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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04 2018, @07:27AM
It's Academia, just think of the future papers and PhD thesis work they can milk out of 'interpreting' these decorations (I've just been browsing through a book where I've never seen so much BS extrapolated from so little archaeological evidence, and we're not even talking 'Ancient Astronut' stuff here, but proper 'I've a Doctorate and lots of published papers' stuff), bet there'll be mention of 'proto-runes', attempts at shoehorning a 'lunar calendar' into it, etc. etc. (of course, as I've already mentioned the 'Ancient Astronuts' mob, that lot'll be screaming 'It's a Grey' and doing their best to fit the carvings into a depiction of the constellation of Orion..)
Before I posted the above, I thought I'd just do a search, came across this [siberiantimes.com] and this [dailymail.co.uk] [both from 2014]
Oh, and this [rense.com] as well from 2014..
Oh bollocks...