The Venus Figurines of the Upper Paleolithic as Sexual Power Objects: The First Fetishing of the Female Body in Human Imaginative Culture

• Published in: Evolutionary behavioral sciences 2025-01, Vol.19 (1), p.14-27
• Main Author: Høgh-Olesen, Henrik
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Evolutionary Psychology; Female; Fertility; Fetishism; Human; Human Body; Human Females; Hypothesis Testing; Neurosciences; Sexuality
• ISSN: 2330-2925; 2330-2933
• DOI: 10.1037/ebs0000341

The Venus figurines have a long history of interpretation centering on two main hypotheses related to fertility divinity (the figurines as talismans used in fertility rites to promote childbirth and growth) and to sexual attractivity (the figurines as materialized lust and objects of sexual desire). We cannot test these hypotheses in the lab, but we can outline criteria that can tell a good, coherent, and well-substantiated interpretation from a not so good, incoherent, and less substantiated ditto. With help from ethology, neuroscience, and evolutionary psychology, this article will try to reevaluate, resubstantiate, and rephrase the main hypotheses of fertility and attractiveness in order to better understand what these female figurines may represent. A substantial number of the Venus figurines found so far seem to represent the supernormal essence of the female body's sexual key stimuli. An object concentrating key stimuli automatically becomes a power object or a fetish, and that may be what the Venus figurines are: Sexual power objects, and hence the first fetishing of the female body in human imaginative culture. Public Significance Statement This study presents evidence that suggests that the Stone Age "Venus figurines" were objects of sexual desire, exaggerating the female gender traits, rather than fertility goddesses securing childbirth and growth.