The Venus of Willendorf is an 11.1-centimetre-tall (4.4 in) Venus figurine estimated to have been made around 25,000–30,000 years ago. It was found on August 7, 1908, by a workman named Johann Veran or Josef Veram during excavations conducted by archaeologists Josef Szombathy, Hugo Obermaier, and Josef Bayer at a Paleolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria. It is carved from an oolitic limestone that is not local to the area, and tinted with red ochre. The figurine is now in the Natural History Museum in Vienna, Austria.
Krems an der Donau is a town of 23,992 inhabitants in Austria, in the federal state of Lower Austria. It is the fifth-largest city of Lower Austria and is approximately 70 kilometres west of Vienna. Krems is a city with its own statute, and therefore it is both a municipality and a district.
The Venus of Dolní Věstonice is a Venus figurine, a ceramic statuette of a nude female figure dated to 29,000–25,000 BCE. It was found at the Paleolithic site Dolní Věstonice in the Moravian basin south of Brno, in the base of Děvín Mountain in what is today the Czech Republic. This figurine and a few others from locations nearby are the oldest known ceramic articles in the world.
A Venus figurine is any Upper Palaeolithic statue portraying a woman, usually carved in the round. Most have been unearthed in Europe, but others have been found as far away as Siberia and distributed across much of Eurasia.
Bezirk Krems-Land is a district of the state of Lower Austria in Austria. It comprises the areas to the South, West and North of the city Krems an der Donau, which itself is a statutory city.
Josef Szombathy born Szombathy József was an Austro-Hungarian archaeologist; he was present when the Venus of Willendorf was discovered in 1908.
Paul Heinrich Adalbert Reinecke was a German prehistorian and archaeologist.
The Venus of Hohle Fels is an Upper Paleolithic Venus figurine made of mammoth ivory that was unearthed in 2008 in Hohle Fels, a cave near Schelklingen, Germany. It is dated to between 40,000 and 35,000 years ago, belonging to the early Aurignacian, at the very beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, which is associated with the earliest presence of Cro-Magnon in Europe.
The Wachau is an Austrian valley with a picturesque landscape formed by the Danube river. It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations of Lower Austria, located midway between the towns of Melk and Krems that also attracts "connoisseurs and epicureans" for its high-quality wines. It is 36 kilometres (22 mi) in length and was already settled in prehistoric times. A well-known place and tourist attraction is Dürnstein, where King Richard I of England was held captive by Leopold V, Duke of Austria. The architectural elegance of its ancient monasteries, castles and ruins combined with the urban architecture of its towns and villages, and the cultivation of vines as an important agricultural produce are the dominant features of the valley.
Franz Xaver Rudolf von Höhnel was a bryologist, mycologist, and algologist from Austria-Hungary. He was a brother of explorer Ludwig von Höhnel (1857–1942). He obtained his PhD in Strasbourg in 1877, and was a professor of botany in the Vienna University of Technology from 1884 to 1920. Höhnel described roughly 250 new genera and 500 species of fungi, and was known for his contributions to the taxonomy of the Coelomycetes. He died in Vienna on November 11, 1920.
The Venus figurines from Gönnersdorf, at Neuwied, are paleolithic sculptures depicting the female body.
The Venus of Mauern is a Venus figurine from the paleolithic era. The statuette stems from the Gravettian and is about 27.000 years of age. The figurine consists of red painted limestone and was found in 1948 in Mauern (Rennertshofen). It is housed in the Archäologische Staatssammlung in Munich.
The Venus figurines of Petersfels are several small female statuettes from the Upper Paleolithic era, carved from jet lignite. The tallest figurine is called the Venus of Engen. The figurines were discovered in the Petersfels caves near Engen, Baden-Württemberg, excavated in 1927–1932 by Eduard Peters und Volker Toepfer and then in 1974–1976 and 1978 by Gerd Albrecht. They stand between 1.5 and 4 cm tall and are about 15,000 to 11,500 years old, created during the Magdalenian era. They are housed in the Museums of Freiburg im Breisgau and Engen.
Leopold Fischer (1902-1978) was an Austrian police officer and much-awarded Pictorialist, and later, Modernist, photographer.
The Venus figurines from Zaraysk are two paleolithic sculptures of the female body. Both are made of mammoth ivory. The age of these Venus figurines is about 20.000 to 14 000 years BC; they stem from the Gravettian. Zaraysk is a Russian town located between Moscow and Ryazan. The statuettes were found in 2005 by Hizri Amirkhanov and Sergey Lev. Finds from Zaraysk show features of both the Avdeevo culture and the Kostenki culture.
Edith Kann was an Austrian teacher and botanist, specializing in phycology. She was a leading expert on blue-green algae.
Karina Grömer is an Austrian archaeologist known for her contribution to the study of archaeological textiles. She is the vice-head of the Department of Prehistory at the Natural History Museum Vienna in Austria.
Friedrich Dworschak was an Austrian numismatist and art historian, and museum director during the Nazi era.
Gerhard W. Weber is an Austrian paleoanthropologist and a founding member of the research network Human Evolution and Archaeological Sciences (HEAS) as well as the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution (ESHE). Weber is a professor at the University of Vienna's Department of Evolutionary Anthropology. He is best known for his application of virtual anthropology to early Homo sapiens and Neanderthals in Europe and the Levant. Weber also determined the origin of the Venus of Willendorf.
