The 25,000-year-old statuette, one of the most important prehistoric finds, was found in 1908 near Vienna. Until now the origin of the stone in which it was made was not known
The rock in which the Venus of Willendorf was made probably came from Northern Italy, from the area of Lake Garda. This was discovered by a research group of the University of Vienna led by anthropologist Gerhard Weber and geologists Alexander Lukeneder and Mathias Harzhauser. The Venus of Willendorf, made about 25 thousand years ago, is one of the most important finds dating back to the Paleolithic and is part of the collection of “Venus”, about thirty, discovered in various parts of Europe and which recall the devotion of a “goddess mother »for human and nature fertility rites.
Oolite
It was discovered in 1908 during archaeological excavations not far from Vienna. The exhibit, just over 11 centimeters high, is kept at the Vienna Museum of Natural Sciences. The other “venus”, however, are made of ivory or bone, while that of Willendorf has been excavated in an oolite, a well-known sedimentary rock that originates in basins of warm and shallow tropical waters in which spheres of smaller diameter are formed. to 2 millimeters for deposition of calcium carbonate around a micronucleus. But this stone is not present in an area with a radius of 200 kilometers around Willendorf. Where did it come from? It has never been known until today, also because the analyzes had been made only outside the artefact, from an artistic-archaeological point of view.
The shell fragment
Weber and his team used computed microtomography and uncovered details never imagined. Scientists have had oolite samples sent from various locations, from France to Ukraine, from Germany to Sicily, to find the one closest to the Venus stone. In addition, a fragment of a fossil shell dating back to the Jurassic was identified in the head. This made it possible to date the stone, excluding many deposits of origin. In the end, the most probable one remained, near Lake Garda.
How did it arrive?
A discovery that opens up new questions: how did you cross the Alps at a time when the glacial phase was at its peak? It is speculated that the hunter-gatherer people who created it, chasing their prey, may have circled the mountain range from the east, a path that may have lasted generations. There is another hypothesis: the arrival from eastern Ukraine, where there is an oolite compatible with that of Willendorf, with a distance of 1,600 kilometers.
The Venus of Willendorf and Ötzi: no link
The Venus of Willendorf has nothing to do with Ötzi, the mummy of the Similaun, which is much more recent: it dates back to around 5,300 years ago. Scholars have also discovered the origin of the mysterious “holes” on the surface of the statuette. They were nuclei of limonite, a red iron oxide, embedded in the stone and which made it easier to model. Also for this reason this particular rock was chosen by the Palaeolithic artist who created it 25 thousand years ago.
March 1, 2022 (change March 1, 2022 | 18:44)
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