Mysterious Human-Like Statue Found In Siberia Is Twice As Old As The Pyramids

Josh Davis
By Josh Davis
26 APR 2018, 12:26

At the end of the last Ice Age, as mammoths were roaming the plains and cave lions prowled in the shadows, a group of people in Siberia felled a tree and began to carve it into a human-like form. What this statute was for is still shrouded in mystery, but new research has revealed that the wooden idol is twice as old as the Great Pyramids of Giza.

The latest study, published the journal Antiquity, has not only refined just how old we think the eerie idol is, but could also hint at what they may have been using the statue for.

The idol was actually first uncovered in 1894, buried under 4 meters (13 feet) of peat in the bog of Shigir, which gives the statute its common name: the Shigir Idol. Uncovered in sections, it was finally pieced together in 1914, revealing that it would once have stood an impressive 5.3 meters (17 feet) tall, although not all of the pieces of the statue survived.



Yet it was not until a hundred years later that advances in technology allowed researchers to finally test the incredible piece of art, and gain an estimate of just how old it is. By radiocarbon dating two sections of the idol, they determined that it was about 9,800 years old. At the time this was extraordinary, and many academics rejected this finding as being impossibly old for a wooden object.

More:
http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/mysterious-humanlike-statue-found-in-siberia-is-twice-as-old-as-the-pyramids/