http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== EARTH'S CHILDREN is a registered trademark of Jean M. Auel and the books in the series: The Clan of the Cave Bear; The Valley of Horses; The Mammoth Hunters; The Plains of Passage; and The Shelters of Stone are all copyrighted by Jean M. Auel. Back to Don's Maps Dolni Vestonice and the Three Sisters Dolni Vestonice View of the Three Sisters from the south looking north. Photo: Per 1998 View of the Three Sisters from almost inside the village of Dolni Vestonice, from the north looking south. View of the Three Sisters from almost inside the village of Dolni Vestonice, from the north looking south. Photo: Per 1998 Dolni Vestonice Dolni Vestonice Page 78 and part of 79 from the delightful book 'The Cartoon History of the Universe Volumes 1-7' by Larry Gonick 1990. Highly recommended for all bookshelves. From the excellent book 'Cro-Magnon Man' by T. Prideaux: One of the best-known sites is Dolni Vestonice, in south central Czechoslovakia, and from the buried remains of this ancient community an intriguing picture of man's domestic life in Europe 27,000 years ago can be reconstructed: On a grass-covered slope dotted with a few isolated trees, a settlement of five huts was partially surrounded by a simple wall of mammoth tusks and bones stuck into the ground and piled about with brush and turf. One hut was set 90 yards apart from the others. The four close together were supported by wooden posts leaning slightly towards the middle, like tent poles, and planted in the earth with rocks piled around their bases for support. The walls were animal skins, presumably dressed and sewn together, then drawn over the posts and anchored to the ground with stones and heavy bones. A small stream meandered down the slope close by the houses, and the ground all around had been hard-packed by the feet of the generations of people who lived here. In an open place among the huts there was a large fire; very likely a fire-tender kept it going by throwing on chunks of bone. Apparently it burned all the time to keep prowling animals away. Inside the largest hut, about 50 feet long by 20 feet wide, were five shallow hearths dug in the floor. One was equipped with two long mammoth bones stuck in the ground to support a roasting spit. In these relatively comfortable surroundings it is easy to imagine a man sitting on a boulder making tools-working with the purposeful, deceptively slow movements -of a master craftsman, using a bone hammer to strike delicate blades from a cylindrical chunk of flint, the core. Meanwhile, from a far end of the hut might have come a clear, high-pitched sound like a bird's call. Its source would have been a woman blowing into the end of a piece of hollow bone that had two or three holes pierced in its length-what humans some 25,000 years later would call a penny whistle has been found at Dolni Vestonice. But the most startling discovery at this Czech site is the remains of the small hut up the slope that was set apart from the others. The hut had been cut into the hill, which formed its back wall; its sides consisted partly of a low wall of stones and clay, and the entrance faced downhill. Inside a visitor would have seen a hearth quite different from those apparent in the other huts; this one had an earthen dome on top of fiercely glowing coals. It was an oven for baking clay, a kiln-one of the very first ever built. Even at this early date the raw material that was baked in the kiln was a specially prepared substance. No simple mud from a stream bank, it was earth mixed with powdered bone to make the heat spread evenly as the oven baked, or fired, the clay into a new, rock-hard material. This is the first example in technological history of what was to become a ubiquitous process-the combination and treatment of two or more dissimilar substances to make a useful product unlike either starting substance-eventually leading to glass, bronze, steel, nylon and most of the other materials of everyday life. It would be another 15,000 years or so before other men, living in what is now Japan, learned to turn clay into pots; yet, as the evidence from Dolni Vestonice attests, ceramics had already been invented. When the kiln hut was first investigated in 1951, its sooty floor was littered with fragments of ceramic figurines. There were animal heads-bears, foxes, lions. In one particularly beautiful lion head there is a hole simulating a wound, perhaps intended to help some hunter inflict a similar wound on a real lion. The floor was also cluttered with hundreds of clay pellets bearing the fingerprints of the prehistoric artisan; he probably pinched them off his lump of unbaked clay when he first began to knead and shape it to his desire. And there were limbs broken from little animal and human figures. They may have cracked off in the baking, or when the ancient ceramist tossed aside a work that failed to please him. But more intriguing than any waste fragments or even clay animal figures on the hut floor are the human statuettes found there-particularly the female figures. Unlike the animals, they are not naturalistic but almost surreal. They have bulging breasts and buttocks, ~distorted arms and legs that taper to points. Experts