An incredible wooden statue was pulled out from a peat bog 125 years ago, and the statue was dated as 11,000 years old after an analysis. The statue is christened Big Shigir Idol, and the wooden idol has baffled researchers for decades for it’s the implicit hieroglyphics covering its surface.
The mysterious statue with undeciphered signs is 11,000 years old according to new tests. It is 1,500 years older than previously believed. The Big Shigir Idol will become the oldest known wooden sculpture in the world.
If the dating is correct, it makes the wooden idol twice as old as the Great Pyramid of Giza, thrice older than the city of Babylon, and five times older than the ruins of the ancient city of Petra.
The initial radiocarbon dating was conducted in 1997, which gave the age as 9,500 years, but it was controversial. Seven miniscule samples of wood were sent to Germany for the age analysis of by the accelerated mass spectrometry.
The new study pegged the age of the sculpture as 11000 years old. It was made from a larch that was 157 years old when it was cut by primitive stone tools.
The wooden idol was found in the late 19th century a swamp in the Urals in western Siberia. For an article so ancient, the statue has been well preserved with its face clearly visible.
Additionally, visible are a series of lines, scrawls, and other marks that can be seen all along the nine-foot length. It is believed that the original statue was bigger touching 17 feet, but some pieces were lost over the years.
Besides the face on the top, several faces are visible at different points along the sculpture. It is not clear what these mysterious lines and marks signify. However, there are some theories about them.
Professor Mikhail Zhilin from the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archeology considers them as alive and very complicated at the same time. He added that the markings were nothing but encrypted information.
