My Encounter with the Venus of Dolní Věstonice by Ivy Helman.

Marija Gimbutas, in her book Language of the Goddess, mentions only one goddess figurine from what was, at the time of her writing, Czechoslovakia (pages 31-32).  That figurine comes from Předmosti, in the very eastern part of what is now the Czech Republic.  However, there are more, and I would like to introduce you to the one that I encountered during a visit to another part of the Czech Republic several weeks ago.

Meet what Czechs refer to as the Venus of Dolní Věstonice.  There is not a lot of information about her, so I have pieced together what I can find.  Said to be the oldest known fired terracotta figurine (some 29,000 years old), she was first unearthed in 1925.  She was found broken into two pieces at the site of the Stone Age settlement known as Dolní Věstonice, in the southeastern part of the Czech Republic.  This settlement, according to Archeo Park Pavlov, was part of the Pavlovian culture, a Stone Age culture local to the area.  

Author’s photograph of a replica of the Venus on display at Archeo Park Pavlov.
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