Venus of Willendorf

The Venus of Willendorf is a limestone figurine about 11.1 centimetres tall, carved roughly 30,000 years ago during the Upper Paleolithic Gravettian period and once colored with red ochre pigment. It was found on August 7, 1908, near Willendorf in Lower Austria, in an excavation led by Josef Szombathy, Hugo Obermaier and Josef Bayer, and is now held by the Natural History Museum in Vienna. One of numerous so-called Venus figurines surviving from Paleolithic Europe, its exaggerated fertility-related features have led many researchers to read it as a fertility goddess, though its exact purpose remains uncertain, and analysis tracing its stone to sources in northern Italy or Ukraine points to long-distance movement or trade among prehistoric peoples.