today still wonder about these so-called Venuses (pages 92, 98-100). Were they household goddesses whose pointed legs were stuck in the ground to hold them upright as they watched over hearth and home? Were they fertility symbols whose ample figures were supposed to enhance fecundity? Certainly they are beautiful objects in spite of their grotesque proportions. They have a grace and dignity, a stylized plasticity, that make them comparable to some modern sculpture. Dolni Vestonice round hut floor Dolni Vestonice - round hut floor with mammoth tusks under a thick deposit of loess. This is S'Armuna's hut. Note the curved retaining wall of limestone blocks. There were a number of post holes suggesting a sloping roof. In the centre there was a well constructed hearth which was flanked by mammoth tusks. In and around the hearth were more than 2300 fragments of fired clay, the earliest 'pottery' in the world. Photo: G. Clark, 'The Stone Age Hunters' S'armuna's hut S'Armuna's hut Plan of round hut number II discovered by B. Klima in 1951 at Dolni Vestonice. 1 Depression in the ground: 2 Post holes; 3 Remains of the circular wall around the dwelling and the fireplace; 4 fireplace; 5 spring This is the plan of S'Armuna's hut which stood at Dolni Vestonice 25 000 years ago. Its edge was strengthened with a wall of earth and stones, in which the posts supporting the roof were placed. The pole holes are marked on the plan by black holes. In the centre of the floor was found the remains of a kiln. Scattered around the kiln and the hut were fired lumps of clay, some in the shape of animals. The hut was on slightly sloping ground and also near a spring, now underground at the time of discovery. A single, oval-shaped fireplace was found in the middle of the almost circular dwelling which was 6 metres in diameter. The fireplace had a blackened clay step around two thirds of it. Several rough pieces of clay were found in the ashes, and also parts of clay animals and human figurines. The living room and fireplace had been levelled by extending one side into the slope for about 0.8 metres, and building up the other with stones. At the edge and within the surface area two types of post holes have been discovered. Four larger holes were vertical, lined with stones and placed in the remains of the stone wall. They were 200 mm deep, 100 to 150 mm wide, and carried the main posts of construction. (8 inches deep by 4 to 6 inches wide). No holes were found on the other side. The roof of the dwelling must have had a distinct slope. One side of the roof rested on the poles, the other on the ground. The post holes of the second type were at an angle, about 100 mm deep and 50 to 70 mm wide. These three holes were located in the inner part of the dwelling and obviously supported extra props for the roof. It was not only a living room but also a work room. The hut stood apart from the others and could have housed a high ranking person such as a shaman or medicine man. -J Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man' Photo: J Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man' S'armuna's hut S'Armuna's hut 1 occupation level 2 wall around the hut and fireplace; 3 fireplace; 4 limestone; 5 bones; 6 water Cross section of the hut above showing the sloping roof. I had always thought that there was the outline of a skeleton lying on its back with legs up on the slope and head in the fireplace, but this is an illusion. There are mammoth bones at the back of the hut, and a stone in the fireplace where the head would be. Note also that the plan of the hut is round, although in this cross section it might appear to be a long narrow structure. S. Mason has also found tap root material from the compositae family, which includes daisies and dandelions, at Dolni Vestonice. These roots are often quite edible. See http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/research/profiles/smason/smdolnv.htm Photo: J Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man' S'armuna headS'armuna headS'armuna head S'Armuna. Head carved from mammoth ivory showing a person with an asymmetrical face. Dolni Vestonice Photo: T. Powell 'Prehistoric Art' (left hand photo), J Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man' (other two photos) Dolni Vestonice artist's impression Dolni Vestonice artist's impression. This Paleolithic cite was inhabited from ca. 27,00 to 23,000 B.C. To give some sense of scale, the rounded structure in the lower center, which perhaps was a wind screen, measured 27 by 45 feet. The settlement had perhaps 100 people who inhabited the site the year round. In this period, Europe was in the midst of the Ice Age so the average daily temperature was probably around freezing. The site was on the edge of a swamp, and was at a point where mammoths and other herd animals would be funnelled in to make hunting them more easy. Photo: http://campus.northpark.edu/history/Classes/Sources/DolniVestonice.html Dolni Vestonice artist's impression Dolni Vestonice artist's impression, obviously from the same primary source. Photo: K. Sklenar, 'Hunters of the Stone Age' Dolni Vestonice artist's impression Dolni Vestonice artist's impression, again obviously from the same primary source. Photo: V. Megaw