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Published online 13 May 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.473
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Ancient Venus rewrites history books
Female figure was carved from a mammoth tusk 35,000 years ago.
A 35,000-year-old prehistoric sculpture of an exaggerated female form found in Germany could be mankind's earliest artistic attempt to represent itself.
The Hohle Fels Venus, uncovered at the cave that shares her name in the southwest province of Swabia, is a 6-centimetre long depiction of a woman carved from mammoth ivory.
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RE: The Origins of Spirituality and Sexuality!? -- From a paleo-psychological perspective, this symbolic "figurative art" or "idolatry arts" shows that our propensities and imaginative drives for spirituality and sexuality are innate in nature (all driven by our hormones and neurotransmitters within); and they all began to culturally and mentally express, identify, communicate, and organize in our ancestral hominids of hunter-gatherers over 50 thousand years ago. However, because of our subsequent emergence of the "male" dominancy and its survival values and powers (physical, intellectual, and spiritual -- while emotionally repressed), all the world "religions" must have had been created and organized in and by and around a patriarchal-hierarchical order of religious shamans, faithful followers, families, relatives, clans, tribes, monarchies, nations, etc such as the Catholic papacy; the Grand Ayatollah; the Dalai Lama; etc. Whereas for any religions to be relevant in our evermore open and democratic societies today, their universal humanitarian teachings and doctrines must now begin to consider and delve into the deepest/highest of our innate spirituality and sexuality in tandem, in harmony, in universality, and in equity worldwide. In short, for more discussions on these matters, please see my book "Gods, Genes, Conscience" linked below; Chapter 5: The Origins of Gods; Chapter 4.10: Sexuality, Spirituality, Maturity, and Responsibility; and Chapter 14: Sexuality, Spirituality, and Mind. -- Best wishes, Mong 5/16/9usct2:43p; author "Decoding Scientism" and "Consciousness & the Subconscious" (works in progress since July 2007), "Gods, Genes, Conscience" (2006: http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0595379907 ) and "Gods, Genes, Conscience: Global Dialogues Now" (blogging avidly since 2006: http://www2.blogger.com/profile/18303146609950569778 ).
Probably, it is simply a woman in the first stage of childbirth. Procreation is likely to have been much more important to them than the instant and pointless gratification implied by the "pornography" suggestion. I would suspect these people, always on the knife-edge of survival, had to have their priorities right.