A figurine of Venus is shown in this undated handout¹ photo.

A sexually suggestive Venus figurine with oversized breasts and thighs² dates back at least 35,000 years and shows ancient humans had sex on their minds, researchers said on Wednesday.

The 60-millimetre-long figurine may be the oldest piece of its kind yet discovered and suggests Palaeolithic art was far more complex than many had thought, Nicholas Conard of Tubingen University in Germany wrote in the journal Nature.

Radiocarbon dating indicates the figure excavated³ from an archaeological dig in southern Germany, near the Danube valley, was at least 35,000 years old, the researchers said.

"The discovery predates the well-known Venuses from the Gravettian culture by at least 5,000 years and radically⁴ changes our views of the context and meaning of the earliest Palaeolithic art," Conard wrote.

"Before this discovery ... female imagery was entirely⁵ unknown."

The figurine's enlarged breasts, bloated belly⁶ and thighs also make clear that sexual symbolism was alive and well tens of thousand of years ago, Paul Mellars of the University of Cambridge, wrote in a commentary.

"The feature of the newly discovered figure that will undoubtedly⁷ command most attention is its explicitly⁸, almost aggressively, sexual nature, focused on the sexual characteristics of the female form," he wrote.

"Whichever way one views these representations, it is clear that the sexually symbolic⁹ dimension in European (and indeed worldwide) art has a long ancestry¹⁰ in the evolution of our species."

研究人员于本周三称，一尊“丰乳肥臀”有性暗示意味的维纳斯雕像近日出土，该雕像距今至少有三万五千年，这表明远古人类已经有了性观念。

德国图宾根大学的尼古拉斯•康纳德在发表于《自然》杂志的文章中称，这尊身长60毫米的雕像或许在目前出土的同类雕像中年代最久远，这表明旧石器时代的艺术远比人们想象中要复杂得多。

研究人员称，根据放射性碳年代测定法的测定结果，德国南部多瑙河流域附近的一处考古遗址中出土的这尊雕像距今至少有三万五千年。

康纳德写道：“这尊雕像比此前出土的旧石器时代晚期著名的同类雕像还要早至少五千年，这也彻底改变了我们对旧石器时代早期艺术背景和内涵的看法。”

“在这之前，我们对那段时期的女性形象完全不清楚。”

剑桥大学的保罗•梅拉斯在评论中写道，从这尊雕像丰满的胸部、隆起的腹部和臀部很明显可以看出，早在数万年前就存在鲜明生动的性象征。

他写到：“毫无疑问，最新出土的这尊雕像最吸引人眼球之处就在于它直白、大胆地勾勒出女性的性本能，并突出了女性的性特征。”

“不管从哪种角度，都能明显看出，在人类进化史上，欧洲（乃至世界）艺术的性象征维度历史非常久远。”

Vocabulary:

Palaeolithic: 旧石器时代的

radiocarbon dating：放射性碳年代测定法，也称为碳14年代测定法。碳14是碳的一种具放射性的同位素，半衰期长达5,730年。人们可通过测定一件古物的碳14含量，来估计它的大概年龄，这种方法称之为碳定年法。