Talk:Venus of Willendorf

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A coxcomb has suppressed the date of the discovery of this statuette. Does that person think such information is irrelevant? The brief aside "akin to Gaia" has also been suppressed. May we be permitted any reference to Gaia in this context, even to deny any connection? Think of the reader. --Wetman 06:03, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The date is still in the first sentence, and Earth Mother redirects to Gaia (mythology), so perhaps the edit wasn't as bad as it initially looked. —No-One Jones ^(m) 06:19, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

User:Wetman is apparently going around and complaining about my edits (and removing some of them completely without trying to come to any improvement). The date was in fact already mentioned, and "akin to Gaia" is a horribly generalized and poor comparison, as the mythological Gaia bears no resemblence to this figurine. As far as the "coxcomb" bit goes, personally insulting other editors is a no-no in general, and probably something to avoid if for no other reason than to save face when it turns out the changes actually make sense. DreamGuy 18:05, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

"Others have raised the possibility that it was designed to be inserted vaginally, perhaps as a fertility charm, to become pregnant."

This bit needs a reference! The vaginal insertion really seems vandalism to me, as is. Giacomo

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"A possible purpose of this sculpture is far more mundane, indeed. In the paleolithic times, food would have been such a scarce commodity that any excess of weight in the human body would be looked upon with shock. This statue may merely be one artist's recording of such an extraordinary individual."

All we know for certain is that the food supply back then was sufficient (since we're around nowadays, duh), and we also have no idea whether humanity back then was as easily shockable about fat woman as modern society appears to be.

As for the Venus being an 'extraordinary individual' -- I am going to demonstrate to you that this is unlikley:

If you look at the Venus, she isn't that outrageous obsese, just looks like a normal fat woman who has a BMI of about 38 and big boobs of about JJ cup size (boobs are not fat tissue but mainly mammary glands and the size does not change dramatically with weight gain or loss either, but is more determined by genetics and nursing). That together with the raised vulva could possibly point towards it being connected with fertility. It could also be a yardstick to show women how fat they should be before winter starts, let's do some comparions and sums:

The venus looks a little fatter than me, but not by much. In fact, I very much look like the venus when nekkid, so, let's take me as a living example :) I'm 1.56m and weigh 90kg, and I'm 42 years old. My 'fat-free' weight is 58kg, so, I have 32kg extra on my ribs. I need about 2500 calories a day when I'm active. I have spare 32*7700 calories = 246400 calories, which is only 100 days supply if there is complete starvation, 200 days if I have enough stores to provide 1250 calories daily. 100 days is 3 month -- so, I could survive one winter if the supplies were lost (bears, other tribes etc). So, given this, one could claim that the Venus actually has the ideal figure for survival ;) Btw, if the Venus was nursing a babe or small toddler (highly likely back then) her calorie requirement would be far higher, and so, the estimate of 100 days is rather conservative.

Cinnamon

Ps.: The article is rather judgemental about what constitutes 'ugly' -- please let people decide for themselves if they think it is ugly or not! (I'm here because a customer ordered a pendant that looks like her, so, someone somewhere is still enjoying the art enough to order one at great expense from my studio, so don't knock it! :) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.45.218.135 (talk • contribs) 12 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Calling her Venus

This was not the name for the piece before it was found. Someone named it Venus simply because it is female.