Stone age women were worshipped for their curves, particularly their “prominent” bottoms, archaeologists say.

Male hunters whittled the outline shapes of their ideal women from flintstone, along with bone and ivory, to create decorative figurines.

Polish archaeologists studied 30 figurines from 15,000 years ago and told journal Antiquity they were “curvaceous womanly shapes with prominent buttocks”.

The whittled flat stones were carved so one side is straight but the other curves to portray the shape of a woman’s back, buttocks and legs.

In all 30 stone carvings - found in Poland - the buttocks were deliberately over-emphasised.

It is thought to mean the woman was wealthy and well-fed. But it is not clear if the carvings represented real women or a spiritual impression of an ideal female shape