I know it’s funny to say “Lucy” and “Eve” and be big nerds, but it’s a valid OP, and it’s RIGHT THERE:
Why do people think they’re so funny that they have to completely derail valid threads?
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother takes umbrage at your OP, sirrah!
This image is from a really, really long time ago.
Oh, and to WAG a guess at the OP, I’ll say Cleopatra. She was real and also really purty, right?
I thought that Cleopatra wasn’t particularly attractive but rather men fell for her because she was smart and charming.
I checked out her wikipedia link and damn, that’s not a pretty mug at all by modern standards. You may be right.
I don’t think they “completely derail” the thread any more than your post did.
A tad too plump for my taste, I admit, but Dolley Madison (1768-1849) was a hottie, I’d say: http://www2.ku.edu/~maxkade/humboldt/Dolleyport1b.jpg
Josephine, Napoleon’s empress, had her charms: http://www.best-of-perigord.tm.fr/sites/musees/napoleon/josephine.jpg
Emma Hamilton, Lord Nelson’s mistress, was easy on the eyes, too: http://www.nmm.ac.uk/upload/img/Emma-cameo.jpg
As in all matters aesthetic, of course, YMMV.
I wouldn’t be so sure of that.
As has been asserted, the assumption underlying the OP is inherently faulty. There is zero evidence that people were uniformly homely before the present time. Further, the OP’s question is ambiguous. Are we talking someone who, if they had the advantages of modern cosmetics and air-brushed photography would look just as hot as, say, Halle Berry? Or are we talking someone who, even with the difficulties inherent in trying to look your best without modern cosmetics and photographic lying, er, that is retouching, would still be hot as Halle Berry?
When an OP is inherently flawed, the typical response on this Board is to flog it unmercifully. Here, that flogging has, at least, been done humorously. 
This is the canonical one:
No, this reading of the OP is faulty. He says “BY TODAY’S STANDARDS.” Therefore, he’s asking about how far back you can go and still find a woman that would be considered “hot” by 2007’s sociocultural standards.
Lucy was a fucking APE. Cleopatra was an ugly man.
I’d venture the mid-1800’s; before that, the cultural standards of beauty favored things that aren’t considered beautiful by modern stanrdards, such as obestity.
See that closed-mouth smile? That’s because her teeth were so bad that she never, ever smiled with her teeth showing.
Not necessarily, if the assumption is correct then the answer is Twiggy.
Or this one.
Uh… I like yours better.
'kin hell - that’s Elijah Wood.
The hell she is! Don’t you dare spoil her for me. 
Here’s another view: http://www.huntington.org/Education/eduPix/24.5.jpg
Or this: http://www.vesuvius.tomgidwitz.com/assets/images/Emma-as-Baccahnte.jpg
Willendorf! :smack:
That was her last name. I had consumed a lot of beer that night, so it’s all kinda fuzzy. But she was a wild one, I’ll tell you!
VCO3 - What sociocultural standards? The 13 year old boys with plums in their shirts that seem to be modelling everything in Milan, or the Lane Bryant models in the catalog? Twiggy or Rosanne? I can find thousands of people who will gladly flog the weasel over either.
That first link in your post should be in the dictionary under “coquette”. Wow!