This episode features some sensitive material about sexual coercion and exploitation that may be uncomfortable for some.

Listener, discretion, is advised.

She was tiny. She was captivating, and she was also very, very old. When Johann Vernon plucked her

from the Danube River soil near the village of Willendorf in Austria, he knew that she was something

special. Standing at four and a half inches tall, he held her in the palm of his hand. She had a

ruddy tint to her, braided hair,

and a big belly. At tens of thousands of years old, she became one of the oldest known

Paleolithic artifacts. And she's not alone. In fact, she's one of dozens of similar figurines

that archaeologists have found. But who was she? Really?

Maybe she was modeled after a living woman. Maybe she was a self-portrait of the artist.

Some have even suggested that her wide hips and large breasts suggest that she was a fertility

fetish. It's hard to say. We can never really know the truth.

You see, archaeology is a discipline of best guesses. It has long been the purview of

dominating cultures who throughout history have taken their shovels, their dynamite, and their

packing crates, and help themselves to whatever they wanted. This means that the interpretations

of the objects and the stories we tell about them are always filtered through a contemporary lens.

So when archaeologists looked at this pint-sized woman, they just couldn't help but project

their ideas and beliefs about sexuality and beauty onto her. They gave her a name,

the Venus of Willendorf. And that name, Venus, is a very specific choice. It was meant to

evoke a particular image, the goddess of beauty, and the white marble bodies so favored by

the Greco-Roman elite and Renaissance painters. But our Venus, tiny, red, and round,

stands in stark relief to this more contemporary Western idea of beauty. They are total opposites.

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