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| | Porcelain Figurine -- Recommendations and Resources (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-25) |
 | | The earliest figurines were made of stone; more recent creations are also made of ceramic, metal, wood, plastic, etc. The earliest figurines are often of pregnant female women, and are called Venus figurines, in reference to their presumed representation of a female goddess, or in any case some connection to fertility. |
 | | Two much older finds are also often categorized as Venus figurines - the Venus of Berekhet Ram, dating to between 800,000 and 233,000 BCE, and the Venus of Tan-Tan, which dates to between 500,000 and 300,000 BCE, the Middle Acheulean period. |
 | | I remember reading, in a basic first-year anthropology survey class, that the Venus figurines maybe be the self-image of the women who created them - "the body as seen by a woman looking down on herself". |
| www.becomingapediatrician.com /health/119/porcelain-figurine.html (1090 words) |
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