and R. Jones 'The Dawn of Man' Dolni Vestonice bones Dolni Vestonice - deposit of discarded bones of reindeer, horse and mammoth under a thick deposit of loess. These were found on the far side of the marsh. Photo: G. Clark, 'The Stone Age Hunters' wolf skull This wolf skull was lying among many other animal bones, obviously the remains of some of the food of the Paleolithic hunters. A flint flake was stuck in the nose of the animal. The wound did not seem to have healed, and the X-ray showed that the flake used was broad, flat and atypically shaped. Tools could sometimes be used for purposes for which they are not obviously suitable. Photo: J Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man' flint tools Flint tools from Dolni Vestonice Photo: J Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man' Predmost engraved tusk Photo: G. Clark, 'The Stone Age Hunters' Predmost engraved tusk Photo: J Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man' *Attaroa's speaking staff* Stylised figure of a woman engraved on a mammoth tusk from Predmost, an area close to Dolni Vestonice. Height 15.5 cm From the book 'Plains of Passage' by Jean Auel, p537: * The staff itself was quite unusual. It was not newly carved, that much was obvious. The color of the mammoth ivory had begun to turn creamy, and the area where it was usually held was gray and shiny, caused by the accumulated dirt and oils of the many hands that had held it. It had been used by many generations. The design carved into the straightened tusk was a geometric abstraction of the Great Earth Mother, formed by concentric ovals to shape the pendulous breasts, rounded belly, and voluptuous thighs. The circle was the symbol for all, everything, the totality of the known and unknown worlds, and symbolized the Great Mother of All. The concentric circles, especially the way they were used to suggest the important motherly elements, reinforced the symbolism. The head was an inverted triangle, with the point forming the chin, and the base, curved slightly into a domelike shape, at the top. The downward pointing triangle was the universal symbol for Woman; it was the outward shape of her generative organ and therefore also symbolized motherhood and the Great Mother of All. The area of the face contained a horizontal series of double parallel bars, joined by laterally incised lines going from the pointed chin up to the position of the eyes. The larger space between the top set of double horizontal lines and the rounded lines that paralleled the curved top was filled in with three sets of double lines that were perpendicular, joining where eyes would usually be. But the geometric designs were not a face. Except that the inverted triangle was placed in the position of a head, the carved markings would not even have suggested a face. The awesome countenance of the Great Mother was too much for an ordinary human to behold. Her powers were so great that Her look alone could overwhelm. The abstract symbolism of the figure on Attaroa's Speaking Staff conveyed that sense of power with subtlety and elegance. * necklacedv.jpg Necklace made of small perforated and decorated cylinders of mammoth ivory, Dolni Vestonice. Photo: J. Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man' necklacefox.jpg Necklace made of teeth from arctic foxes, Dolni Vestonice. Photo: J. Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man' necklaceshellsfox.jpg Necklace made of fossil (Tertiary) shells and teeth of the arctic fox, Dolni Vestonice. Photo: J. Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man' dvvenusbwsmall.jpg dvvenusbwsidesmall.jpg dvvenusbwbacksmall.jpg Click on each of the photos above to see a more detailed version. Photos: J Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man' dvvenusbwsmall.jpg dvvenusbwsidesmall.jpg Click on each of the photos above to see a more detailed version. Photos: J Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man' From the book 'Plains of Passage' by Jean Auel, p510 ff: * S'Armuna reached inside her shirt and pulled out a small figure of a woman, perhaps four inches high. Both Ayla and Jondalar had seen many similar objects, usually carved out of ivory, bone, or wood. Jondalar had even seen a few that had been carefully and lovingly sculpted out of stone, using only stone tools. ...................... But this particular Mother figure was unique. S'Armuna gave the Munai to Jondalar. "Tell me what this is made of," she said. Jondalar turned the small figure over in his hands, examining it carefully. It was endowed with pendulous breasts and wide hips, the arms were suggested only to the elbow, the legs tapered, and though a hairstyle was indicated, the face bore no markings. It was not much different in size or shape from many he had seen, but the material from which it was made was most unusual. The color was uniformly dark. When he tried, he could make no indentation in it with his fingernail. It was not made of wood or bone or ivory or antler. It was as hard as stone, but smoothly formed, with no indication or marks of carving. It was not any stone he knew. He looked up at S'Armuna with a puzzled expression. "I have never seen anything like this before," he said. Jondalar gave the figure