最古老女性雕像出土“維納斯”豐乳肥臀

A sexually suggestive Venus figurine with oversized breasts and thighs dates back at least 35,000 years and shows ancient humans had sex on their minds, researchers said on Wednesday.

The 60-millimetre-long figurine may be the oldest piece of its kind yet discovered and suggests Palaeolithic art was far more complex than many had thought, Nicholas Conard of Tubingen University in Germany wrote in the journal Nature.

Radiocarbon dating indicates the figure excavated from an archaeological dig in southern Germany, near the Danube valley, was at least 35,000 years old, the researchers said.

"The discovery predates the well-known Venuses from the Gravettian culture by at least 5,000 years and radically changes our views of the context and meaning of the earliest Palaeolithic art," Conard wrote.

"Before this discovery ... female imagery was entirely unknown."

The figurine's enlarged breasts, bloated belly and thighs also make clear that sexual symbolism was alive and well tens of thousand of years ago, Paul Mellars of the University of Cambridge, wrote in a commentary.

"The feature of the newly discovered figure that will undoubtedly command most attention is its explicitly, almost aggressively, sexual nature, focused on the sexual characteristics of the female form," he wrote.

"Whichever way one views these representations, it is clear that the sexually symbolic dimension in European (and indeed worldwide) art has a long ancestry in the evolution of our species."

研究人員於本週三稱，一尊“豐乳肥臀”有性暗示意味的維納斯雕像近日出土，該雕像距今至少有三萬五千年，這表明遠古人類已經有了性觀念。

德國圖賓根大學的尼古拉斯•康納德在發表於《自然》雜誌的文章中稱，這尊身長60毫米的雕像或許在目前出土的同類雕像中年代最久遠，這表明舊石器時代的藝術遠比人們想象中要複雜得多。

研究人員稱，根據放射性碳年代測定法的測定結果，德國南部多瑙河流域附近的一處考古遺址中出土的這尊雕像距今至少有三萬五千年。

康納德寫道：“這尊雕像比此前出土的舊石器時代晚期著名的同類雕像還要早至少五千年，這也徹底改變了我們對舊石器時代早期藝術背景和內涵的看法。”

“在這之前，我們對那段時期的女性形象完全不清楚。”

劍橋大學的保羅•梅拉斯在評論中寫道，從這尊雕像豐滿的胸部、隆起的腹部和臀部很明顯可以看出，早在數萬年前就存在鮮明生動的性象徵。

他寫到：“毫無疑問，最新出土的這尊雕像最吸引人眼球之處就在於它直白、大膽地勾勒出女性的性本能，並突出了女性的性特徵。”

“不管從哪種角度，都能明顯看出，在人類進化史上，歐洲（乃至世界）藝術的性象徵維度歷史非常久遠。”

Vocabulary:

Palaeolithic: 舊石器時代的

radiocarbon dating：放射性碳年代測定法，也稱爲碳14年代測定法。碳14是碳的一種具放射性的同位素，半衰期長達5,730年。人們可通過測定一件古物的碳14含量，來估計它的大概年齡，這種方法稱之爲碳定年法