first depiction of a woman

With its outsize bulbous breasts and hugely exaggerated genitalia, a statuette of a woman has pushed back the history of female figurative art by 5000 years, to at least 35,000 years ago.6-centimetre-high figurine might have been a fertility symbol. A small loop where the head should be suggests that it may have been hung on a string and worn as a pendant. He points out that the previous oldest female "Venus" figurines are from about 27,000 years ago. [more..]