The Acheulian Goddess

Can you imagine what humans were doing 1/4 million to 3/4 million years ago? As far back as that, predating even the Neanderthals, our Homo erectus ancestors were carving representations of the Mother Goddess!

Discovered in Austria, this prehistoric stone carving is far older than the Venus of Willendorf, which was for decades the earliest carved idol known.

Yet hundreds of thousands of years earlier, humans had carved a quite similar figurine, proving that human reverence for the Mother Goddess could be at least 800 thousand years old!

This is hundreds of millennia longer than scholars had previously thought. And it demonstrates that our ancestors were artistic, spiritual beings before we were even Homo sapiens!

The Acheulian Goddess has been called "the earliest manifestation of a work of art."

The Acheulian Goddess:
Timeless Imagery of the Mother Goddess

200,000 years, the time between the Acheulian Goddess and the Venus of Willendorf, say — it's too big a number to imagine. Homo Sapiens have been on the Earth for less time!

What I find truly remarkable about the Acheulian Goddess is that for hundreds of thousands of years afterward, the ancient Goddess had been carved in the same basic style... even in far distant lands.

In fact, the first art carved in human form — the only art carved in human form for hundreds of millennia — are of women, and all of the same basic design. That in itself points to the supreme importance the female body has held for our ancestors.

It indicates that it's not the body itself, but the meaning behind the body — the spiritual significance — that they were expressing in these ancient Goddess figurines.

Prehistoric Perfection

Using tools made of flint, in what must surely have been an arduous process, our ancestors adapted a natural stone to bring out the Sacred Feminine they saw within it, including breasts, a navel, a curve of belly, and of course her sacred Yoni (vulva).

More details than that were unnecessary: the Goddess is powerfully evoked in a few simple lines.

Being a virtually natural stone, the Acheulian Goddess holds an energy that's somewhat different from, say, the Venus of Willendorf. More unalloyed, pure Earth energy.

The fact that she fits in the palm of the hand is fortuitous for an icon of this sort. Have you ever found a rock that fits just perfectly in your hand, curves sliding into hollows? There's a feeling of rightness and satisfaction in holding a stone just the right shape.

How much more so, when it's also charged with the energy of the Goddess!

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