Is this the world's oldest secret code?
Scientists close to precise dating of the Shigir Idol, twice as ancient as the Egyptian Pyramids.
By Anna Liesowska
22 October 2014
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| The oldest wooden statue in the world. Picture: Ekaterina Osintseva, The Siberian Times |
The Idol is the oldest wooden statue
in the world, estimated as having been constructed approximately 9,500 years
ago, and preserved as if in a time capsule in a peat bog on the western fringe
of Siberian. Expert Svetlana Savchenko, chief keeper of Shigir Idol, believes
that the structure's faces carry encoded information from ancient man in the
Mesolithic era of the Stone Age concerning their understanding of 'the creation
of the world'.
German scientists are now close to a
precise dating - within five decades - of the remarkable artifact, which is a
stunning example of ancient man's creativity.
The results are likely to be known
in late February or early March, The Siberian Times can reveal.
Now the question is turning among
academics to a better understanding of the symbols and pictograms on this
majestic larch Idol, one of Russia's great treasures, which is now on display a
special glass sarcophagus at its permanent home, Yekaterinburg History Museum,
where Savchenko is senior researcher.
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| There is no such ancient sculpture in the whole of Europe. Picture: Ekaterina Osintseva, The Siberian Times |
German pre-historian Professor
Thomas Terberger said: 'There is no such ancient sculpture in the whole of
Europe. Studying this Idol is a dream come true. We are expecting the first results
of the test at the end of winter, (early) next year.'
Professor Mikhail Zhilin, leading
researcher of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Archeology,
explained: 'We study the Idol with a feeling of awe. This is a masterpiece,
carrying gigantic emotional value and force. It is a unique sculpture, there is
nothing else in the world like this. It is very alive, and very
complicated at the same time.
'The ornament is covered with
nothing but encrypted information. People were passing on knowledge with the
help of the Idol.'
He is adamant that we can draw
conclusions about the sophistication of the people who created this
masterpiece, probably scraping the larch with a stone 'spoon', even though the
detail of the code remains an utter mystery to modern man.
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| This is a masterpiece, carrying gigantic emotional value and force. Pictures: Ekaterina Osintseva, The Siberian Times |
Asked if they lived in permanent
fear of mighty forces of mysterious nature, nervously casting around, petrified
by danger, he replied: 'Forget it. The men - or man - who created the Idol
lived in total harmony with the world, had advanced intellectual development,
and a complicated spiritual world.'
'It is obvious that the elements of
geometrical ornament had some meaning,' stated Savchenko and Zhilin in
explaining the Idol's ancient markings.
'The difficulty of interpretation is
the polysemy symbolism of these symbols' - in other words, the possible
multiple related meanings. According to ethnography, a straight line 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. In addition,
the zigzag signaled danger, like a pike. Cross, rhombus, square, circle
depicted the fire or the sun, and so on.'
Savchenko and other museum staff
have postulated that among its purposes was that of an early map, or navigator.
Straight lines, wave lines and arrows indicated ways of getting to the
destination and the number of days for a journey, with waves meaning water
path, straight lines meaning ravines, and arrows meaning hills, according to
this theory which has yet to be fully researched.
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| The ornament is covered with nothing but encrypted information. Pictures: Ekaterina Osintseva, The Siberian Times |
Author Petr Zolin, citing scientific
work by Savchenko and Zhilin, stated: 'The characters of Idol cannot have an
unambiguous interpretation. If these are images of spirits that inhabited
the human world in ancient times, the vertical position of figures (one above
the other) probably relate to their hierarchy.
'Placing images on the front and
back planes of the Idol, possibly indicate that they belong to different
worlds. If there are depicted myths about the origin of humans and the
world, the vertical arrangement of the images may reflect the sequence of
events. Ornaments can be special signs which mark something as significant.'
The Idol reflects what these people
looked like, with straight noses and high cheekbones.
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| The men - or man - who created the Idol lived in total harmony with the world, had advanced intellectual development, and a complicated spiritual world. Pictures: Ekaterina Osintseva, The Siberian Times |
The impression of the main
three-dimensional face, with a gaping mouth, is of an Aztec look, but it is
only because the part of the nose of the main face was broken. In all
there are seven faces, six of which are one dimensional.
'It is clear that the faces together
with the ornament form separate figures,' said Savchenko and Zhilin. 'On both
the front and back of the Idol there are three figures. Here they are located
one above the other, and the upper seventh figure...connects both sides and
crowns the composition.'
Some have claimed the Idol includes
primitive writing, which, if true, would be amongst the first on Earth, but
there is no consensus among experts who have studied the Urals statue.
The Idol was preserved due to a
stroke of luck concerning its resting place in the Urals.
It happened 'thanks to a combination
of antiseptics,' said Professor Zhilin. 'The idol was made from the Phytoncidic
larch, then 'canned' in turf which is an acid anaerobic environment that kills
microorganism-destroyers and also has a tanning effect.'
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| Some have claimed the Idol includes primitive writing, which, if true, would be amongst the first on Earth. Picture: Ekaterina Osintseva, The Siberian Times |
The scientists from the Lower Saxony
State Office for Cultural Heritage are using AMS - accelerated mass
spectrometry - enabling them to compare analysis of five microscopic samples of
the larch from the idol with climate changes data for the past 10,000
years.
This will allow them to figure out
when exactly the 159 year old larch - from which the Idol is carved -
grew.
The tests follow what Professor
Terberger called 'a very successful summer trip' in which 'we worked
together with our Russian colleagues from the Yekaterinburg History Museum'.
The Idol was originally recovered in
January 1890 near Kirovograd; some 2.8 metres in height, it appears to have
seven faces. It was protected down the millennia by a four metre layer of peat
bog on the site of an open air gold mine.
Lack of funding has, until now,
prevented the proper age testing of this Urals treasure. Professor Uwe
Hoysner, from Berlin Archaeological Institute said: 'The Idol is carved
from larch, which, as we see by the annual rings, was at least 159 years old.
The samples we selected contain important information about the isotopes that
correspond to the time when the tree grew.'
The samples used for testing were
cut in 1997. The Idol was extracted in several parts from the peat bog.
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| First reconstructions of the Idol as walking and standing upright, archeologist Vladimir Tolmachev and his drawings of the Idol, and marked faces of the Idol. Pictures: Yekaterinburg History Museum |
Professor Dmitry. I. Lobanov
combined the main fragments to reconstitute the sculpture 2.80m high but in
1914 the Siberian archaeologist Vladimir Tolmachev proposed a variant of this
reconstruction by integrating previously unused fragments.
Tragically, some of these fragments
were later lost, so only Tolmachev's drawings of them remain. However, these
suggest the original height of the statue was 5.3 metres. Some 1.93 metres of
the statue did not survive the 20th century's revolutions and wars and it is
only visible on his drawings.
But even the size is it now makes it
the highest wooden statue in the world.
One intriguing question debated by
Russian scientists is how the Idol - as tall as a two-storey house - was kept
in a vertical position.
Museum staff believe it was never
dug into the ground to help it stand upright, and that it was unlikely it was
perched against a tree, because it would have covered more than half of its
ornaments.
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