The Venus of Mauern (also: Rote von Mauern, "the red one of Mauern") is a Venus figurine from the paleolithic era. The statuette stems from the Gravettian and is about 27,000 years old. 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 excavations were led by the prehistorian Lothar Zotz from the university of Erlangen in 1948/49. The amateur archeologist Christoff von Vojkffy found the figurine in the Weinberghöhlen ("vineyard caves") near Mauern at 24 August 1948. [1] The figurine was found at the hill between cave 2 and 3.
The figurine is 7.2 centimetres (2.8 in) tall, made of limestone and is covered with red ochre. [2] The statuette can be interpreted in two ways: as a stylized depiction of a woman with large buttocks or as a penis with testicles. [3] At the upper side is a deepening, which can be interpreted as the ending of the urethra. This kind of double-sexed depiction can also be found in several other figurines of the paleolithic era, among them sculptures from Dolni Vestonice, Gönnersdorf, Nebra, Mezin (Ukraine), Milandes, Oelknitz, Savignano, Trasimeno and Trou Magrite.
Augusta Treverorum was a Roman city on the Moselle River, from which modern Trier emerged.
Johannes Gustav Riek was a German archaeologist from the University of Tübingen who worked with the SS Ahnenerbe in their excavations, and led the teams that excavated the Vogelherd Cave in 1931, the Heuneburg Tumulus burial mounds in 1937 and the Brillenhöhle 1955–63.
Gerd Zacher was a German composer, organist, and writer on music. He specialized in contemporary compositions, many of which feature extended techniques, and are written in graphic or verbal scores. He interpreted the scores of numerous contemporary composers, including John Cage, Juan Allende-Blin, Mauricio Kagel, György Ligeti, Hans Otte, Luis de Pablo, and Isang Yun. He is also known as an interpreter of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Imanuel Geiss was a German historian.
Urgesellschaft is a term that, according to Friedrich Engels, refers to the original coexistence of humans in prehistoric times, before recorded history. Here, a distinction is made between the kind of Homo sapiens as humans, who hardly differed from modern humans biologically, and other representatives of the genus Homo such as the Homo erectus or the Neanderthal. Engels claimed "that animal family dynamics and human primitive society are incompatible things" because "the primitive humans that developed out of animalism either knew no family at all or at most one that does not occur among animals". The U.S. anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan and translations of his books also make use of the term.
Geissenklösterle is an archaeological site of significance for the central European Upper Paleolithic, located near the town of Blaubeuren in the Swabian Jura in Baden-Württemberg, southern Germany. First explored in 1963, the cave contains traces of early prehistoric art from between 43,000 and 30,000 years ago, including some of the oldest-known musical instruments and several animal figurines. Because of the historical and cultural importance of these findings, in 2017 the site became part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura.
Norbert Müller-Everling is a contemporary German artist working with concrete art.
Joachim Hahn was a German archaeologist and expert on the Upper Paleolithic era.
The Venus figurines from Gönnersdorf, at Neuwied, are paleolithic sculptures depicting the female body.
Monrepos is an archaeological research centre and a museum of human behavioural evolution located at Schloss Monrepos in Neuwied. The development of our modern human behaviour in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic is studied at the research centre and the findings of these studies are conveyed to the public in the museum. Monrepos is one of the leading institutions for the research of early human history.
The Opfermoor Vogtei is an open-air museum at the location of a prehistoric and protohistoric sacrificial bog in the municipality of Vogtei, Thuringia, in Germany. It lies within the former municipality of Oberdorla, approximately 200 metres (220 yd) from Niederdorla, and the site is also known by those names.
Horst Wolfgang Böhme is a German archaeologist with a focus on Late Antiquity / Early Middle Ages and research into castles.
The Lower Germanic Limes is the former frontier between the Roman province of Germania Inferior and Germania Magna. The Lower Germanic Limes separated that part of the Rhineland left of the Rhine as well as the southern part of the Netherlands, which was part of the Roman Empire, from the less tightly controlled regions east of the Rhine.
The Neckar-Odenwald Limes is a collective term for two, very different early sections of the Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes, a Roman defensive frontier line that may have been utilised during slightly different periods in history. The Neckar-Odenwald Limes consists of the northern Odenwald Limes (Odenwaldlimes), a cross-country limes with camps, watchtowers and palisades, which linked the River Main with the Neckar, and the adjoining southern Neckar Limes (Neckarlimes), which in earlier research was seen as a typical 'riverine limes', whereby the river replaced the function of the palisade as an approach obstacle. More recent research has thrown a different light on this way of viewing things that means may have to be relativized in future. The resulting research is ongoing.
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.
The Adorant from the Geißenklösterle cave is a 42,000-to-40,000-year-old section of mammoth ivory with a depiction of a human figure, found in the Geißenklösterle cave in the Swabian Jura near Blaubeuren, Germany.
The Venus of Eliseevichi is a Venus figurine from the Epigravettian exhibited at the Hermitage Museum.
The history of Stuttgart traces its origins in the mid 10th century. However, the history of the land upon which Stuttgart stands has a far longer history dating back several thousands years to prehistoric peoples who sought the fertile soil of the Neckar river valley.
The Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura are a collection of six caves in southern Germany which were used by Ice Age humans for shelter about 33,000 to 43,000 years ago. Within the caves were found the oldest non-stationary works of human art yet discovered, in the form of carved animal and humanoid figurines, in addition to the oldest musical instruments ever found. One statuette of a female form, carved figurines of animals, musical instruments and items of personal adornment have been discovered. Some of the figurines depict creatures that are half animal, half human. Because of their testimony to the development of Paleolithic art and culture, the six caves were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2017.
The Venus of Waldstetten is an approximately 15,000 year old Venus figurine made of quartzite. The find was apparently brought to the site by people. The figure is unprocessed in its basic form, but has engravings that were clearly carried out by humans. Therefore, it is interpreted as a female figure. It is 5.8 cm long with a maximum width of 1.9 cm; 2.5 cm thick and weighs 25.3 g. The site is located at Waldstetten in the Ostalbkreis on a terrain level between the Rems Valley and the Swabian strata landscape.
