 The discovery of ancient art and their origins remains a subject to widespread controversy as no two cultures on this planet seem to be able to come to an agreement on the symbolic meaning of ancient art. This is despite well over a hundred years of research into the past where it does begin to paint a telling story of our own perceptions when you consider African art dating back almost 80,000 years to be a proxy for advanced symbolic communication in Europe where such figurative arts have been dated to 40,000 years, but therein lies the path of confusion. A 40,000 year differential pattern of bewilderment is an audacious amount of time for little advancements to have taken place, yet we were meant to believe that there was a civilization on this planet that were primitive during the course of this massive sway in time without any consideration of a civilized separation. The teachers of the past were studying something higher, they seem to have understood this planet more than we do today, and they asserted a guidance that we were struggling to understand yet we are meant to be more intelligent than they were. In 2008, the discovery of a female mammoth ivory figurine took place in the Basile Orignation Deposit at Holyfills Cave in the Swabian Jura of southwestern Germany. The figurine was produced at least 35,000 years ago, making it the oldest known example of figurative art ever recovered, predating the well-known Venus from the Gravedian culture by at least 5,000 years and radically changing our views of the context and meaning of the earliest Paleolithic art. Scholars say the figurine is roughly contemporaneous with other early expressions of artistic creativity, like drawings on cave walls in southeastern France and northern Italy. The inspiration and symbolism behind the rather sudden flowering have long been debated by art historians. Commenting in the journal Nature in 2008 on the discovery, Dr. Mellors who did not take part in the research, wrote that the artifact was one of 25 similar carvings found over the past 70 years and other caves in the Swabian region of southern Germany. A variable art gallery of early modern human art, he said. These sites, he concluded, must be seen as the birthplace of true sculpture in the European and maybe even global artistic tradition. Scholars say the large caves were presumably inviting sanctuaries for populations of modern humans migrating then into Central and Western Europe, and these were the people who eventually displaced the resident Neanderthals around 30,000 years ago. Dr. Crenard who made the discovery reported that the discovery took place beneath 3 feet of red-brown sediment in the floor of the Hollyfels Cave with 6 fragments of the carved ivory, including all but the left arm and shoulder, were recovered and when he brushed dirt off the torso he said the importance of the discovery became apparent. The short squat torso is dominated by oversized breasts and broad buttocks. The split between the two halves of the buttocks is deep and continuous without interruption to the front of the figurine. A greatly enlarged vulva emphasizes the deliberate exaggeration of the figurine's sexual characteristics according to Dr. Crenard. The object reminded experts of the most famous of the sexually explicit figurines from the Stone Age, the Venus of Villendorf, discovered in Austria a century earlier and that Venus is somewhat larger and dated about 24,000 years ago. But it is in a style that appeared to have been prevalent for several thousand years and scholars speculate that these Venus figurines, as they are now known, were associated with fertility beliefs or shamanistic rituals. The Venus of Hollyfels is 2.4 inches in height, headless and was carved from the tusk of a woolly mammoth tusk and it has been pieced together from 6 fragments found in a cluster about 10 feet below ground although the left arm and shoulder are still missing. It has a short and squat body whose waist is slightly narrower than its broad shoulders and wide hips. The figurine has no head in its place, a carving ring protrudes between the shoulders indicating that the sculptor was probably worn as a pendant or amulet. The Venus is endowed with prominent breasts while its two short arms with their carefully shaped hands and fingers rest on the upper part of the abdomen with a number of deeply etched horizontal creases indicating clothes perhaps which traverses the torso from just below the breast to the pubic triangle. The buttocks and genitals are portrayed in exaggerated detail while the legs are small and pointed. Curiously, neither the Holyfels cave have yielded any significant cave art such as paintings or engravings. In effect, the discovery of the Venus of Holyfels pushes back the date of the oldest prehistoric carving by at least 2,000 and perhaps as many as 7,000 years that is from 33,000 years before Christ to 35 to 40,000 BC and according to Professor Nicholas Conard, the find radically changes our views of the earliest Paleolithic art. But what do you guys think about this anyway? Comments below and as always, thank you for watching.