detail not noted before, that resembled the style of the male head. Were these accidental similarities or aspects of a regional Ice Age style?
His initial microscopic analysis indicated that the male head had been broken in several places, glued together, and covered with a protective coating. He was told by the owners that the piece had been dipped in horse glue, once a common method of preserving bone. The ivory had apparently been shaped with flint tools. Many grooves were striated and changed configuration as the line curved. A steel blade would not make these patterns. Some strokes were overlaid with encrustations of sand and minerals that had apparently accumulated over time. Natural cracks, also filled with minerals, crossed the engraved lines, suggesting that weathering had occurred after the piece was carved.
The bottom had been sawed horizontally at about the shoulder line. Marshack had seen fine-toothed blades from the Dolni Vestonice collection that might, when hafted, have been used to saw ivory in this way. The nostrils and eyes presented a special problem. They appeared to have been cleaned, and even recarved, and then covered with paraffin.
The protruding brow is similar to that on a skull found in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1891.
X-ray diffraction at the Peabody Museum revealed the presence of iron oxides, which give the artifact its reddish brown coloration, and fluorapatite, the result of an exchange between the ivory and minerals in the soil. Both suggest long burial in the ground.
The British Museum had seen the piece once before. In the late 1940s the museum had been asked to authenticate the piece but had to return it when the owners moved to Australia; the museum may have put the paraffin in the eyes as a preservative. Museum experts now told Marshack it would be difficult, if not impossible, to fake the complex changes that had occurred in the ivory.
Clearly the ivory needed to be dated, and, more important, the carving itself. Accelerator carbon-14 dating was not feasible because it would consume a portion of the statuette. Marshack contacted Dr. Edward Zeller, director of the Radiation Physics Lab at the University of Kansas Space Technology Center, who became intrigued with the problem. He suggested alpha-particle spectral analysis to locate radioactive elements useful in estimating age. Working with fragments at first, Ed found uranium in surprising quantities. Uranium would enter the tusk only after its burial in sediment or sand where groundwater containing traces of uranium was seeping. More startling were the high counts of radium and other radioactive products of uranium decay.
While Ed was testing, Marshack detoured to Czechoslovakia on his way to a conference in Italy. He wanted to learn about soil conditions in the area of Dolni Vestonice and confer with Dr. Klima. He learned that uranium, a valued resource after World War II, had been located in the highlands northwest of Brno. Rainwater draining these heights may have reached the lowlands where the head was reportedly found. Klima said, 'We have so many unique things from Dolni Vestonice and Brno -the 'marionette', the oldest fired clay figures, the 26 000 year old female head - it would not surprise me to find here the oldest male image.'
Back in Kansas, Ed Zeller and his associate Dr. Wakefield Dort, Jr., a Pleistocene geologist now had the carved hair piece to test. They placed it in the counting chamber of the alpha particle spectrometer for 72 hours. The final ratios of uranium to decay products suggested that the carved surface of the ivory may be about 26 000 years old.
The scientists envision this Ice Age scenario: Sometime after a mammoth died, someone carved a piece of its tusk. The carving became buried in sediment or sand, where it absorbed uranium, iron oxide, and fluoride from the groundwater. The calcium phosphate of the ivory absorbed the minerals, especially the uranium. At the same time, radioactive decay set in, leaving its by-products at levels that require thousands of years to build up to the present reading. If the head had been carved anytime in the past few centuries, the decay products on the surface would have been cut away. 'Even Madam Curie couldn't fake that effect.' Ed said. He and Dort have no doubt that the carving is ancient, but the precise age has yet to be confirmed.
Photo and text: National Geographic October 1988, photo by Alexander Marshack
In July 2008 I received this very interesting communication from Danylo Derkacz (a pseudonym):
I am a retired neuropathologist and part time forensic pathologist who has dissected and examined microscopically about 1 200 human heads and brains.
1) the ivory head is carved by someone with training and talent.
