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Oolite limestone11/2/2022 ![]() “Even if we cannot claim with absolute certainty that the raw material of the Venus originates from a particular locality, the match between the Venus and Sega di Ala samples is almost perfect and suggests a very high probability for the raw material to come from south of the Alps,” the team noted. Though the Ukrainian oolite match is not as strong, the Venus of Willendorf is extremely similar in form to younger Venus figures found in Ukraine and Russia, suggesting a possible connection. While the researchers are almost certain the Venus came from the Lake Garda location, they also found compelling evidence for an origin in eastern Ukraine. What’s more, the team identified a tiny fragment of a mollusk shell inside the figurine that dated back to the Jurassic period, which also matched the age of the deposit at Sega di Ala and eliminated many other sites that were much younger. The northern Italian location, called Sega di Ala, “intermingled perfectly with the Venus samples,” the researchers noted in the study. The team then compared the rock in the Venus to oolite deposits across a huge swath of Europe, from France in the west to Ukraine in the east, and from Germany in the north to Sicily in the south. In order to track down the figurine’s home while preserving its integrity, Weber and his colleagues scanned the Venus with advanced tomography that enabled them to pinpoint details at resolutions of just 11 microns, which is about the size of a red blood cell. Because the oolite doesn’t seem to match rock deposits near Willendorf, the origin of the Venus has remained an open question, in part because its exceptional nature has prevented invasive techniques that might answer this riddle but would leave the object damaged. ![]() The Venus of Willendorf, however, stands out as the only such figurine to be made of oolite, which is a sedimentary limestone made up of spherical grains of different sizes. Similar buxom figurines, which are reminiscent of fertility goddesses and are normally made of ivory and bone, are plentiful in the prehistoric archaeological record across Europe. OOLITE LIMESTONE SERIES“The travel of the Venus or its material from northern Italy to the Danube is more likely the outcome of a series of undirected incidents which may have required years or even generations” and that “could have started as early as 31,000 years ago.” “A rapid transport from northern Italy to Lower Austria within months would probably have been technically possible, but would rather require a purposeful motivation behind the journey, which seems questionable,” the researchers added. “However, independent of the location of origin, we can state with certainty that its individual owners kept and protected it en route.” “The exact time when the Venus was created or its material collected and transported is unknown,” Weber and his colleagues said in the study. ![]() ![]() ![]() The new research suggests that the crafters of this iconic object, a hunter-gatherer culture known as the Gravettian people, traveled hundreds of miles across the treacherous landscape of Europe before the last ice age, though the team noted that it’s unclear what might have prompted such a journey. Researchers led by Gerhard Weber, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Vienna, believe they have matched the figurine’s limestone with a location near Lake Garda in northern Italy, revealing the likely origin of “one of the most famous signs of early modern human symbolic behavior,” according to a study published on Monday in Scientific Reports. ![]()
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