to Ayla, and a shiver went through her at the moment she touched it. I should have taken my fur parka when we went out, she said to herself, but she could not help feeling that it was more than the cold that had made her feel such a sharp chill. "That munai began as the dust of the earth," the woman stated. "Dust?" Ayla said. "But this is stone!" "Yes, it is now. I turned it to stone." "You turned it to stone? How can you turn dust to stone?" jondalar said, full of disbelief. The woman smiled. "If I tell you, would it make you believe my power?" "If you can convince me," the man retorted. "I will tell you, but I won't try to convince you. You will have to convince yourself. I started with hard, dry clay from the river's edge and pounded it to dusty earth. Then I mixed in water." S'Armuna paused for a moment, wondering if she should say anything more about the mixture. She decided against it for now. "When it was the right consistency, it was shaped. Fire and hot air turned it to stone," the shaman stated, watching to see how the two young strangers would react, whether they would show disdain or be impressed, whether they would doubt or believe her. The man closed his eyes trying to recall something. "I remember hearing ... from a Losadunai man, I think ... something about Mother figures made of mud." S'Armuna smiled. "Yes, you could say we make munai out of mud. Animals, too, when we have need to call upon their spirits, many kinds of animals, bears, lions, mammoths, rhinos, horses, whatever we want. But they are mud only while they are being shaped. A figure made of the dust of the earth mixed with water, even after it has hardened, will melt in water back to the mud from which it was formed, then turn to dust, but after it is brought to life by Her sacred flame, it is forever changed. Passing through the Mother's searing heat makes the figures as hard as stone. The living spirit of the fire makes them endure." Ayla saw the fire of excitement in the woman's eyes, and it reminded her of Jondalar's excitement when he was first developing the spearthrower. She realized that S'Armuna was reliving the thrill of discovery, and it convinced her. * ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Comment:* I have done a bit of pottery, and the quality of this piece amazes me. It is a masterwork, given the stage pottery had reached at the time, when even very ordinary pots and jugs had not yet been made. It appears glazed, but it is possibly a 'self glaze' where the material of which the figurine is made creates its own glaze during the firing. Powdered bone was added to the clay, which may have had an effect. When you also take into consideration the kiln, which cannot have come close to the temperature reached in a modern earthenware kiln ( I read somewhere that the pieces were fired to about 1300 F, or 700 C) it is even more astounding. Don ------------------------------------------------------------------------ oven.jpg An oven with high clay walls found at Dolni Vestonice. Photo: K. Sklenar, 'Hunters of the Stone Age' oven.jpg A reconstruction of S'Armuna's pottery oven at Dolni Vestonice. The fire burnt in the 40 cm (15 inch) high space and would have reached very high temperatures. Scattered around the oven and the hut were fired lumps of clay, some in the shape of animals. Photo: K. Sklenar, 'Hunters of the Stone Age' boundgrave Dolni Vestonice is the most important Palaeolithic site in the Czech Republic. It was first excavated in 1949. While uncovering a large hut, they dug a little below the original floor level. Here they found a body which had been laid in a shallow dish shaped pit, and covered with two mammoth shoulder bones, one of which had been engraved on its lower side. The body rested on its right side with its knees drawn up to the chin. The body had been sprinkled with red ochre before being covered. It belonged to a woman who had been about 40 years old when she died, and had been small and slim, standing about 160 cm, or 4 feet 10 inches at most. Lying in the grave were several flint flakes. Beside the body's left hand were the bones of an arctic fox, while the right hand grasped ten canine teeth from an arctic fox. The complete grave can still be seen in the Moravian Museum at Brno. Photo: K. Sklenar, 'Hunters of the Stone Age' gravedvphoto.jpg Excavation of the woman buried beneath a mammoth shoulder blade, above which there was part of a mammoth pelvic bone. The skull is visible on the side below the shoulder blade, near the numbered disk '11'. Photo: J Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man' dolniskulldolnijaw Left: Woman's skull stained with red ochre from a Pavlovian burial at Dolni Vestonice. Right: Lower jaw from a Pavlovian burial at Dolni Vestonice. The bone on the left has been deformed due to arthritis. Photo: J Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man' The Multiple Burial from Dolni Vestonice II Dolni Vestonice burial Dolni Vestonice burial Photo: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6293/series/bk4moravia.htm Dolni Vestonice burial reconstruction Photo: http://artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/blurb/trinkcover.html Dolni Vestonice burial Dolni Vestonice burial Dolni Vestonice