During the last Ice Age, people living in what is now northern Ukraine carved small figurines from ivory taken from the tusks of enormous mammoths.
Simon Radchenko is a researcher at the University of Stavanger and has coordinated this research. Together with colleagues, he has mapped the unique technology used by some of the Ice Age’s most skilled craftspeople.
“Our research is helping to uncover the complex history of art development in Europe,” Radchenko says in a press release.
He and his colleagues from Ukraine, the UK, and Germany now believe they can explain the entire process used to produce the figurines.
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In the study they have published, the researchers also believe they have identified what inspired the intricate patterns carved into these small female figurines.
When these figurines were created around 18,000 years ago, mammoths were still widespread across Eastern Europe.
Mammoth bones and ivory from their tusks were important raw materials for the people living in what is now Ukraine.
Mammoths may have disappeared from this part of Europe sometime between 15,000 and 14,000 years ago.
Are we looking at genitalia?
More than a century has passed since archaeologists discovered 18 Venus figurines carved from mammoth ivory during excavations at the Stone Age settlement of Mizyn in northern Ukraine.
Researchers have now finally been able to use both advanced microscopes and modern digital techniques to examine them.
Here you can see how the carvings follow the ivory’s natural growth lines with an accuracy of less than one millimetre.(Photo: Radchenko et al., 2026)
These methods have given the researchers a clearer understanding of the role these female figurines played in the lives of Ice Age people.
"Our findings suggest that the ornaments were more than merely decorative. They likely played an important role in the social lives of the people who created these objects," archaeologist Oleksandr Naumenko of the National Museum of History of Ukraine says in the press release.
There is considerable evidence suggesting that what we see at the bottom of several of the figurines represents female genitalia.
The Ice Age artists structured their carvings according to the natural lines visible in mammoth ivory. This has become much clearer now that researchers have been able to use advanced digital tools.
The researchers have also found answers about how the artists extracted the raw material from the middle of the mammoth tusk, and how they shaped, ground, polished, and finally engraved the patterns into the ivory.
The researchers conclude that the artist must have used several different tools made of flint.
The Ice Age was at its coldest
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When artists were carving these female figurines, the last Ice Age was at its very coldest.
The art they created may have marked the beginning of a renewed flourishing of Venus figurines across Europe.
The ornamentation on the female figurine shown at the top of the article. Seen from the front, side, and back.(Image: Radchenko et al., 2026)
This is an art form that can be traced back as far as 44,000 years.
Shortly after the figurines were made in Ukraine 18,000 years ago, similar art depicting abstract female bodies reappeared in several places in Western Europe. But in those cases, the artists could not as readily create ornamentation based on the natural lines in the ivory.
This is entirely unique to the female figurines from Mizyn.
The very last Venus figurines were made in Europe around 12,000 years ago, when the Ice Age was coming to an end.
