5. The Venus figurines
The most surprising aspect of our discovery is the extreme
antiquity of the figurine, the Venus of Lespugue. This is a
sculpture carved from mammoth-ivory, 6 inches (147 millimeters)
high, from the Gravettian-Upper Perigordian culture, about 25,000 B.P.,
found at the Des Rideaux site at Lespugue, Haute Garonne, France.
(Gimbutas, 1989, Plates 5, 252.) The ages of our historical scales
have been traced back by McClain only to early Sumer, around 6,000 B.P.
About 40
similar figures, called paleolithic Venus figurines, have been
found since 1895 in sites of Europe and west Asia, as shown in
Fig. 2. Theories of their meaning abound in the literature of
prehistory since 1967. A very interesting recent summary is given
in (Gimbutas, 1989.) See also (Gamble, 1982.) The most studied
exemplars are those of Lespugues, Kostienki, Dolni Vestonice,
Laussel, Willendorf, Gagarino (2 cases), and Grimaldi. Outline
drawings of these, enclosed in rhombi, or lozenges, are shown in
Fig. 3.
The proportions of the enclosing rhombi provide interesting ratios,
like those studied by Villard de Honnecourt for drawings of the
human figures. (See Bowie, 1959, and Kayser, 1946.) Of the eight
figurines shown in Fig. 3, the ratios of width to height are:
0.39, 0.33, 0.37, 0.37
0.44, 0.44, 0.20, 0.28
These seem too closely grouped to be random, and are close
to the proportions of the Pythagorean triple triangles:
5-12-13, 12-35-37, and 44-117-125, of the cuneiform tablet
Plimpton 322 from ancient Babylonia, dated about 1700 B.C.
See (McClain, 1978, p. 124) for a tonal interpretation of
Plimpton 322.