23.2.2010 6000 years old Venus from Slovakia

Eleven years ago, Slovak archaeologists managed to make some excellent finds. The greatest acclaim was the discovery of the so-called Venus of Beladice, which apparently depicts a pregnant woman. But her belly has fallen off.

It all happened during a rescue excavation on the construction of the R1 high-speed road. Róbert Malček from the Institute of Archaeology in Nitra and a group of volunteers worked there. They were exploring a settlement of the so-called Lengyel culture (note: it was created by mixing influences from the southeast, a culture with Moravian painted pottery) from the Late Stone Age. The weather was not good at all, the wind was blowing terribly. Nevertheless, little by little they uncovered the space they had set out.

They found a large number of stone tools and pottery. Finally, they pulled a small clay statue of a woman out of the frozen ground. She was named Sarah. "I didn't name her that. It was one of our temporary workers. According to the calendar, it was Sarah," Malček explained.

Some media outlets mistakenly reported that the statue broke into several pieces when it was pulled out of the clay. "That's not true. The statue was already cracked in the ground. However, the cracks were not visible and the individual parts only separated in the heat," Malček clarified. He also added that unprofessional handling can never be completely prevented. "Only qualified researchers would have to work on the research, who would also have to be very manually skilled," the archaeologist added.

The statuette is believed to depict a pregnant woman. However, it is the belly that has become detached from the figurine. Such a Venus has not yet been found in Slovakia. Ivan Cheben from the Institute of Archaeology of the Slovak Archaeological Academy thinks that the statue served as a magical amulet.

"The belly of the statue symbolizes the family, the preservation of the family. In the Stone Age, motherhood was of great importance. The statuette may have been meant to protect the woman during childbirth from something evil, so that the child would be born alive and healthy," Cheben said at the time.

But opinions differ. Malcek later said he did not think the statue depicted a pregnant woman. "And the fact that her belly fell off is probably just a coincidence," he noted. But some experts support the idea that it is a figurine of a pregnant woman. She was lying in the pit, which researchers have been unable to identify. Some say it was a ritual pit, while others say it was an ordinary waste pit.

"And how did the statue end up in a garbage dump? "Maybe there was an accident at the settlement at the time and the figurine got among the waste with the remains of a burnt dwelling," Malček concluded.

Source: www.pravda.sk, www.sme.sk