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posted by janrinok on Thursday May 03 2018, @05:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the got-old-wood dept.

The Independent has an article about a wooden statue found in peat bog which is 'twice as old as Stonehenge'. Named the Shigir Idol, it was found preserved in a peat bog back in 1890. New dating techniques suggest that it is around 11,000 years old, which would make it the oldest extant wooden sculpture.

Depicting a man with mysterious symbols inscribed on him - which scientists believe could be an ancient encrypted code - the statue is 1,500 years older than previously thought.

Scientists in Mannheim, Germany, used the most up-to-date carbon dating technology, called Accelerated Mass Spectrometry, to determine the statue's age.

Thomas Terberger, a professor at the Department of Cultural Heritage of Lower Saxony, part of the team who dated the Idol, told the Siberian Times: "The results exceeded our expectations.

"This is an extremely important date for the international scientific community. It is important for understanding the development of civilisation and the art of Eurasia and humanity as a whole.

"We can say that in those times, 11,000 years ago, the hunters, fishermen and gatherers of the Urals were no less developed than the farmers of the Middle East."


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 03 2018, @10:34PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday May 03 2018, @10:34PM (#675366) Journal

    They've found some amazing items preserved in peat bogs. Butter [washingtonpost.com], sacrificial victims [pbs.org], and well-preserved wooden artifacts [wired.com].

    On a related note, similarly amazing levels of preservation have been observed in other bodies of water that have dead zones. The Black Sea has an anoxic layer at the bottom that has kept ancient shipwrecks from all eras in pristine condition [newsweek.com]. Ballard, who explored it, even reported he found evidence of ancient buildings [nationalgeographic.com] that predated the breaching of the dam that separated the Mediterranean from the Black Sea.

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