2) the head makes no sense physiologically, genetically, medically or culturally.
a) medically it represents the head of a microcephalic individual who even with today's medical and social care would not survive puberty.
b) the supraorbital ridges are those of a Neandertal but the head lacks the prognathia and recessed mentum (chin) of a Neandertal and has it protruding like that of H. sapiens sapiens.
c) the upturned nose is typical of a modern Slovyan (Slav) who at the time of discovery were considered as stupid peasants.
3) neither today nor then would any artist produce a labor intensive sculpture of a village idiot with microcephaly.
4) the nose of the ivory figure is so exaggerated that is better interpreted as that of a tertiary syphilitic which was then common in the pre-penicillin era and pre sulfonamides era.
In summary:
I think it is a first half of the 20th century fake and caricature of the fashionable (at that time) concept of Neandertals admixed with westerners as an expression of disrespect for Slavs.
(translated and abridged from the Czech by Don Hitchcock)
It is an event well remembered from earlier this year when there appeared the exceedingly strange circumstances surrounding the alleged Palaeolithic sculpture, allegedly originating from Dolní Věstonice, which very quickly gained the name 'Věstonice Venus II'.
When the statue was offered for sale overseas, at an enormously overpriced amount, police, at the request of the relevant authorities, charged with the protection of monuments and exports, seized the object from the then owner, F. Mullandrovi, and presented it for study to Prof. Dr K. Absolon, whose report was published on 23rd January 1930 by almost all daily newspapers. The report was damning with respect to its authenticity, identifying the statue as 'poor, made recently, an amateurish carved forgery' and that it should be referred for examination by a suitable criminological investigation.
Affirming this completely hostile verdict was State Conservator Dr Eng. I. L. Cervinka, as well as the Viennese Museum Director Dr Joseph Bayer of Vienna, who claim the sculpture is a 'modern, clumsy fake'.
It has been determined that the sculpture has no relationship to known Palaeolithic material, and displays a mental culture quite foreign to the period. However, because of the technical nature of the piece, by carving and scraping, there is no way to confirm or deny its Palaeolithic authenticity on this basis alone.
Posted by cassiterides (Member # 18409) on :
The Cro-Magnon head is clearly proto-Caucasoid.
Posted by AGÜEYBANÁ(Mind718) (Member # 15400) on :
^^LOL
quote:Originally posted by the lioness: In July 2008 I received this very interesting communication from Danylo Derkacz (a pseudonym):
I am a retired neuropathologist and part time forensic pathologist who has dissected and examined microscopically about 1 200 human heads and brains.
1) the ivory head is carved by someone with training and talent.
2) the head makes no sense physiologically, genetically, medically or culturally.
a) medically it represents the head of a microcephalic individual who even with today's medical and social care would not survive puberty.
b) the supraorbital ridges are those of a Neandertal but the head lacks the prognathia and recessed mentum (chin) of a Neandertal and has it protruding like that of H. sapiens sapiens.
c) the upturned nose is typical of a modern Slovyan (Slav) who at the time of discovery were considered as stupid peasants.
3) neither today nor then would any artist produce a labor intensive sculpture of a village idiot with microcephaly.
4) the nose of the ivory figure is so exaggerated that is better interpreted as that of a tertiary syphilitic which was then common in the pre-penicillin era and pre sulfonamides era.
In summary:
I think it is a first half of the 20th century fake and caricature of the fashionable (at that time) concept of Neandertals admixed with westerners as an expression of disrespect for Slavs.
Ahh yes now I remember.
Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
.
This is considered real:
________________________________________
This is considered uncertain:
possibly a straight haired Nubian?
Posted by AGÜEYBANÁ(Mind718) (Member # 15400) on :
The difference in artistry is clearly apparent.
quote:Originally posted by the lioness: .
This is considered real:
This is considered uncertain:
Posted by Simple Girl (Member # 16578) on :
quote:Originally posted by the lioness: This is considered uncertain:
possibly a straight haired Nubian?
I wouldn't say that it is considered uncertain at all. In fact it appears to be authentic according to your source. Posted by AGÜEYBANÁ(Mind718) (Member # 15400) on :
Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by AGÜEYBANÁ(Mind718): [QB] The difference in artistry is clearly apparent.
[QUOTE]Originally posted by the lioness: [qb] .
