The article mentions the remarkable stability in form these figurines had, but towards the end, they started variating in an interesting way, and perhaps this variation can give us clues as to what these figurines meant.
What are we to make of this? Sheer speculation of course, but I wonder if it has something to do with those european tribes discovering that it was sex which caused pregnancy. It might seem incredible that we didn't always know this, but even into the 20th century, we were discovering cultures which hadn't made that connection yet.
So imagine you have no idea where babies come from...just every once in a while, a woman would grow a belly and start putting on fat...and a baby would come. Sexy, sacred, and mysterious...and very worthy of making artwork to celebrate.
Eventually, however, they made the connection. I think these later venus figurines are attempts to acknowledge the male role in reproduction--and also attempts to reconcile their sense of the sacred with both the godlike-power females have to produce new people, with the newly discovered godlike power males have to get females pregnant.
Perhaps it also documents the transition from female, earth-mother-based religion to the sky-daddy-based religions we've had ever since.
Specifically, the figurines tended to get more stretched out, and more abstract (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Monruz#/media/File:La...)
As this trend continued, the statues started looking less like figurines of women, and more like...phaluses, e.g. https://www.donsmaps.com/milandesvenus.html
What are we to make of this? Sheer speculation of course, but I wonder if it has something to do with those european tribes discovering that it was sex which caused pregnancy. It might seem incredible that we didn't always know this, but even into the 20th century, we were discovering cultures which hadn't made that connection yet.
So imagine you have no idea where babies come from...just every once in a while, a woman would grow a belly and start putting on fat...and a baby would come. Sexy, sacred, and mysterious...and very worthy of making artwork to celebrate.
Eventually, however, they made the connection. I think these later venus figurines are attempts to acknowledge the male role in reproduction--and also attempts to reconcile their sense of the sacred with both the godlike-power females have to produce new people, with the newly discovered godlike power males have to get females pregnant.
Perhaps it also documents the transition from female, earth-mother-based religion to the sky-daddy-based religions we've had ever since.