> the Venus of Willendorf could indicate some of those things, but it equally could have just been made by one especially advanced human Hundreds of such figur

> the Venus of Willendorf could indicate some of those things, but it equally could have just been made by one especially advanced human Hundreds of such figurines have survived to the present day, so tens of thousands must have been produced. They used materials transported over 1000+ kilometers. Clearly, those were made by a large-scale network of artists learning from one another, part of a pan-European culture – not by a random genius doodling around, otherwise they wouldn't be so similar to each other. It's also pretty obvious from looking at the figurine that this wasn't the artist's first work. They probably had to make hundreds such statuettes before achieving this level of detail, so they were likely at least part-time professionals.