Stone-age figurines depicting what could be the oldest pornographic scene in the world have been unearthed in Germany.

Harald Stäuble of the Archaeological Institute of Saxony, based in Dresden, discovered the 8cm lower half of a man, which has been named Adonis von Zschernitz.

"A unique find," reported Spiegel magazine. "This is the oldest male clay figurine ever discovered in the world."

But the most amazing find came at the dig in Leipzig one month later, when Dr Stäuble found what could be the matching female figurine.

Dr Stäuble, who is due to publish a paper on his findings this year, said: "After finding Adonis, we got the team to sieve every speck of soil for a whole month. We were well rewarded because we then found fragments of a female figurine of the same size."

He added: "Adonis is bent forward and the female figure is bent forward even more."

"There are two ways of looking at this. The first is that they were doing a ritual dance, but the other possibility is that the man and woman were copulating and that he was standing behind her. The copulation option is far more likely, and would make this the oldest representation ever of a pornographic scene."