triple burial Photo: http://artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/blurb/trinkcover.html Dolni Vestonice burial reconstruction Photo: http://www.baselland.ch/docs/kultur/archaeologie/Pages/Publikationen/022.html Dolni Vestonice burial The following is taken from James Shreeve's book The Neandertal Enigma: solving the mystery of modern human origins (William Morrow and Company, New York, 1995.) In the spring of 1986, near a village called Dolni Vestonice in the Czech province of Moravia, the bodies of three teenagers were discovered in a common grave. A specialist was immediately summoned from Brno, some twenty-five miles to the north, and under his care the remains were exhumed and faint remnants of the youths' identities revealed. Two of the skeletons were heavily built males. By its slender proportions, the third was judged to be female, aged seventeen to twenty. A marked left curvature of the spine, along with several other skeletal abnormalities, suggested that she had been painfully crippled. The two males had died healthy, in the prime of their lives. The remains of a thick wooden pole thrust through the hip of one of them hinted that his death might not have been entirely natural. The bodies had been buried with curious attention. According to the expert Bohuslav Klima, of the Czech Institute of Archaeology in Brno both young men had been laid to rest with their heads encircled with necklaces of pierced canine teeth and ivory; the one with the pole thrust up to his coccyx may also have been wearing some kind of painted mask. All three skulls were covered in red ocher. The most peculiar feature of the grave, however, was the arrangement of the deceased. Whoever committed the bodies to the ground extended them side by side, the woman between her two companions. The man on her left lay on his stomach, facing away from her but with his left arm linked with hers. The other male lay on his back, his head turned toward her. Both of his arms were reaching out, so that his hands rested on her pubis. The ground surrounding this intimate connection was splashed with red ocher. The skeletons lean into each other, like nestled question marks. In his written report, Klima speculated that the arrangement of the grave might reflect "a real life drama which precipitated the burials." His drama revolved around a young woman who had died in childbirth. The two male skeletons where those of her husband and a medicine man-the man wearing the mask. Held responsible for her death, the men had been compelled to follow her into the afterlife. *************** From: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6293/series/bk4moravia.htm In August, 1986 this multiple burial was unearthed. It was a shallow pit grave located near hearths carbon-dated to about 26,000 years ago. The remains were of an individual of undetermined sex in the center, who had spinal scoliosis, an asymmetrical skull, and an underdeveloped right leg. On the left is a male reaching toward some red ochre located between the legs of the middle body. A larger male on the right is laying face down. The male skulls were adorned with circles of arctic fox teeth, wolf teeth and ivory beads. From the book 'Plains of Passage' by Jean Auel: * Stretched out on the ground were three people - young, probably late teens or early twenties, he guessed. Two of them were definitely male; they were bearded. The biggest one was probably the youngest. His light facial hair was still somewhat sparse. ... The third one was fairly tall but thin, and something about the body and the way it lay made him wonder if that person had had some physical problem. He could see no facial hair, which made him think it was a woman at first, but it also could have been a rather tall young man who shaved, just as easily. With no burial shrouds, the bodies were simply carried to a single shallow grave one at a time. ... The tall, thin body went in first, placed on its back, and powdered red ochre was sprinkled on the head and, strangely, over the pelvis; the powerful generative area, making Jondalar wonder if, perhaps, it was indeed a woman. The other two were handled differently, but even more strangely. The brown-haired male was put in the common grave, to the left of the first corpse from Jondalar's viewpoint, but on the figure's right, and placed on his side, facing the first body. Then his arm was stretched out so that his hand rested on the red-ochred pubic region of the other. The third body was almost thrown into the grave, facedown, on the right side of the body that had been put in first. Red ochre was also sprinkled on both of their heads. The sacred red powder was obviously meant for protection, but for whom? And against what?