Limestone 'Venus' 23,000 years old dug up in France

A limestone statuette of a shapely woman some 23,000 years old has been discovered in northern France in what archaeologists Thursday described as an "exceptional" find.

A person points to a 23,000 year-old chalk statue of a woman called the "Venus of Renancourt" which was found at the paleolithic site of Renancourt, France, November 27, 2014

Archaeologists stumbled on the Paleolithic-era sculpture during a dig in the summer in Amiens, the first such find in half a century.
"The discovery of this masterpiece is exceptional and internationally significant," said Nicole Phoyu-Yedid, the head of cultural affairs in the area, on showing the find to the media.
"We were expecting to find classical vestiges such as tooled flint or bones," said archaeologist Clement Paris.
But on their second day of fieldwork, the team found a pile of limestone that included fragments which did not seem natural.
"That same night we carefully pieced together the 20-odd fragments and realised it was a female statuette," he added.
Carbon-14 dating of organic material found at the site showed the statue to be 23,000 years old.
About 12 centimetres (4.7 inches) high, it shows a woman with big breasts and buttocks. The head and arms are less detailed.
"The fact that the sculpture is not totally realistic shows the intent was to produce a symbolic image of a woman linked to fecundity," Paris said.
Around 100 such figures have been found in Europe, mostly in Russia and central Europe, including around 15 in France, most of them discovered in the southwest.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-11-limestone-venus-years-dug-france.html#jCp

The most ancient form of art...by Homo Erectus

Zig-zag patterns found on a fossilised shell in Indonesia may be the earliest engraving by a human ancestor, a study has claimed.

Homo Erectus art

The engraving is at least 430,000 years old, meaning it was done by the long-extinct Homo erectus, said the study.
The oldest man-made markings previously found were about 130,000 years old.
If confirmed, experts say the findings published in the journal Nature may force a rethink of how human culture developed.
One of the report's authors, Stephen Munro, told the BBC it could "rewrite human history".

"This is the first time we have found evidence for Homo erectus behaving this way," said the researcher, from Australian National University.

'No other explanation'
Hundreds of fossilised freshwater mussel shells were excavated and collected in Java by Dutch scientist Eugene Dubois in the 1890s, then stored in boxes for years in the Dutch city of Leiden.
In May 2007, Mr Munro took photos of them as part of his research for his PhD.
The engravings stood out very clearly on the digital photos when they had not been visible to the naked eye.
Scientists found the engravings were as old as the shell, made more than 430,000 year ago
"Immediately when I saw the markings there I thought, those are human engravings, there's no other explanation," he said.
A group of scientists then worked to date the shell and check whether the engravings were as old as the shell itself.
They found the engravings were indeed made before fossilisation, when the mussel was fresh between 430,000 and 540,000 years ago.

Mr Munro said the discovery could confirm theories that Homo erectus had significant manual dexterity and greater cognitive abilities than previously thought.
"We see this type of behaviour, whether it's art or symbolic expressions, we reserve that behaviour for ourselves. As something quite uniquely human," he said.
"With this finding, we might say there are definitely difference between us and Homo erectus. But they might be more like us than we previously thought."
It is not clear whether the pattern was a form of art, or served another purpose.

Other experts expressed scepticism about the research.
John Shea, from Stony Brook University in New York, told NPR there was "nothing like it around for hundreds of thousands of years, and thousands and thousands of miles".
"If this is symbolic behaviour by Homo erectus, then it's basically the only evidence we've got for a species that lived for a million-and-a-half years on three continents," he said.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-30324599