Ice Age Venus Figurines of the Eurasian Continent

Socalled venus figurines, female nudes standing upright, designed to be stuck in the ground, and then covered with red ochre, were made as an unbroken artistic and symbolic tradition of the Eurasian continent that lastet for at least years (between B. C). (Red ochre is otherwise known from Paleolithic burials and have been understood to symbolise rebirth of some kind. People were usually buried in fetal position in a rounded grave. ) The tradition stretched from Portugal in the West to Siberian Lake Baikal in the East, and appears to have continued into the Neolithic, where the figurines often appear in shrines and temples, and must be understood as