'Early Girls'

The Venus of Willendorf is 30,000 years old. Found in Austria in 1908, she is 4.4 inches tall, carved from limestone, and depicts a woman's body with full breasts, a rounded belly, wide hips. Her face is covered. Her feet are small. She fits in a palm. There are hundreds of similar figurines from the same period found across Europe and Asia, with no contact between the cultures that made them.

The first sacred image humans made — across tens of thousands of years and thousands of miles — was a woman's body. Not a weapon. Not a king. Not a god with a beard. A woman. The early girls were the first thing considered worth making permanent.

They arrived before the word for arrival existed.

This is for the woman who carries the oldest knowing in her body.