According to new tests, a mysterious wooden statue canvassed in undeciphered markings is 11,000 years old, which is more 1,500 years more than it was previously believed. This makes the Shigir Idol the oldest wooden sculpture on the planet, the Siberian Times revealed.

The statue is more than twice as old as the Great Pyramid of Giza, three times older than the old city of Babylon, and five times as old as Al Khazneh, the most renowned of the remnants in the old city of Petra.

The new examination watched the model to be 11,000 years old, and delivered utilizing a larch that was 157 years old when it was felled by stone instruments.

Radiocarbon dating directed in 1997 gave the statue an age of 9,500 years of age, however the outcomes were dubious. To affirm the statue’s age, seven “minute” specimens of wood were sent to Germany for examination by quickened mass spectrometry, the Siberian Times detailed.

“This confirms that hunters and fishermen from Urals created works of art as developed and as monumental as ancient farmers of the Middle East,” –the museum’s quote that was used by the website.

The statue was found in the late nineteenth century in a swamp in the Urals in western Siberia. Conditions in the marsh safeguarded the wood so well that not exclusively is the icon’s cut face still especially obvious, however a progression of lines, squiggles and different imprints that keep running along its nine-foot length can likewise be seen.

Initially, it was considerably taller — maybe more than 17 feet high — however a few pieces have been lost throughout the years.

A more total adaptation of the model can be seen in portrays made by paleontologist Vladimir Tolmachev over a century back:

Alongside the face at the best, a few countenances are noticeable at different focuses along the figure. It’s not clear what the appearances or the lines and markings connote, yet there are various speculations.

This is a masterpiece, carrying gigantic emotional value and force, a unique sculpture; there is nothing else in the world like this,” Professor Mikhail Zhilin of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archeology told the Siberian Times last year. “It is very alive, and very complicated at the same time.”He said the markings are “nothing but encrypted information.”“People were passing on knowledge with the help of the idol,” he said, calling it “an utter mystery to modern man.”

Itogi News wrote in 2007 that a few anthropologists believe that straight lines on the symbol could speak to the land, the skyline or the limit amongst paradise and earth, while a wavy line could mean water, a snake or a reptile, and a crisscross could show danger.

The Encyclopedia of Stone Age Art called the icon “one of the best sculptures of the late Stone Age” and said additionally research may decide “whether the signs spoke to an arrangement of pictorial directions, similar to a guide.”

The Encyclopedia likewise offers another probability:

“Although all commentators refer to its exceptional height, and its enigmatic geometric symbols, no one seems to have mentioned the possibility that it may be an early prototype of the totem pole, popularized by North American Indians who also originated in Siberia.”

The idol is currently on display at the Sverdlovsk Regional History Museum.

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com