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| The Shigir Idol |
Story at The Daily Mail, along with a multitude of photos and graphics.
World's oldest wooden statue is TWICE as old as the pyramids: New analysis reveals Shigir Idol is more ancient than first thought
- Shigir Idol was discovered in a peat bog in Kirovgrad, Siberia in 1890
- Perfectly-preserved wooden statue was thought to be 9,500 years old
- Dating technology revealed its 1,500 years older than previously thought
- Idol is covered in mysterious carvings which have yet to be deciphered, but could depict snakes, danger and even spirits in different worlds
A stunning wooden statue pulled from a Russian peat bog 125 years ago has been dated as being 11,000 years old after 'sensational' new analysis.
This means the remarkable Shigir Idol, which is covered in ‘encrypted code’ and may be a message from ancient man, is by far the oldest wooden sculpture in the world.
Previous dating attempts claimed it was made 9,500 years ago. By comparison, Stonehenge dates back 4,614 years, while the haunting Russian wooden sculpture is also more than twice as old as the Egyptian pyramids.
But in fact, it is one and a half millennia older, according to the latest research by German scientists. 'We can say the results are sensational,' a source at Sverdlovsk Regional History Museum told The Siberian Times. The museum said the dating used the world's most sophisticated technology and was undertaken to remove doubts about the age of the idol.
