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Venus of El Pendo Cave (Santander)

Note that this may be of modern manufacture

The Venus of El Pendo Cave, Camargo, province of Santander, may be of modern manufacture. It is in the form of a spear straightener or baton de commandement, made of deer antler, variously dated to the Solutrean or the upper Magdalenian, excavated by Abbé Jesus Carballo at El Pendo Cavern. Of interest is the form of the handle, which evokes the feminine form. This 'Venus' was discovered in the Solutrean layer of the El Pendo Cave. It is made of deer antler, and its form evokes that of a woman, with arms raised and with large hips.

Venus figure El Pendo

A spear straightener made of deer antler, from the upper Magdalenian, excavated by Abbé Jesus Carballo at El Pendo Cavern.

Of interest is the form of the handle, which evokes the feminine form.

Note that the authenticity of this piece is not confirmed.

Photo: Giedion (1962)


Venus figure El Pendo

This 'Venus' was discovered in the Solutrean layer of the El Pendo Cave, Camargo, province of Santander. It is made of deer antler, and its form evokes that of a woman, with arms raised and with large hips.

In fact, it is very likely a fragment of a baton perforé, or spear straightener.

(Delporte goes on to question the authenticity of feminine forms in the rock art of the Spanish Levant, and their attribution to the Upper Palaeolithic. Reading between the lines, he obviously thinks that this is of modern manufacture - Don )

Photo and text: Delporte (1979)


Venus figure El Pendo

Another version of the venus.

Height 7 cm.

Photo: © Maudet Morgane, Musée de Préhistoire de Santander.


Venus figure El Pendo Venus figure El Pendo Venus figure El Pendo

This is a facsimile of the venus.

Seen in this format, the similarity to modern norms of feminine beauty is obvious.

Photo: http://www.litos.net/tienda/arte-e-instrumentos/132-venus-del-pendo.html


pendoentrancesm


Entrance to Cueva de El Pendo.

Photo: © Codigowiki
Permission: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Spain license, via Wikimedia


pendowalldeerhorsesm


Wall of paintings including deer and a horse at Cueva de El Pendo.

This is part of the ‘Frieze of Paintings’, a panel measuring 25 metres in length visible from any point in the main hall, containing some twenty figures painted in red. It shows 12 deer, a goat, a horse and various other symbols, all drawn using the contour technique. It dates from around 22 000 BP.

Photo: © Sautuola1880
Permission: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, via Wikimedia
Text: Adapted from www.spainisculture.com


Altamira Deer

Female deer, and part of a small horse, as above.

Photo: Ernesto Lazo via Picasa




cueveelpendointeriorviewingplatformsm


Viewing platform at the frieze of paintings, Cueva de El Pendo.

Photo: © Gobierno de Cantabria
Permission: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, via Wikimedia


fishspatulaelpendosm


Fish-shaped spatula, a bone piece of great beauty, originality and exquisite workmanship from El Pendo, which comes from the excavations carried out by Father J. Carballo, founder of the MUPAC, between 1932 and 1934.

Photo and text: © Gabinete de Prensa del Gobierno de Cantabria
Permission: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Spain, via Wikimedia


bonehorseelpendosm


Piece found in the cave of El Pendo during the excavations carried out by Father J. Carballo, founder of MUPAC, between 1932 and 1934. It is a fragment of engraved diaphysis (central part of a long bone) in which two incomplete figures can be observed. On the one hand, the head and neck of a horse engraved with great detail representing the ear, the mane, the eye, the nostril and the mouth, in addition to a fine crisscross line that fills the silhouette.

The other figure, more complete, represents an aurochs, drawn with great precision, perfect proportions and perspective. In this case, the fine crisscrossing highlights the belly and the dorsal area. The aurochs is an animal very rarely represented in Palaeolithic portable art, which makes this a truly exceptional piece.

Photo and text: © Gabinete de Prensa del Gobierno de Cantabria
Permission: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Spain, via Wikimedia


References

  1. Delporte H., 1979: L'image de la femme dans l'art préhistorique, Paris, Picard.
  2. Giedion S., 1962: The eternal present: the beginnings of art : a contribution on constancy and change, Pantheon


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This page last updated: Thursday, 16th Nov 2023 16:27


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My background

Some people have expressed interest in knowing a little bit about me. For those people, here is a potted biography:

I live in New South Wales, Australia, and I am a retired high school mathematics/science teacher.

The Donsmaps site is totally independent of any other influence. I work on it for my own pleasure, and finance it myself. I started before there was an internet, when I thought I could do a better job of the small map on the end papers of Jean Auel's wonderful book, Valley of the Horses, by adding detail and contour lines, and making a larger version. I have always loved maps since I was a young boy.

