Beaver's teeth 'used to carve the oldest wooden statue in the world’

The article ‘ Beaver's teeth 'used to carve the oldest wooden statue in the world'’ originally appeared on The Siberian Times

18 OCTOBER, 2020 ,ANCIENT-ORIGINS

https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-technology/oldest-wooden-statue-008260

Two years ago, German scientists dated the Idol as being 11,000 years old. Picture: The Siberian Times

Dating back 11,000 years - with a coded message left by ancient man from the Mesolithic Age - the Shigir Idol is almost three times as old as the Egyptian pyramids.

New scientific findings suggest that images and hieroglyphics on the wooden statue were carved with the jaw of a beaver, its teeth intact.

Originally dug out of a peat bog by gold miners in the Ural Mountains in 1890, the remarkable seven-faced Idol is now on display in a glass sarcophagus in a museum in Yekaterinburg.

At a conference involving international experts held in the city this week, Professor Mikhail Zhilin said the wooden statue, originally 5.3 meters (17.4 ft) tall, was made of larch, with the basement and head carved using silicon faceted tools.

'The surface was polished with a fine-grained abrasive, after which the ornament was carved with a chisel,' said the expert.

'At least three were used, and they had different blade widths.

The faces were 'the last to be carved because apart from chisels, some very interesting tools - made of halves of beaver lower jaws - were used'.

He said: 'Beavers are created to carve trees. If you sharpen a beaver's cutter teeth, you will get an excellent tool that is very convenient for carving concave surfaces.'

'This is a masterpiece, carrying gigantic emotional value and force'. 

Pictures: The Siberian Times, Svetlana Savchenko

The professor has found such a 'tool' made from beaver jaw at another archeological site - Beregovaya 2, dating to the same period.

Studying the Idol, he believed the tool is consistent with its markings, 'for example when making holes more circular', said Svetlana Panina, head of the archaeology department at Sverdlovsk Regional Local History Museum.

The idol was put on a stone basement, not dug in the ground, said Zhilin.

It stood like this for around 50 years before falling into a pond, and was later covered in turf.

The peat preserved it as if in a time capsule.

Post continues with more pics at:  https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-technology/oldest-wooden-statue-008260

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