* ********************* From: http://emuseum.mnsu.edu/archaeology/sites/europe/dolni_vestonice.html "Where the two rivers came together and the wet ground sustained the tender grasses of spring, the woolly mammoth...grazed, and the people...hunted and lived on the swamp." -James Shreeve Dolni Vestonice was an Upper Paleolithic habitation in Czechoslovakia on a swamp at the joint of two rivers near the Moravian mountains. In the spring of 1986, near the village of Dolni Vestonice, the remains of three teenagers were discovered in a common grave. Approximatley 27,640 years had passed from the time of the burial until they were found. Two of the skeletons were heavily built males while the third was judged to be a female based on its slender proportions. Archaeologists who examined her skeletal remains found evidence of a stroke or other illness which left her painfully crippled and her face deformed. The two males had died healthy, but remains of a thick wooden pole thrust through the hip of one of them suggests that the death didn't happen naturally. On the ground surrounding the burial site, red ocher powder was splashed, which was thought to be for protection. Dolni Vestonice is also the site of the earliest known potter's kiln. For acres around, the fertile clay soil is seeded with carved and molded images of animals, women, strange engravings, personal ornaments, and decorated graves. In the main hut, where the people ate and slept, two items were found: a goddess figurine made of fired clay and a small and cautiously carved portrait made from mammoth ivory of a woman whose face was drooped on one side. The goddess figurine is the oldest known baked clay figurine. On top of its head are holes which may have held grasses or herbs. The potter scratched two slits that stretched from the eyes to the chest which were thought to be the life-giving tears of the mother goddess. Above the encampment in a small, dry-hut, whose door faced towards the east, was the kiln. Scattered around the oven were many fragments of fired clay. Remains of clay animals, some stabbed as if hunted, and other pieces of blackened pottery still bear the fingerprints of the potter. *************** From: http://www.calacademy.org/calwild/sum99/symbol.htm Some 26,000 years ago, a resident of a seasonal, open-air encampment in what is now the southern Czech Republic kneaded moist clay mixed from local soil into an exaggerated portrait of a woman. The so-called Black Venus of Dolni Vestonice I has a featureless, possibly masked, face, squared shoulders, pendulous breasts, and a belt beneath her broad hips. Only four inches tall, she is one of the earliest known depictions of a female figure, but what inspired her creation is cloaked in mystery. A jagged crack runs along her right hip, damage sustained when the clay figurine was fired in a kiln at temperatures up to 1,500 �F. More than 700 figurines-nearly all depicting Ice Age animals such as lions, rhinos, and mammoths-were fired in the oval earthen kilns of Dolni Vestonice. At nearby sites of similar age, thousands more terracotta figurines and clay pellets have been excavated. Almost all the Vestonice figurines exhibit breaks and cracks-the shattering shock of the flames that baked them. Were the world's first ceramic artists also the world's worst craftsmen, or were these figures props for a pyrotechnic ritual? Elsewhere at Dolni Vestonice, a grave excavated in 1986 contained the skeletons of two young men and a woman. Inside the shallow burial pit lay bits of reindeer bones, and wolf and fox teeth. Red ocher powder had been sprinkled around each skull and between the legs of the female, who had a deformed spine and right leg. One male's hand had been placed atop the female's pelvis, while the other male's skull had been smashed at the time of burial. ****************** This is a delightful first person account of someone who went to Dolni Vestonice. From: http://www.spiritproject.com/oracle/magic/travel/dolni.htm It is not easy to find - too small for most maps, and only the larger neighbor village Horni Vestonice has a sign from the main road. There are no signs for tourists, no fast-foods offering "Venus burgers" - and this makes it so very special. In Dolni Vestonice, the traveler interested in archeomythology does not get it all ready to eat, you have to find it yourself and talk with the people who live there today. Dolni Vestonice is situated in the South of the Czech Republic close to the city of Mikulov. Dolni is a small village with approximately 500 inhabitants - the most important thing seems to be the main road with some restaurants and little stores and shops. It is Indian Summer, fishers are on their way to the near artificial lake and colorfully clothed bikers relax in the shade in front of a road inn. There are no signs that say "museum" or "archeological exhibition". After driving through the village from all sides some time I finally found the museum of Dolni Vestonice, plain gray with a simple sign saying "Archeologicke Exposize". The cashier lady only speaks Czech, but she does not only offer entrance tickets, but also information leaflets in German and English and rough-made plastic casts of the Venus of Vestonice. I get myself a leaflet and enter the exhibition. There are lots of text in and around the showcases, but all in Czech language, and although some words look familiar, I soon give up. The leaflet explains that I find only remakes of the originals from Dolni Vestonice and the neighboring village Pavlov. The archeologist Karel Absolon made excavations from 1924 to 1938 and found, among many other interesting tools and items, the statuette of a woman made from burnt clay (today plastic...) - she became famous as the "Venus of