This is considered real:
Obviously the second one, speculated to by by a different artist, is much cruder than th first. the first one the sarmuna head is unaturally elongated but the eye sockets are realistically formed, skillfully formed eye area.
This is considered real. Is there other paleolithic art that has this type of anatomical accuracy around the eyes?
Posted by Simple Girl (Member # 16578) on :
quote:X-ray diffraction at the Peabody Museum revealed the presence of iron oxides, which give the artifact its reddish brown coloration, and fluorapatite, the result of an exchange between the ivory and minerals in the soil. Both suggest long burial in the ground.
quote:Clearly the ivory needed to be dated, and, more important, the carving itself. Accelerator carbon-14 dating was not feasible because it would consume a portion of the statuette. Marshack contacted Dr. Edward Zeller, director of the Radiation Physics Lab at the University of Kansas Space Technology Center, who became intrigued with the problem. He suggested alpha-particle spectral analysis to locate radioactive elements useful in estimating age. Working with fragments at first, Ed found uranium in surprising quantities. Uranium would enter the tusk only after its burial in sediment or sand where groundwater containing traces of uranium was seeping. More startling were the high counts of radium and other radioactive products of uranium decay.
quote: While Ed was testing, Marshack detoured to Czechoslovakia on his way to a conference in Italy. He wanted to learn about soil conditions in the area of Dolni Vestonice and confer with Dr. Klima. He learned that uranium, a valued resource after World War II, had been located in the highlands northwest of Brno. Rainwater draining these heights may have reached the lowlands where the head was reportedly found. Klima said, 'We have so many unique things from Dolni Vestonice and Brno -the 'marionette', the oldest fired clay figures, the 26 000 year old female head - it would not surprise me to find here the oldest male image.
quote: Back in Kansas, Ed Zeller and his associate Dr. Wakefield Dort, Jr., a Pleistocene geologist now had the carved hair piece to test. They placed it in the counting chamber of the alpha particle spectrometer for 72 hours. The final ratios of uranium to decay products suggested that the carved surface of the ivory may be about 26 000 years old.
quote:The scientists envision this Ice Age scenario: Sometime after a mammoth died, someone carved a piece of its tusk. The carving became buried in sediment or sand, where it absorbed uranium, iron oxide, and fluoride from the groundwater. The calcium phosphate of the ivory absorbed the minerals, especially the uranium. At the same time, radioactive decay set in, leaving its by-products at levels that require thousands of years to build up to the present reading. If the head had been carved anytime in the past few centuries, the decay products on the surface would have been cut away. 'Even Madam Curie couldn't fake that effect.' Ed said. He and Dort have no doubt that the carving is ancient, but the precise age has yet to be confirmed.
Posted by Simple Girl (Member # 16578) on :
quote: The only other human head from the Ice Age that had eye sockets, eyeballs, and lids was the realistically carved female with a bun excavated in a 26 000 year level at Dolni Vestonice. Pieces of the ivory lamellae, like layers of an onion, had flaked off, leaving an uneven surface and an unfinished look. Later when Alexander Marshack reexamined this head in Czechoslovakia, and cleaned it he found incised nostrils, a detail not noted before, that resembled the style of the male head. Were these accidental similarities or aspects of a regional Ice Age style?
Posted by cassiterides (Member # 18409) on :
15,000 year old portaits from La Marche, France:
Posted by the lioness (Member # 17353) on :
quote:Originally posted by Simple Girl:
quote: The only other human head from the Ice Age that had eye sockets, eyeballs, and lids was the realistically carved female with a bun excavated in a 26 000 year level at Dolni Vestonice. Pieces of the ivory lamellae, like layers of an onion, had flaked off, leaving an uneven surface and an unfinished look. Later when Alexander Marshack reexamined this head in Czechoslovakia, and cleaned it he found incised nostrils, a detail not noted before, that resembled the style of the male head. Were these accidental similarities or aspects of a regional Ice Age style?
If this is the case the scuptures from Dolni Vestonice in general are not totally similar to other paleolithic art.
It comes down to guessing if these two heads could have been made by the same person. There is some similarity in the realisitic anatomy around the eyes.
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
