The 35000-year-old ivory figurines. Picture courtesy: H Jensen, University of Tubingen, Germany

May 13: Call it palaeolithic pornography.

A 35,000-year-old figurine carved out of ivory, depicting a woman with sharply exaggerated sexual features, is the world’s oldest known figurative art, scientists reported today.

The headless figurine, discovered in a cave named Hohle Fels in southern Germany, is also possibly the earliest 3D representation of a woman, and at least 5,000 years older than similar artifacts from other European archaeological sites.

The 6cm squat statuette “radically changes our view of the origins of palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) art”, Nicholas Conard, an archaeologist at the University of Tubingen, Germany, said in a paper that will appear in the journal Nature tomorrow.

The excavations in the cave revealed six fragments of the figurine along with the remains of horses, reindeer, bears and mammoths, the source of the ivory.

The figurine has a ring above its shoulders in place of a head, and features of the ring suggest that it may have been suspended as a pendant, Conard said in his paper. The extreme emphasis on sexual attributes, along with the lack of emphasis on the head, face, arms and the legs, according to Conard, is similar to what is seen in Venus figurines from other European sites between 22,000 and 27,000 years old.

“This discovery suggests the world’s first artistic representation of a woman was heavily focused on sexual features,” Paul Mellars, professor of prehistory at the University of Cambridge, who was not associated with the findings, told The Telegraph.

Although the excavations have not revealed human skeletal remains, scientists say the materials at the site suggest the artwork was the product of early modern humans shortly after they migrated into Europe.

Although engravings of abstract designs have been found at South African sites, 75,000 years old, the Hohle Fels figurine and other artifacts at neighbouring sites represent the first depiction of real living objects, humans or animals, Mellars said.