Gross Dudes are Everywhere

Don't know if you happened to catch this in your news feed, but the world's oldest known depiction of a human, this 35,000 year old 2 inch figurine, was recently found in south western Germany. Guess what folks, it's a lady!

This looks to me (and I am not an expert at all) like a goddess figurine. Many women's studies-inclined peeps know that some of the oldest religious artifacts found across the globe are goddess worship artifacts. If you wanna get your matriarchal studies going, I highly recommend Merlin Stone's When God Was a Woman. Basically, the theory is that a majority of pagan, pre-Judaic religions were religions that venerated women, childbirth, and big giant boobies. And that as such, the spread of Judaism and Christianity required a rejection of the female as transcendant figure. Hence patriarchy and the reason my dad was bummed when I, his first born child, was a girl. Yeah, I've got some issues.

But this figurine totally reminded me of the Goddess of Willendorf, which you might remember:
Same deal, large breasts, thunderously amazing thighs, belly with navel. Right?

Oh, don't go celebrating though, about the Venus of Hohle Fells. Because the way this story was reported, and the Cambridge archaeologist who provided some commentary, will engender thousands of eye-rolls.

Point #1 - the title of the piece, on MSNBC, by Jennifer Viegas for Discovery, is, I kid you not:

"She's Still a Pin-Up After 35,000 Years"

Really Jennifer?

Point #2 -

Although tiny — just over 2 inches long — the intentionally headless figurine is remarkably detailed, with pronounced genitalia visible between open legs. "As one male colleague remarked, nothing has changed in 40,000 years," Nicholas Conard, who reported the find and led the project, told Discovery News.

har de har har! Looks like we got ourselves a comedian! But it gets better!

"It is the oldest example of figurative art in any class, making it all the more surprising that the figurine presents such a powerful, sexually aggressive image," added Conard, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Tubingen.

Why is this image considered "aggressive"? Is it because of the boobies? Because they are large? And because she actually has a vagina? Could it be that powerful, sexual women were once worshipped or thought of as beautiful. Surprising?

Ok, so that's one douche that's involved in the find. It could be he's trying to be palatable to the media so his story gets reported. But can you believe they found another person to comment on this in the academic community who needs to be whacked on the head? You can? Oh, that's right, you probably can.

Point # 3

Paul Mellars, a University of Cambridge archaeologist who is currently at Stony Brook University's Turkana Basin Institute, wrote a commentary about the Venus that appears in the same issue of Nature. "It's at least as old as the world's oldest cave art," Mellars said, adding that viewers "can't avoid being struck by its very sexually explicit depiction of a woman. The breasts really jump out at you."

"I assume it was a guy who carved it, perhaps representing his girlfriend," he added. "Paleolithic Playboy? We just don't know how it was used at this point, but the object's size meant it fit well in someone's hand."

So instead of thinking this is a religious artifact, the conclusion is that this is spank bank material? That pagan men were jerking off to this figure? For fucking reals?

If you're interested, Paul Mellars looks like you'd expect him to:

And can be contacted here!

But really folks, poor Venus of Holhe Fells, who probably had a much cooler name originally. Once a goddess, worshipped as the embodiment of all things female (breasts of course, give life and sustenance, in addition to scaring 40 year old archaeologists). If she's at all magical and still in existence in some form, I hope she gives those dudes mystical gynecomastia.