The Venus of Berekhat Ram is ‘a grooved scoria pebble that was excavated during the summer of 1981 at the Acheulian site of Berekhat Ram’ by Naama Goren-Inbar. It was unearthed between ‘two basalt flows that overlie and underlie the archaeological horizon and are dated to 233,000 ± 3,000 years’ , making it roughly 235,000 years old. It is small in size, 35mm x 25mm x 21mm , and weighs 10.33g . In the initial report, on discovery, Goren-Inbar suggested that this small object was an effort of the prehistoric human hand, being the earliest example of an Ultra Primitive Humanoid Object:
‘The grooves described above are considered here to be artificial and purposefully man made.’
Alongside the object, a number of tools were discovered, which displayed well-defined examples of sculpting techniques typical of the time. It was therefore concluded that:
‘Based on this evidence we assume that the inhabitants of the Acheulian site were both physically and mentally capable of modifying pebbles to achieve a required form.’
There then ensued an argument, between 1981 and 1995, between archaeological papers, over its validity as an object of human effort as opposed to an outcome of natural forces. There were many archaeologists who did not recognize symbolic objects prior to the Upper Paleolithic (see Chase and Dibble 1992; Bednarik 1989, 1992; Davidson and Noble 1989; Davidson 1990; Schepartz 1993) , and its validity was strongly contested between it’s discovery in 1981 and Alexander Marshack’s paper in 1995, which provided sufficient evidence for the object to be assumed a product of human intention. Andrew Pelcin was the main opposition to Goren-Inbar’s discovery, expressing in his paper:
‘It is not only conceivable but probable that the figurine is entirely of geologic origin.’
Pelcin called for scoria from the same archaeological shelf to be compared to the object, and stated that the ‘symbolic nature’ could not be discussed until the object was validated. In opposition to Pelcin, Marshack worked with Sergio Peltz in 1995, a specialist in scoria and the pyroclastic materials of Israel and ‘Peltz reported that it was clear that “human hands had worked a fragment of the pyroclastic rock”’.