Oldest Naked Woman Sculpture Discovered, Obsession With Sex Goes Back 35,000 Years

Live Science:

If human culture seems obsessed with sex lately, it's nothing new. Archaeologists have discovered the oldest known artistic representation of a woman - a carved ivory statue of a naked female, dating from 35,000 years ago.

Read the whole story: Live Science

Comments

[Malkin71]

09:30 AM on 05/14/2009

I wish all of the feminists I argued with on the "Hip to Strip..." article about whether sex drive is a hardwired biological thing....could tell me why I'm still wrong...

[CharlieMarlowe]

06:41 AM on 05/15/2009

Don't sweat it. Feminists here are claiming that these figures show that women used to be worshipped as goddesses. No-goddesses were worshipped as goddesses-ordinary women, and that means most women, were not worshipped. The same with men. Some men were revered as living gods, the vast majority of men lived ordinary lives of "quiet desperation"

[thebanana]

09:23 AM on 05/14/2009

Wow, we were interested in sex even bfeore the dinosaurs roamed the earth? Who knew?

[Diogenis]

09:13 AM on 05/14/2009

This is by far the most stupid article I have ever read.

[jaschrod]

08:55 AM on 05/14/2009

But, how can that be? Do not the christians believe that man has only existed for somewhere around 6,000 years, doggonit.

[hackerblaster]

09:44 AM on 05/14/2009

First thing I thought. How do they forward an article like this to their friends? More lies from science? It must be really hard sometimes to close your eyes and keep chanting "you didn't see that..you believe in god..." over and over.

[camper65]

10:45 AM on 05/14/2009

You really ought to heed the dichotomy in the lyrics of a Blood, Sweat and Tears song: "I swear there ain't no heaven and I pray there ain't no Hell." You better be right.

[RobertHenryEller]

06:46 AM on 05/14/2009

I suspect the obsession with sex goes back a bit futher than 35,000 years. Or there would not have been anyone around 35,000 years ago to be obessed about sex.

And it's not an obsession, it's a drive. We don't control it. It controls us.

[AgeofReason]

09:13 AM on 05/14/2009

AMEN! This is exactly what I was thinking as I read this article!

[Pantelleria01]

06:13 AM on 05/14/2009

People are blind......... This is clearly a man and a woman. there are two heads and she is embracing a man who is coupling with her. I am a sculptor and there is no question that this is TWO people......how strangely blind people are. What a great little carving.

[gayleg]

07:24 AM on 05/14/2009

You're right.
At least that's what the photo looks like. It's a cool little sculpture. Sweet. Not anything like porn.

[Ed438]

08:31 AM on 05/14/2009

Breaking story!!! Stop the presses!!!!

Seriously, I have to agree that it's a couple. I don't know why all these "experts" seem unable to observe what is in front of them.

[Macready]

06:05 AM on 05/14/2009

we have seen these fertility figures before . . . they could have been used in a number of ways . . . to ensure fertility for the species, for crops . . for rebirth the continued regeneration of life . . .just as an aside I have always found it iodd that these "fertility" figures seem to depict a middle aged woman's figure rather than that of a young woman . . who would be more fertile than the older woman . . .

[CharlieMarlowe]

09:32 AM on 05/14/2009

One researcher has a hypothesis that these "fat" figures" are depictions of people suffering from a thyroid problem. He says that people who lived in inland areas had iodine deficiencies, the result of which were these kind of "bloated" bodies. Also, these might not be fertility figures at all. It is a popluar idea to call them such, but we really don't know the purpose for which these works were created.

[Macready]

10:49 AM on 05/14/2009

I hadn't heard about the thyroid theory . . .

you are right of course we don't know if they were fertility figures . . . that is just conjecture . . .

[yappnmutt]

03:54 AM on 05/14/2009

pornography wasn't the first successful business on the net by accident. its no surprise it was the first thing on the human mind, period. the nonsense about fertility gods somehow serving some higher purpose is nonsense. its always been about the need to connect tab a with slot b. if it was just about fertility it wouldn't feel sooo good.

[ThankGodhesgone]

02:55 AM on 05/14/2009

Do some research. Jumpingcholla is correct. This is not about sex or porn. It is a representation of the mother goddess.

She represents fertility and was worshipped by many cultures long before any Christian, male diety.

[PoohBear]

02:42 AM on 05/14/2009

"The figure is explicitly - and blatantly - that of a woman, with an exaggeration of sexual characteristics (large, projecting breasts, a greatly enlarged and explicit vulva, and bloated belly and thighs) that by twenty-first-century standards could be seen as bordering on the pornographic,"

So in other words, porn is completely normal and has been going on for many thousands of years. Just as I suspected.

[DC]

03:15 AM on 05/14/2009

That is not a definition of pornographic, but perhaps erotic.

Pornography may be violent, is often ugly and always dehumanizing.

Big difference.

[Malkin71]

02:35 PM on 05/14/2009

"Porn...is...always dehumanizing."

Please explain this statement.

[gayleg]

07:27 AM on 05/14/2009

This is not pornographic at all. Though I suspect that's why it's getting publicity. It defend porn as somehow natural.

Baloney.

I don't see how it proves any "obsession" either.

[JumpingCholla]

02:37 AM on 05/14/2009

It's a goddess figure, not an early version of Playboy. What a pathetic article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_goddess

[peterg76]

02:33 AM on 05/14/2009

I'm pretty sure sex has been an obsession since the first sexually-reproducing organisms, 6 or 7 hundred million years ago.

[jaschrod]

08:58 AM on 05/14/2009

The sexual climax is the most intense emotion/feeling we have in the body, as proclaimed by science.

[camper65]

10:48 AM on 05/14/2009

You need SCIENCE to tell you that? I pity you.

[Steamboater]

01:17 AM on 05/14/2009

This ain't science. Where do they get the notion that this means that anyone was obsessed with sex? This means as much an obsession with sex as do the figures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Maybe it all has to do with an obession for life. The only one obsessed with sex is the one who wrote that piece.

[DC]

03:15 AM on 05/14/2009

Exactly.

[Rjchinook]

01:16 AM on 05/14/2009

And I see the Virgin Mary in piece of toast and Mickey Mouse in the clouds.

[mcle3002]

12:48 AM on 05/14/2009

I would say that the "obsession" with sex started a lot longer than 35,000 years ago. Hence we exist.

[3dtrix]

01:27 AM on 05/14/2009

My dad was a salesman - he always used to say that sex was popular because it was centrally located...