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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."
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday May 03 2018, @11:07PM (1 child)
Or about the best you can do with nothing more than a sharp stone you happened to find.
Its a totem pole. Those things were usually community projects, made with primitive tools, by people who didn't have any specific information to encode, and no understanding on encryption. These were verbal societies, they didn't write anything down, they had no written language, they couldn't even count the fish catch of the day if it was more than 10. They built totem poles to remind them of their stories and legends.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday May 04 2018, @04:14AM
My understanding of totem poles, at least as used in the Pacific Northwest, is that they're actually... well, billboards. They indicated what a tribe had available for trade.
The marks on the artifact may be simply counting marks.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.