Shigir Idol The Worlds Oldest Wooden Statue

Shigir Idol which displayed in the "Historic Exhibition" Museum in Yekaterinburg, Russia is the most ancient wooden sculpture in the world, made during the Mesolithic period, around 7,500 BCE. It was discovered on January 24, 1894 at a depth of 4m in the peat bog of Shigir, on the eastern slope of the Middle Urals, approximately 100 km from Yekaterinburg. The ancient statue is twice as old as the Egyptian pyramids, and contains arguably the most ancient coded message on the planet. Investigations in this area had begun 40 years earlier after the discovery of a variety of prehistoric objects in an open-air gold mine.

The idol, 'scraped' using a 'stone spoon' from larch timber, is around 4,000 to 5,000 years older than Britain's world famous Stonehenge monument. It stands 9.2ft (2.8 metres) in height but originally was 17.4ft (5.3 metres) tall, as high as a two storey house.

In 1914 the archaeologist Vladimir Tolmachev proposed a variant of this reconstruction by integrating the unused fragments. Some of these fragments were reported lost, so only Tolmachev’s drawings of them remain.

Since 2003 the sculpture has been displayed in a glass box filled with inert gas. The head reproduces rather faithfully a face with eyes, nose, and mouth.

The body is flat and rectangular. Geometrical motifs decorate its surface. Horizontal lines at the level of the thorax seem to represent ribs, and lines broken in chevrons cover the rest of the body. The messages carved into the ornament ‘remain ‘an utter mystery to modern man’, according to experts. Some say the straight lines could denote land, or horizon – the boundary between earth and sky, water and sky, or the borderline between the worlds. A wavy line or zigzag symbolised the watery element, snake, lizard, or determined a certain border. But the marks could have multiple meanings for the ancient statue-makers who gave the idol seven faces, only one of which is three-dimensional.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigir_Idol
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2802962/what-world-s-oldest-wooden-statue-trying-tell-etchings-haunting-seven-faced-shigir-idol-hold-message-modern-man.html

http://coolinterestingstuff.com/the-mystery-of-the-worlds-oldest-statue-and-its-unexplained-markings

Pic SOurce:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%88%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D1%88%D0%B8%D0%B3%D0%B8%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BB.jpg