Ignateva Cave

Ignateva cave, also known as Ignatievka cave, Ignatievskaya cave ( _ru. Игнатьевская пещера), or Yamazy-Tash, is a large limestone cave on the banks of the Sim River, a tributary of the Belaya river in the southern Ural mountains of Russia. [citation|title=Collins Dictionary of Archaeology|first=Paul G.|last=Bahn|publisher=ABC-CLIO|year=1993|isbn=0874367441|page=224.] [citation|url=http://www.northcongress.ural.ru/index/en/arh/public?r_id=504|title=Review of the Ural cave and rock art|first=Vladimir|last=Shirokov|publisher=The Northern Archaeological Congress|year=2002.] It was in 1980 the site of the discovery of a venus figure, with twenty-eight red dots between her legs that are believed to represent the female menstrual cycle. [citation|title=Lost Civilisations of the Stone Age|first=Richard|last=Rudgley|publisher=Century|year=1998|isbn=0712677585|page=196.] [citation|title=The Story of V: A Natural History of Female Sexuality|first=Catherine|last=Blackledge|publisher=Rutgers University Press|year=2004|page=37|isbn=0813534550.] The cave also contains microliths, remains of animals, and many other cave paintings, as well as a layer of Iron Age materials.citation|title=Encyclopedic Dictionary of Archaeology|first=Barbara Ann|last=Kipfer|publisher=Springer-Verlag|year=2000|isbn=0306461587|page=250.] Although some sources date the paintings in the cave to the Upper Paleolithic, radiocarbon dating of the pigments in the paintings places their origin more recently, between 6000 and 8000 years ago. [citation|title=Radiocarbon dates for pictographs in Ignatievskaya Cave, Russia: Holocene age for supposed Pleistocene fauna|first1=K. L.|last1=Steelman|first2=M. W.|last2=Rowe|first3=V. N.|last3=Shirokov|first4=J. R.|last4=Southon|journal=Antiquity|year=2002|volume=76|issue=292|pages=341–348|url=http://www.antiquity.ac.uk/ant/076/Ant0760341.htm.]

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