Vestonice". Like her "sisters" from other archeological excavations worldwide, the "Willendorf Venus" from Austria, the "Venus of Laussel" and the "Venus of Lespugue" in France she is depicted as a voluptuous woman with heavy breasts and broad hips standing in an upright position. But unlike all the others who don't have face features, she has eyes - slit carvings that make her look like squinting in the sun. They are all very old, those ladies - the village Pavlov gave its name to a complete time period, the Pavlovien as the older phase of the Gravettien, 30.000 - 25.000 years before our time. Along with the venus, zoomorphic statuettes have been found, made of clay, stone and bone, carved or modelled. And there is another Venus figurine who did not become as famous as her darker colored sister - she is very special, because her face is carved very carefully, and her body is nearly complete. Both Venuses are shown in the same showcase next to each other. The museum offers a lot of interesting and very special details of our ancestors - hints on how colors were made and used and the reconstruction of a burial site of three young people, a woman and two men - the woman was found with shamanic headbands made from teeth, claws and shells. Strange and rare circumstances gave us even the fingerprints of one of our forebears on a lump of clay. So much for the historical details of the museum. I was interested to find out more about the experiences which the famous archeologist Marija Gimbutas called "archeomythology".I leave the exhibition, and in the souvenir shop on the other roadside I find a book in English on the archeological findings in the area, and I also get a plastic pendant of the black Venus. Then I take off to Pavlov. Nobody can tell me where the excavation site really was. After asking several people in the village I give up and go on according to one of the black-and-white photos I had seen in the exhibition - showing the successful professors on the excavation site of Pavlov right under the ruins of Pavlov castle. The ruins still look the same today. I park my car and climb uphill past grapevine fields and orchards. Below I see the green shimmer of the large artificial lake, and I keep asking myself how many wonderful treasures it may hide from us forever. Rotting trees reach like hands out of the lake, on their silvery gray branches cormorants dry their feathers in the sunshine. I keep on climbing, still watching the angle from which the castle looks down on me. Now this looks like the right place. A farmer comes my way, pulling a little cart loaded with grapes. I smile at her, pointing at my Venus pendant. "Archeologicke Exposize?" I ask. She nods and smiles at me, pointing downhill towards the village behind us - Dolni Vestonice. "Yes, Dolni Vestonice, Muzeum!" I make the signs of digging in the ground. She laughs, shakes her head and offers me some grapes. I have to laugh, too, thank her and walk on. Now here must be the place. In front of me a vast empty potato field stretches all the way downhill. Next to it is a little place with hard grass and some small bushes. I walk towards the bushes and sink in to my knees - Bingo! This is historical ground, here they have been digging, the professors. Mammoth bones lay around here, as big as my collie, wolf skulls have been found with the spear heads still sticking in their jaw bones. Here our ancestors fought against their enemies. And the venus and other goddess figurines, here they have been waiting in the lap of mother Earth. I sit down on the dry earth and try to imagine what this area looked like before the artificial lake covered the lower parts. I compare the picture of the venus in the archeology book with the pendant I'm wearing. Thinking about what I learned from Dr. Felicitas Goodman about shamanic body postures and trance (she tried the postures of the old statues with her students and found out stunning experiences in and about trance), I get up and stand like the Venus of Vestonice. I take a deep breath, roots grow from my feet. A deep calmness, security, trust spreads within me. Time is not important, 25.000 years more or less... time does not have to be cut and measured anymore. I feel the wind on my skin, the warm sun on my face, the stability of the earth who carries me, yesterday, today, tomorrow. Peace and harmony well up within me and a trust that has not been there before. Yes, I can imagine it - the maker of the figurine who wanted to give this feeling to others - the image of an earth mother spreading the feeling by touching her: I am here, I have always been with you, and I give you the power, calmness and stability you need in this very moment. Walking back down to Pavlov I find the hidden hints to Venus still being here - as a pictograph she is looking at me from the windshield of a city bus, and the small inn next to my parking place is named "U Venuse", the Venus. Maybe people held these small, voluptuous goddesses in their hands when they faced critical situations - women giving birth, men hunting mammoth and aurochs, or simply when they wanted some calm moments after a hard day. I am here, I have always been here, and here shall I ever be - that's what they say to me and others, the Venus of