Prehistoric Venus Figures and Vulva Paintngs

The vulvas of Tito Bustillo















By Marianna Beck and Jack Hafferkamp

How old is porn?

From the record, it would seem to be very old indeed. It goes back about as far as art itself.

In prehistoric art, it is not unusual to find images of vulvas either carved or painted on cave walls.

These red painted vulvas are found at Tito Bustillo in Spain. They most likely date from the Magdelanian period, 18,000 years ago to the beginning of the ice age 10,000 years ago.

Prehistoric art included small pieces that could be carried from place to place. Often these pieces had an erotic quotient. Venus figurines reflect the enormous diversity in subject matter, use, and date of creation.

For example, the Venus of Galgenberg is considered to be one of the world’s oldest statues. Created around 32 000 years ago and found in 1988 in Austria, it is thought to be of a woman dancing.





Venus of Galgenberg














The so-called Venus Immudique is an example of how cultural attitudes and sexism of the time inform the artifact.


Venus Impudique



Consider the word “venus” that describes these figures. It was first used in a kind of mocking irony by the discoverer of what was then the first Venus figure to be found. It was discovered in France in the 1860s. As you can see, she’s a headless and armless ivory statuette.

Interestingly, she also looks like a dildo. The discoverer named her the Venus Impudique or Immodest Venus, first as a playful reversal of the Venus Pudica used to describe a statue type of the Classical Venus that shows, in many statues the goddess attempting to conceal her breasts and pubic area from view. Does the faceless demeanor indicate a conscious desire to not represent individuality because of its sacredness?


While the Venus of Willendorf is by no means the oldest example of portable art found in Europe, she is probably the most famous of the 200 or so female figures that have been found across Europe.

Discovered in 1908 near the Danube in Willendorf, Austria, this five-inch limestone figure was at first assumed to be about 10,000-15,000 years old. But in 1990, with more precise and reliable radiocarbon dating, she is now estimated to be somewhere between 24,000-26,000 years old. That puts her smack dab in the middle of the Gravettian Period (28,000-22,000 years ago) – a time from which many Venus figures stem.


Venus of Willendorf




Found in 1922 in the Rideaux cave of Lespugue in the foothills of the Pyrenees, the six-inch Venus of Lespugue figure is carved from a fragment of mammoth ivory tusk, of which much of the front portion has been restored.



Venus of Lespugue


About 23,000 years old, it is yet another example of a Venus figure that raises more questions than it answers. Is this swollen body with its egg-shaped parts an exaggerated celebration of fertility, a portable amulet of power, a portrayal of a priestess? Is she a depiction of how men viewed women and thus a culturally idealized view of female beauty? Certainly given the Ice Age climate, fat would have been critical to survival.


Although the game hunted for food was a reoccurring subject in cave painting, so was the female sex organ. To our way of thinking these two themes convey something fundamental about what was important to the artists who created these works.

The meaning of depicting game is fairly easy to comprehend. The meaning or meanings of female figures is less easily understood in our contemporary context. But that there was an erotic component is hard to deny – and it says something about what was important to the artists who created these works