The Oldest Human Image. Until the past few decades, the famous Willendorf Goddess, carved of bone 30,000 years ago, was held to be the earliest human-crafted work of art and veneration. The Acheulian Goddess predates Willendorf by an amazing quarter-million years, and may be as old as 800,000 years!

It is remarkable to note the similarities between the Willendorf and the far older Acheulian. Both figures are distinctly female, great-breasted with featureless head and discrete limbs.

Using flint tools, the maker of the Acheulian Goddess intentionally adapted an existing small stone, which already had breast-like Mother Goddess features, by adding incised grooves delineating the head and arms. Like Willendorf, the Acheulian appears to have a groove suggestive of the sacred vulva.

This Paleolithic image offers breathtaking evidence that our worship of the divine feminine could have extended up to 250,000 years deeper into hunter-gatherer antiquity than previously suspected! In the face of this discovery, 3,500 years of current patriarchy pales to insignificance.

Clearly the old, ecology-centered goddess values have been with us for a vaster sweep of time than our recent misadventures of war and exploitation. And now we choose to reclaim those older values.

This reproduction is based on drawings and photographs from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Institute of Archeology, where the original is housed. Hold her in your hand to feel her shape, fecundity and power.

[232,000 - 800,000 BCE]

Ganges Clay.

Lespugue's fertility was crucial to survival for our Stone Age ancestors. Her delicately tapered legs would have been inserted into a moist lump of clay, allowing her to stand beside the fire-circle or upon a cave ledge. Invite Lespugue's abundance to your own hearthside.

[Les Rideaux caves, Garonne, France; c. 20,000 BCE]

Finish will vary.

Snake Goddess from Neolithic Crete. She is portrayed in a yogic posture, with snakelike legs and human features. She is crowned. In ancient Crete, families kept live snakes in their house as guardians or household gods insuring fertility, increase and health. Snakes symbolized the continuity of life between generations. Many kept snake effigies and Snake Goddess figurines in household shrines.

Hera and Athena are often though to be the descendants of the ancient Snake Goddess.
The snake is life force emblematic of the worship of life on this earth. It was not the body of the snake that was sacred, but the energy exuded by and concentrated in this spiraling and coiling creature. Something primordial and mysterious coming from the depths of the waters where life begins, the snake's seasonal renewal in sloughing its skin and hibernating made it a symbol of the continuity of life and of the link with the underworld.

[clay figurine, Crete 6000 B.C.E.]

Red black Gypsumstone statue.

Shaman of Trois Freres celebrates your Inner Animal! The Shaman of Trois Freres is carved into the ceiling chamber of a Paleolithic hunter's initiation cave. An image of sympathetic magic, he embodies parts of many different animals, plus the bearded face of an old man and the legs of a dancing shaman. This ancient Sorcerer served as mediator between humans and their venerated animal kin, and is a prototype for Kernunnos, Forest God of the later Celts.

[Ariege, France, c. 13,000 BCE]