I had just bought a black and white 'fat Mac' with a whopping 512 kB of memory (!), and no hard disk. With a program called 'Super Paint' and a lot of double work (hand tracing first the maps of Europe from atlases, then scanning the images on the tracing paper, then merging the scanned images together, then tracing these digital scans on the computer screen), I made my own black and white map.

Then the internet came along, the terms of my internet access gave me space for a small website, and Don's Maps started. I got much better computers and software over the years, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for example, and my maps became colourised and had more detail. I did a lot of maps of the travels of Ayla from Jean Auel's books, and I gradually included other pages with more and more photos available from the web, and scanned from books or from scientific papers, since I was not happy with the quality generally available. I became very interested in the Venus figurines, and set out to make a complete record of the ice age ones. Along the way I got interested in archaeology for its own sake.

In 2008 my wife and I went to Europe, and when we arrived in Frankfurt at sunrise after the 24 hour plane trip from Sydney, while my wife left on her own tour with her sister, they visited relatives in Germany and Austria, I went off by myself on the train to Paris. Later that afternoon I took a train to Brive-la-Gaillarde, found a hotel and caught up on lost sleep. The next morning I hired a car, and over the next four weeks visited and photographed many of the original archaeological sites in the south of France, as well as many archaeological museums. It was a wonderful experience. My wife and I met up again later in the Black Forest, and cycled down the Danube from its source to Budapest, camping most of the way, a wonderful trip, collecting many photos, including a visit to Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic, as well as visiting the Vienna natural history museum. Jean Auel fans will realise the significance of that trip!

Luckily I speak French, the trips to France would have been difficult or impossible otherwise. No one outside large cities speaks English (or they refuse to). I was travelling independently, not as part of a tour group. I never knew where I was going to be the next night, and I camped nearly everywhere, except for large cities. I am a very experienced bushwalker (hiker) and have the required equipment - a one-man ultra lightweight tent, sleeping bag, stove, raincoat, and so on, all of which I make myself for use here when I go bushwalking, especially down the beautiful gorges east of Armidale, though for Europe I use a commercial two person lightweight tent, since weight is not so much of a problem when cycling or using a car, and in any case my wife was with me when cycling, once along the Donau from its source to Budapest in 2008, and again from Amsterdam to Copenhagen and then up the Rhine from Köln to the Black Forest in 2014, both of which were memorable and wonderful trips.

In 2012 we went to Canada for a wedding and to visit old friends, and I took the opportunity to visit the wonderful Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, where I took many photographs of the items on exhibit, particularly of the superb display of artefacts of the First Nations of the Pacific Northwest.

In 2014 my wife and I did another European cycling tour, from Amsterdam to Copenhagen, then from Cologne up the Rhine to the Black Forest, camping most of the way in each case, and taking many useful photos in museums along the way, including the museums at Leiden, Netherlands, and Roskilde in Denmark, and the National Museum in Copenhagen. Again, I later hired a car and did more photography and visited many more sites in France.

In 2015 I made a lone visit to all the major museums in western Europe by public transport, mostly by train, and that went very well. I had learned a lot of German while travelling with my wife, who is a fluent speaker of the language, and of all the European countries, Germany is my favourite. I feel comfortable there. I love the people, the food, and the beer. Germans are gemütlich, I have many friends there now.

I repeated the visit to western Europe in 2018, to fill in some gaps of museums I had not visited the first time, because they were either closed for renovation the first time (such as the Musée de l'Homme in Paris) or because I ran out of time, or because I wanted to fill in some gaps from major museums such as the British Museum, the Berlin Museum, München, the Louvre, the Petrie and Natural History Museums in London, the Vienna Natural History Museum, the important museum in Brno, and museums in northern Germany. It takes at least two visits, preferably three, to thoroughly explore the items on display in a major museum.

I spend a lot of time on the site, typically at least a few hours a day, often more. I do a lot of translation of original papers not available in English, a time consuming but I believe a valuable task. People and fate have been very generous to me, and it is good to give back a very small part of what I have been given. With the help of online translation apps and use of online dictionaries there are few languages I cannot translate, though I find Czech a challenge!

Life has been kind to me, I want for nothing, and am in good health. Not many in the world are as lucky as I am, and I am grateful for my good fortune.

My best wishes to all who read and enjoy the pages of my site.



May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
And may rain on a tin roof lull you to sleep at night.


Webmaster: Don Hitchcock

Email: don@donsmaps.com



Website last updated Sunday 04 May 2025