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The Dolní Věstonice Portrait Head features a woman’s face with carefully engraved details like her eyes, nose, mouth and dimpled chin.
The portrait is 1.9 inches in height and 1 inch in width. (Photo Credits: X)
The Dolní Věstonice Portrait Head, a small sculpture carved from mammoth ivory, is believed to be one of the oldest human portraits ever found. Created around 24,000 B.C., it comes from the South Moravian region in the Czech Republic. This ancient artefact was discovered in the 1920s at an archaeological site in Dolní Věstonice. Researchers believe it to be the earliest surviving representation of a specific individual, estimated to be 26,000 years old.
The portrait head was crafted using stone tools. It is very small, measuring 1.9 inches (4.8 cm) in height and 1 inch (2.4 cm) in width. The carving features a woman’s face with carefully engraved details. Her eyes, nose and mouth are visible and she has a dimpled chin. The hairstyle or head covering suggests she may have worn her hair up or under a hat.
Unlike other sculptures from the site, such as the Venus of Věstonice which lacks distinct facial details, this artefact seems to represent a particular person.
During the Upper Paleolithic period, a group of mammoth hunters established their settlement in Dolní Věstonice, a location now part of a small village near the southern Czech border. This site, also known as the “Stone Age Pompeii,” has provided archaeologists with numerous artefacts. Over the past century, excavations have uncovered tens of thousands of items which include ceramics, tools made of stone and various objects carved from bone. Many human burials have also been found at the site.
One such burial, unearthed in 1949, contained the remains of a middle-aged woman whose skeleton was found covered in red ocher. The burial also included ten drilled fox teeth. Her skull was found asymmetrical which was possibly caused by a childhood injury.
In 2018, forensic researchers reconstructed her face based on her skull and the resulting image bore a resemblance to the small ivory carving. The left eye of the sculpture is smaller than the right which is a feature similar to the reconstructed face.
Dolní Věstonice in Europe is known for its rich collection of artifacts from the Late Gravettian period which lasted from 29,000 to 24,000 B.C. Some of the world’s earliest kiln-fired pottery has been found here. The small mammoth ivory head is considered the oldest known individual portrait.
These artifacts from Dolní Věstonice including the sculpted head are on display at the Anthropos Pavilion Museum in Brno, Czech Republic.
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