The Shigir idol is the oldest in the world
The Shigir Idol dates back 11 thousand years, making it the oldest human artifact ever found. This is revealed by radiocarbon dating.
Radiocarbon dating shows that a wooden statue discovered in a peat bog in the Ural Mountains in 1894 dates back 11,000 years.
The enigmatic artefact, known as the Shigir Idol, is therefore 1500 years older than scholars initially supposed, making it the oldest artefact ever discovered.
The dating was performed in 2016 in Mannheim, Germany, in one of the most advanced laboratories in the world, using accelerator mass spectrometry. The results were truly surprising, placing the artifact at the beginning of the Holocene.
“These are extremely important results for the international scientific community,” Thomas Terberger of the Lower Saxony Department of Cultural Heritage told at that time. “It is important for understanding the development of civilization and art in Eurasia and humanity as a whole.”
The idol measures 2.8 meters, although it was originally 5.3 meters long, before it was accidentally damaged during the Soviet era. It is thought that the artifact was obtained by modeling the trunk of a larch tree.
The body of the sculpture is flat and rectangular and is covered in a series of complex geometric symbols whose meaning is unknown. Seven different levels are recognisable, perhaps intended to express a sort of hierarchy.
The mysterious symbols certainly represent encoded information, which, if translated, could provide valuable information for understanding Mesolithic man and his relationship with the natural and spiritual world.
The shape of the cheekbones, straight nose and shape of the head could reflect what the creators thought of the deity.
The encoded messages engraved on the idol remain today an absolute mystery, but they certainly indicate that its creators lived in total harmony with the world, also developing the conception of a very elaborate spiritual sphere.
