Culture

Prehistoric women had passion for fashion

by mpress | November 13, 2007 at 05:58 am

948 views | 5 Recommendations | 1 comment

I can just see prehistoric women in mini skirts and hot pants...

The most famous early image of a human, a
woman, is the so-called "Venus" of Willendorf, found in 1908 by the
archaeologist Josef Szombathy in an Aurignacian loess deposit in a terrace about 30 meters above the Danube river near the town of Willendorf in Austria.

The earliest notice of its discovery
appeared in a report by the Yale anthropologist George Grant MacCurdy
(1863-1947) who happened to be in Vienna in the summer of 1908.
Although the greater part of the collection of finds from the site had
not yet been unpacked, MacCurdy reported excitedly that before he left
Vienna Szombathy had very kindly shown him a single remarkable specimen
- a human figurine, full length, carved out of stone.

The statuette, which measures about 11.1 centimeters in length, is now in Vienna's Naturhistorisches Museum.
It was carved from a fine porous oolitic limestone not found in the
region and so must have been brought to the area from another location.
It may well be the case that the carving, which was presumably done
with flint tools, was not done locally.

PLOCNIK, Serbia (Reuters) - If the figurines found in an ancient European settlement are any guide, women have been dressing to impress for at least 7,500 years.

Recent excavations at the site -- part of the Vinca culture which was Europe's biggest prehistoric civilization -- point to a metropolis with a great degree of sophistication and a taste for art and fashion, archaeologists say.

In the Neolithic settlement in a valley nestled between rivers, mountains and forests in what is now southern Serbia, men rushed around a smoking furnace melting metal for tools. An ox pulled a load of ore, passing by an art workshop and a group of young women in short skirts.

"According to the figurines we found, young women were beautifully dressed, like today's girls in short tops and mini skirts, and wore bracelets around their arms," said archaeologist Julka Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic.

The unnamed tribe who lived between 5400 and 4700 BC in the 120-hectare site at what is now Plocnik knew about trade, handcrafts, art and metallurgy. Near the settlement, a thermal well might be evidence of Europe's oldest spa.

"They pursued beauty and produced 60 different forms of wonderful pottery and figurines, not only to represent deities, but also out of pure enjoyment," said Kuzmanovic.

The findings suggest an advanced division of labor and organization. Houses had stoves, there were special holes for trash, and the dead were buried in a tidy necropolis. People slept on woolen mats and fur, made clothes of wool, flax and leather and kept animals.

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