On the Moravian plain, halfway between Brno and Vienna, the site of Dolní Věstonice was first excavated in 1924 by Karel Absolon. What he uncovered exceeded all expectations: dwelling structures, thousands of mammoth bones, ivory jewellery, and above all a female statuette in fired clay dated to around 26,000 years ago. For the first time in human history, someone had shaped clay, exposed it to heat, and produced an object that would not decay. This is the invention of ceramics1.
The GravettianGravettianAn Upper Palaeolithic culture (c. 33,000–21,000 BC) spanning from the Atlantic to Siberia, famous for its ivory female figurines ("Venuses") and, at Dolní Věstonice, the oldest fired ceramics.→: a pan-European culture
Dolní Věstonice belongs to the Gravettian culture (c. −33,000 to −21,000), which spans from the Atlantic to Siberia. Gravettians were hunters specialising in big game, mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, reindeer, horse, bison, and skilled craftspeople, renowned for their ivory female figurines (the "Venuses"), ivory beads, ornaments and, at Věstonice, their unique mastery of clay firing. The Dolní Věstonice–Pavlov–Milovice complex is a vast open-air site: across several kilometres of plain, dozens of Gravettian camps span several millennia2.
The Venus of Věstonice: the oldest ceramic figurine
The Venus of Věstonice is a female statuette 11.1 cm tall, 4.3 cm wide and weighing 43 grams, fashioned from a mixture of local clay and powdered bone. Its silhouette shows the typical traits of PalaeolithicPalaeolithicThe oldest and longest period of prehistory (c. 3.3 Ma–12,000 BC), defined by chipped stone tools and a hunter-gatherer way of life.→ Venuses: featureless face, voluminous breasts and hips, tapered legs, reduced arms. Found in 1925 in two pieces in hearth ashes, it was initially thought to have cracked accidentally in firing. But later analyses showed the fractures were post-depositional: the statuette was intact when placed, and sediment pressure broke it.
The firing technique is fascinating. Gravettians had no modern kiln, but excavations at Věstonice uncovered a semi-sunken structure interpreted as a firing kiln, a dome of earth and clay with a central hearth reaching 500–800°C. Here were fired both the Venus and thousands of small animal figurines, lions, bears, rhinoceroses, many of which were deliberately exposed to thermal shock to make them explode. This deliberate destruction by fire may have had ritual significance1.
The triple burialBurialThe intentional deposition of a body, sometimes with offerings; a marker of symbolic behaviour.→: a 26,000-year-old mystery
In 1986, during excavations directed by Bohuslav Klíma, archaeologists uncovered an unprecedented burial: three skeletons lying side by side, dated to about 26,000 years ago. The central individual, who died aged 17–20 and whose biological sex was long debated (recent genetic analyses suggest a male individual possibly suffering from a bone development disorder), is flanked by two young men. The central skull is wrapped in a net of ivory beads. The left hand rests on the pelvis of the left individual. Mammoth and reindeer antlers partially cover the bodies, and red ochre was scattered over all three.
The identity of the three individuals and the circumstances of their simultaneous death remain mysterious. Ritual murder? Simultaneous death from accident or epidemic? Sacrifice? Execution? No hypothesis has prevailed. This burial is, alongside the Chauvet paintings and the Gravettian Venuses, one of the most striking windows onto the symbolic world of our Upper PalaeolithicUpper PalaeolithicThe final phase of the Palaeolithic (c. 45,000 to 10,000 years ago), marked by Homo sapiens in Europe, art, ornaments and a succession of cultures (Aurignacian, Gravettian, Solutrean, Magdalenian).→ ancestors2.
The Věstonice "portrait"
Among Dolní Věstonice's discoveries is a unique object: a small ivory human head with an asymmetric face marked by a drooping right cheek and a half-closed eye. Some researchers see in it a portrait of a real person with facial palsy or an injury, which would make it the oldest individualised human portrait in history, 26,000 years old. If this interpretation is correct, Věstonice's Gravettians were not merely representing archetypes: they observed, memorised and reproduced particular faces. A immense conceptual leap1.
Ce site de Moravie est absolument fascinant pour qui s'intéresse à l'évolution cognitive de notre espèce. La concentration de statuettes féminines sur ce site suggère une organisation sociale et spirituelle complexe. J'aurais aimé voir davantage de détails sur les analyses ADN des restes humains retrouvés à proximité.
La Vénus de Dolní Vestonice est l'une des plus anciennes céramiques cuites connues au monde, datant d'environ 26 000 ans. Ce qui est remarquable, c'est que la cuisson intentionnelle de l'argile précède de plusieurs millénaires la poterie utilitaire. Cela témoigne d'une dimension symbolique et rituelle très développée chez ces Homo sapiens du Gravettien.