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A 40,000 year old, ca. four inch high ivory carving of a female form, found in far southwestern mountains in Germany in September 2008, thought to be the oldest known human representative figure yet found by archeologists, will be unveiled this week in Tübingen.

Archeologist Nicholas Conard hypothesizes that because this and other numerous ivory carvings, as well as the earliest musical instrument found come from the area known as the Schwaebisch Alps, that this could mean that the area gave birth to the first ever world “culture,” according to the late 19th and early 20th century definition of culture. To date, all other carvings from this early era are of animals.

Stunningly, in print the discoverers have continued to refer to the carving as a “Venus” figurine. Using the term “Venus” to describe all prehistoric female figures is a practice that has been forcefully discredited over the past forty years, for two main reasons. Venus as an artistic and literary reference was a Victorian-era euphemism for sexually provocative, thus irrelevantly codifying the sexual projections of the early scientists. Also, as a goddess of the Roman pantheon, Venus post-dates this prehistoric art work by several thousand years, making such a reference anachronistic. While the finders admitted they did not know for what purpose the piece was created, they did not fail to characterize the piece as “undoubtedly representing a fertility object,” which is perhaps the most unexamined and oft-repeated cliche in the entire history of archeology as a science. How the object can, without question, be labelled a so-called “fertility object,” without a single definition of the meaning or intent of fertility as an abstract concept to these people is a question that remains unanswered.

The piece is highly detailed and intricately carved, and its finders are happy and excited. Said Conard, “This piece radiates energy and is impressive.” As with many other prehistoric carvings which may have simultaneously represented women and deities, this carving focuses on her breasts and stylized pubic area, while her arms and legs are less detailed, and her head is missing. Because the piece was found compacted with material, 20 meters from the cave entrance, scientists believe her missing parts may yet be found.

With a shocking hubris, yet presumably because the carving shows an abstracted vulva, Conard’s colleague Paul Mellars stated that the figure’s “design bordered on modern pornography.” While modern pornography generally has the intention of raising sexual excitement in a passive viewer, the said figurine shows no perceivably provocative display associated with such. Mistaking a simply carved, unclothed, 40,000 year old female form with an external and conscious attempt to arouse him, Mellars makes the same misinterpretation his 19thc, pre-psychology predecessors made: he has projected his own contemporary sexual identification on a 40,000 year old culture whose expression of 21st century “pornography” can only be said to exist in fantasy.

Mellars’ stupid and prurient comment, then, printed in the journal Nature, repeated in Yahoo news and in countless regional newspapers, can only be assumed to have had the self-conscious intention of ensuring its publication and wide dissemination.