Vestonice and her colleagues, yesterday and tomorrow, for all of us to feel and see. Dolni Vestonice II The following are extracts from the Eric Trinkaus site: http://artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/blurb/b_trink.html trinkaus.jpg Erik Trinkaus working on the Dolni Vestonice III early modern human skeleton in the Moravian Museum, Brno. *Abstract* The excavation and paleoanthropological analysis of the early Upper Paleolithic site of Dolni Vestonice II has yielded a series of incomplete and isolated human remains, comprising cranial vaults, teeth (including a series from an infant), ribs, arm bones, hand phalanges, leg bones, tarsals, metatarsals and pedal phalanges. Morphologically and morphometrically the elements are similar to those from buried individuals at Dolni Vestonice I and II ( III? ) and Pavlov I, as well as to other European early Upper Paleolithic human remains. They differ principally in the high percent cortical areas of the distal humerus and femur. The Dolni Vestonice 36 infant's teeth may well derive from an undisturbed burial with in situ bone destruction. Geological processes are unlikely to have produced the taphonomic patterns observed, and the preservation and damage patterns of the elements (other than Dolni Vestonice 36) suggests that the original bodies were processed by some combination of scavenging agents. Moreover, the original number of burials at Dolni Vestonice II may have been greater than the four currently known. *The Site of Dolni Vestonice II* Dolni Vestonice II (Fig. 1) occupies one of the loess elevations at an altitude of ca.240m, rising above the Dyje River toward the Pavlovian Hills (altitude 550m). The central parts of this site were excavated as a salvage project during industrial loess exploitation between 1985-1991. The site is one of the largest hunter-gatherer settlements in Moravia. However, a lower density of the occupations, less stable dwelling structures, a rarity of art objects, and other characters of archaeological record suggest that Dolni Vestonice II was not settled as densely as the nearby sites of Pavlov I and Dolni Vestonice I. Dolni Vestonice II was probably occupied repeatedly, but in a more time-limited manner and with more specialized functions. On August 13, 1986, inside the same settlement concentration, the exceptionally well preserved triple burial was unearthed (DV 13 to 15), *probably covered originally by burnt spruce logs and branches *(Klima, 1987a). On April 28, 1987, in another settlement concentration near a hearth on the western slope of this site, a male burial (DV 16) was uncovered (Svoboda, 1987). A consideration of the postmortem damage on the isolated human remains from the Dolni Vestonice II site indicates that geological processes (other than sediment compaction and minor erosion) are unlikely to have produced the taphonomic patterns observed, but that human and/or carnivore processing of the bodies were responsible for the observed distribution. Given the limited range of skeletal elements represented among these isolated remains, agents which systematically destroy bones (large carnivores) seem more likely to have been involved than less destructive agents (humans and small carnivores). Regardless of the original processes involved, it is nonetheless apparent that there were considerably more human burials at Dolni Vestonice II (and probably other earlier Upper Paleolithic sites) than is indicated by the well-preserved human burials. Dolni Vestonice III dvIIIsitevineyard.jpg From: http://www.iabrno.cz/dv3.htm Dolni Vestonice III The Dolni Vestonice III Gravettian site lies on the eastern slope of the short blind valley (slope dell) between the sites I and II. The site was first observed by B.Klima at the end of 1960s and has been under excavation since the summer of 1993 by Petr Skrdla. Excavations yielded a collection of more then 500 pcs of stone artifacts (majority of which are made of silices from glacigene sediments), bone fragments, and decorative objects. The site consists of two different units (unit 1 and 2). Unit 2 is composed of two layers. Excavations will be continued. For more informations see: Skrdla, P., Cilek, V., Prichystal, A 1996: Dolni Vestonice III, excavations 1993-1995. Spisy Au AV CR v Brne, vol. 5, 173-190. musical instruments Four musical instruments made by the mammoth hunters at Dolni Vestonice. On the left are three transversely cut and smoothed hollow bones which are thought to be flutes, and on the right a pipe made from the toe bone of a reindeer. Photo: K. Sklenar, 'Hunters of the Stone Age' female pendant Stylised female figurine used as a pendant, height 8.6 cm, made from mammoth ivory. Photo: J Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man' rhino head Pottery head of a rhinoceros, Dolni Vestonice Photo: J Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man' lion head Pottery head of a lioness, showing a wound just above the ear, from Dolni Vestonice Photo: J Jelinek, 'The Evolution of Man' ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to Don's Maps ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This document last modified Monday 13 December 2004 Webmaster: Don Hitchcock Australia Email: don at donsmaps.com