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Name : Shigir Idol
What it is : The world ’s oldest known wooden sculpture
The Shigir Idol was discovered in a peat bog in Russia and is now on view at a museum.
Where it was found : At the bottom of a peat peat bog in Russia ’s Ural Mountains in 1894
When it was made : The hulk carving was carve 12,100 year ago from the trunk of a larch tree ( Larix ) tree , making it more thantwice as old as the Egyptian pyramids .
What it tell us about the yesteryear : This Sir Henry Joseph Wood sculpture would have towered 17.4 feet ( 5.3 meters ) magniloquent when it was first crafted . It depict a human figure and features an array ofgeometric motif etched into the statue , including zigzag patterns , as well as human face and hands . For years , archaeologist have argue over the years of the artifact . However , the latest analysis determine that the piece was create by huntsman - accumulator in thePleistocene epoch(2.6 million to 11,700 long time ago ) , according to a field of study in the journalQuaternary International .
The Shigir Idol as seen at the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore in Russia.
bear on : World ’s 1st carved horse : The 35,000 - year - old off-white figurine from Vogelherd cave
— No two are likewise : The colossal stone heads of Olmec in Mexico
— 2,100 - year - old burying of Aphrodite ' priestess ' discovered in Russia
— 8,200 - yr - old interment in Russia hold pendants craft from human bone
Many of the scoring are similar to those found chiseled into monumental stone ruins atGöbekli Tepe , a Neolithic archaeological site in Turkey , concord toScience magazine — a vulgar artistic occurrence that began as the last ice age was ending . However , the intended intention of the wooden piece remain a secret , with some investigator speculating that the design may have been used during ancient rituals , or perhaps that the carve faces may speculate " encoded mythology " whose vertical placement could interpret a hierarchy or chronological succession of events , according to a study in the journalAntiquity .
Researchers have found a much old wooden construction — a 476,000 - year - quondam wooden construction in Zambia — but unlike this ancient discovery , the Shigir Idol is intelligibly a carved monument , rather than tree diagram automobile trunk with notches .
