The statue of “Venus of Wallendorf”, about 11 cm high, from Wallendorf (Austria), is one of the oldest and most important examples of early human art in Europe.

The famous Paleolithic figurines, known as “Venus” statues, come in the form of obese or pregnant women. Most of these statues date back to between 26,000 and 21,000 years ago, and were found in 1908.

It was not clear before where the rocky material called “oolite”, from which the statues were made, came from, as it is not found in and around Wallendorf, as the purpose of these statues and what they refer to, constituted a puzzle for scientists for many years.

Now, a research team led by anthropologist Gerhard Weber of the University of Vienna, geologists Alexander Lockender and Mathias Hartzhauser and prehistoric Walberga Antel-Weiser of the Natural History Museum in Vienna, with the help of high-resolution tomography, has discovered that the material from which the Venus statues were carved is from She probably came from northern Italy. This sheds new light on the intriguing mobility of early modern humans south and north of the Alps.

It is noteworthy that the statues of “Venus and Wallendorf” are not only distinguished in terms of their design, but also in terms of the material from which they are made.

While other forms of Venus are usually made of ivory or bone, and sometimes of various stones as well, olite was used in Lower Austria and is unique to such cult objects.

The statue, found in Wachow in 1908 and on display in the Natural History Museum in Vienna, has so far only been examined from the outside.

And now, more than 100 years later, anthropologist Gerhard Weber of the University of Vienna has used a new method to examine its interior: computed tomography.

In several passes, the scientists obtained images with a resolution of 11.5 micrometers – a quality that can only be seen under a microscope.

The first observations were that “Venus does not look uniform at all on the inside. A distinctive feature can be used to determine its origin,” says the anthropologist.

Together with geologists Alexander Lochander and Mathias Hartzhauser of the Natural History Museum in Vienna, who had previously worked with oolites, the team purchased comparative rock samples from France to eastern Ukraine and Germany to Sicily, and evaluated them under a microscope.

Tomography data from the statues of “Venus” showed that sediments accumulated in the rocks of various densities and sizes.

In between, there were also small remnants of shells and six very dense and large grains, called limonites, the latter, explaining the previously mysterious hemispherical cavities on the surface of “Venus” of the same diameter, and “the hard spheres likely formed when the creator of the statue was carving it.” Weber explains. “In the case of Venus’ belly button, he seems to have made it an advantage out of necessity.”

The scientists also found that “the oleic Venus figurines are porous because the nuclei of the millions of ooides that make up them have faded away. This is a wonderful explanation for why the master sculptor chose this material 30,000 years ago, as it is much easier to work with.”

The scientists also identified the remains of small shells measuring only 2.5 mm in length, dating back to the Jurassic period. This excluded all other possible deposits of rocks from the late Miocene geological period, such as those in the nearby Vienna Basin.

The research team also analyzed the grain sizes of the other samples. Hundreds, even thousands of grains were examined and measured using image-processing software or even manually. None of the samples matched within a radius of 200 km from Wallendorf.

Finally, the analysis showed that samples taken from “Venus” are statistically indistinguishable from samples from a site in northern Italy near Lake Garda. This is remarkable because it means that “Venus” (or at least its substance) began a journey from the south of the Alps to the Danube River north of the Alps.

Statistics clearly point to northern Italy as the origin of Olite “Venus”. However, another interesting place of the rock’s origin is located in eastern Ukraine, more than 1,600 linear kilometers from Wallendorf.

And the samples there do not fit clearly with the samples from Italy, but they are better than the rest of the samples approved in the study.

Venus of #willendorf material likely came from northern #Italy. High-resolution tomographic images highlight sediments deposited in the rocks where its stone came from. #archaeologyhttps://t.co/0HY6JYJG79 pic.twitter.com/kLc8oaay3G

— Archaeology & Arts (@archaiologia_en) March 1, 2022