[lombas]

6. De 'moedergodin'. Zo'n 80 beeldjes werden gevonden van vrouwelijke figuren met uitgesproken borsten, billen en buikjes. Deze zouden wel eens vroege cultussymbolen van vruchtbaarheid geweest kunnen zijn. Tannahill denkt er anders over:

"The usual argument against accepting the figurines as pictures of real people seems to have its roots in an instinctive revulsion against the physical type they represent. As Richard Lewinsohn remarks: "Sex life in the Paleolithic must have been quite unerotic, for this Venus [of Willendorf, in Austria] was no more than a lump of fat." Yet even the modern eye, conditioned by Western Culture and corsets ought to be able to recognize a family resemblance between the pendulous breasts and stomachs of the Venus statuettes and those of women in tribal societies today. The Venuses may be more generously upholstered, but they were created at a period when - because of the genetic time lag - the human figure had probably not yet adapted to the milder conditions resulting from the retreat of the ice sheets. (...) What the Venus figurines unequivocally suggest is that the Paleolithic woman of Central Europe was chubby, well-developed, and suffered from relaxed breast and abdominal muscles, perhaps as a result of frequent pregnancies.

(...)

The other theory combines the highly nubile appearance of the figurines with what is known of early humanity's tentative steps towards a formalized religion. (...) The trouble is that humanity, at this period, seems to have had very little enthusiasm for human fertility. Too many children posed more of a problem than too few. (...) If Paleolithic man was interested in fertility at all, it was in the fertility of his food animals; a pregnant cow or deer would have been a good deal more relevant than a pregnant woman."