Female figurine from the Hohle Fels cave near Stuttgart, about 35,000 years old. Interpreted as a pornographic pin-up.
âThe Earliest Pornographyâ says Science Now, describing the 35,000 year old ivory figurine thatâs been dug up in a cave near Stuttgart. The tiny statuette is of a female with exaggerated breasts and vulva. According to Paul Mellars, one of the archaeologist twits who commented on the find for Nature, this makes the figurine âpornographic.â Nature is even titling its article, âPrehistoric Pin Up.â Itâs the Venus of Willendorf double standard all over again. Ancient figures of naked pregnant women are interpreted by smirking male archaeologists as pornography, while equally sexualized images of men are assumed to depict gods or shamans. Or even hunters or warriors. Funny, huh?
Consider: phallic images from the Paleolithic are at least 28,000 years old. Neolithic cultures all over the world seemed to have a thing for sculptures with enormous erect phalluses. Ancient civilizations were awash in images of male genitalia, from the Indian lingam to the Egyptian benben to the Greek herm. The Romans even painted phalluses on their doors and wore phallic charms around their necks.
Ithyphallic figure from Lascaux, about 17,000 years old. Interpreted as a shaman.
But nobody ever interprets this ancient phallic imagery as pornography. Instead, itâs understood to indicate reverence for male sexual potency. No one, for example, has ever suggested that the Lascaux cave dude was a pin-up; heâs assumed to be a shaman. The ithyphallic figurines from the Neolithic â and there are many â are interpreted as gods. And everyone knows that the phalluses of ancient India and Egypt and Greece and Rome represented awesome divine powers of fertility and protection. Yet an ancient figurine of a nude woman â a life-giving woman, with her vulva ready to bring forth a new human being, and her milk-filled breasts ready to nourish that being â is interpreted as pornography. Just something for a man to whack off to. Itâs not as if thereâs no other context in which to interpret the figure. After all, the European Paleolithic is chock full of pregnant-looking female statuettes that are quite similar to this one. By the time we get to the Neolithic, the naked pregnant female is enthroned with lions at her feet, and itâs clear that people are worshipping some kind of female god.
Yet in the Science Now article, the archaeologist who found the figurine is talking about pornographic pin-ups: âI showed it to a male colleague, and his response was, âNothingâs changed in 40,000 years.ââ That sentence needs to be bronzed and hung up on a plaque somewhere, because you couldnât ask for a better demonstration of the classic fallacy of reading the present into the past. The archaeologist assumes the artist who created the figurine was male; why? He assumes the motive was lust; why? Because thatâs all he knows. To his mind, the image of a naked woman with big breasts and exposed vulva can only mean one thing: porn! Porn made by men, for men! And so he assumes, without questioning his assumptions, that the image must have meant the same thing 35,000 years ago. No other mental categories for ânaked womanâ are available to him. His mind is a closed box. This has been the central flaw of anthropology for as long thereâs been anthropology. And even before: the English invaders of North America thought the Iroquois chiefs had concubines who accompanied them everywhere, because they had no other mental categories to account for well-dressed, important-looking women sitting in a council house. Itâs the same fallacy that bedevils archaeologists who dig up male skeletons with fancy beads and conclude that the society was male dominant (because powerful people wear jewelry!), and at another site dig up female skeletons with fancy beads and conclude that this society, too, was male dominant (because women have to dress up as sex objects and trophy wives!). Male dominance is all they can imagine. And so no matter what they dig up, they interpret it to fit their mental model. Itâs the fallacy that also drives evolutionary psychology, the central premise of which is that human beings in the African Pleistocene had exactly the same values, beliefs, prejudices, power struggles, goals, and needs as the middle-class white professors and students in a graduate psychology lab in modern-day Santa Barbara, California. And that these same factors are universal and unchanged and true for all time.
Hohle Fels phallus, about 28,000 years old. Interpreted as a symbolic object and âŠflint knapper. Yes.
Thatâs not science; itâs circular, self-serving propaganda. This little figurine from Hohle Fels, for example, is going to be used as âproofâ that pornography is ancient and natural. I guarantee it. Having been interpreted by pornsick male archaeologists as pornography because thatâs all they know, the statuette will now be trotted out by every every psycho and male supremacist on the planet as âproofâ that pornography is eternal, that male dominance is how itâs supposed to be, and that feminists are crazy so shut the fuck up. Look for it in Steven Pinkerâs next book. ***
P.S. My own completely speculative guess on the figurine is that it might be connected to childbirth rituals. Notice the engraved marks and slashes; thatâs a motif that continues for thousands of years on these little female figurines. No one knows what they mean, but they meant something. Theyâre not just random cut marks. Someone put a great deal of work into this sculpture. Given that childbirth was incredibly risky for Paleolithic women, they must have prayed their hearts out for help and protection in that time. I can imagine an elder female shaman or artist carving this potent little figure, and propping it up somewhere as a focus for those prayers.
On the other hand, it is possible that it has nothing to do with childbearing or sexual behavior at all. The breasts and vulva may simply indicate who the figure is: the female god. Think of how Christ is always depicted with a beard, which is a male sexual characteristic, even though Christ isnât about male sexuality. The beard is just a marker. Or, given the figurineâs exaggerated breasts, it may have something to do with sustenance: milk, food, nourishment.
The notion that some dude carved this thing to whack off to â when he was surrounded by women who probably werenât wearing much in the way of clothes anyway â is laughable.
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