11,000 Years: The Dating of the Shigir Idol, the World’s Oldest Wood Carving

The incredible Shigir Idol, a wooden wonder of the prehistoric world, has been accurately dated by a team of German scientists, and the results obtained have been sensational. It has been determined that the age of this tall carved wooden sculpture is 11,000 years, 1,500 more than previously thought, thus making it the oldest wood carving in the world.
The significant discoveries were presented at a press conference on August 27 in Yekaterinburg, Russia. The previous dating of the idol had been set at 9,500 years.
“The investigations were carried out in Mannheim, Germany, in one of the most advanced laboratories in the world, using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry on seven tiny samples of wood. The results were astounding, as samples taken from within the Idol itself tested for an age of 11,000 years, dating back to the dawn of the Holocene. We also learned that the sculpture was carved from a larch tree that was at least 157 years old,” .
By comparison, the haunting humanoid statue is more than twice as old as the Giza pyramids, a claim made all the more incredible by the fact that it is made of wood.

Taller than a two-story building—2.80 meters, though it originally stood at more than 5.30 meters, before sections of the carving were accidentally destroyed during the Soviet era—the idol is believed to have formed At the time, it was made from a larch tree that was over a hundred years old, whose trunk was carved and decorated using a stone instrument similar to a spoon.
The body of this prehistoric sculpture is flat and rectangular, and is crossed by horizontal lines approximately at the height of its chest, representing what could be ribs. A̳n̳c̳i̳e̳n̳t̳ artists also decorated the carving with seven faces at different levels, which has suggested to scholars that these positions are probably related to some kind of hierarchy. Three of the faces are situated one above the other both front and back, and a seventh figure at the top connects front and back, completing the composition.
Researchers believe that the idol\’s high cheekbones and straight nose may reflect the appearance or physiognomy of its creators at that time.

The incredible wood carving was extracted from a peat bog on the western fringes of Siberia as long as 125 years ago. Just as if it had been inside a time capsule, the idol was sitting on the ground and in an excellent state of preservation about four meters deep below ground level, protected by the antibacterial properties of peat. , which prevented its decomposition.
The sculpture was broken into numerous fragments when found, but once reconstructed, its surface was found to be covered in Mesolithic symbols and geometric designs: broken lines, straight lines, herringbone patterns, meandering lines, etc. If these lines really do form any message in a primitive writing system, this would make Shigir\’s Idol the oldest code on the planet.
These mysterious markings have yet to be deciphered, but many suspect they may contain coded information. If it were translated, we could gather valuable information about Mesolithic man and his vision of nature and the spiritual world.

The director of the research and professor at the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Mikhail Zhilin, believes that this could be the case when he says that: “It is a masterpiece, charged with great force and with gigantic emotional value. It is a one size fits all, there is nothing in the world like it… The ornamentation that covers it is nothing more than encrypted information. The people of the time transmitted their knowledge with the help of this idol.
These messages remain for now “an absolute mystery for modern man”, but according to Zhilin the prehistoric artisans must have “lived in complete harmony with the world and had an advanced intellectual development, as well as a complex spiritual world.”
The new research is a victory for Russian academics who had been defending the idol\’s antiquity in the face of skepticism from some members of the scientific community.
In The Siberian Times we can read that Natalia Vetrova, general director of the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of History, explained that the previous statements “were not recognized by the international scientific community. So we wanted to know for sure how old our Idol was and tell the world about it.”
Thomas Terberger, a professor at the Lower Saxony Department of Cultural Heritage, was involved in the recent dating of the idol. He stated that “The results exceeded our expectations. The age of the Shigir Idol is 11,000 years.”
“This is extremely important information for the international scientific community. It is important for understanding the development of c̳i̳v̳i̳l̳i̳z̳a̳t̳i̳o̳n̳ and art both in Eurasia and in humanity as a whole.”
“We can say that at that time, 11,000 years ago, the Ural h̳u̳n̳t̳e̳r̳s̳, fishermen and gatherers were no less developed than their Middle Eastern agricultural contemporaries,” Terberger concluded.
Professor Mikhail Zhilin, director of the research and a member of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, has studied the idol and told The Siberian Times that it is an impressive work.
“It is a masterpiece, charged with great force and with enormous emotional value,” he stated.
“It is a one size fits all, there is nothing in the world quite like it”
The giant who came from the Siberian peat
It came from the cold, no doubt, and from a remote antiquity that has taken us a long time to discover. This wooden figure was discovered in the 19th century, specifically on January 24, 1890 and at a depth of 4 meters, in the Shigir peat bog, near the western periphery of Siberia.
It was in a swamp and in very poor condition, so much so that it was extracted in several parts. What they gradually revealed can be summarized in these disturbing data:
Shigir\’s idol measures 2.8 meters and actually does not have 1 face, but 7. To understand it, all you have to do is look at the image below. Disturbing isn\’t it?

The sculpture has been gradually reconstructed. However, all the pieces have never been able to fit together because they do not follow a known logic. Professor Lobanov, combined the main fragments to reconstitute the sculpture at the beginning of the 20th century. But the arms, for example, did not quite fit the figure.
In 1914, the Yekaterinburg archaeologist Vladimir Tolmatsjev thought that the remaining pieces were not arms, but legs, and for this reason he made it taller, almost 5.3 meters.
Over time, these pieces were removed and lost, leaving the idol standing 1.93 centimeters tall. That is to say, the pieces found in the peat bog were either lost or it was never fully known how they could fit together.
What does seem to be clear today is its age: 11 thousand years. The statue would have been carved in the Holocene, with the first h̳u̳n̳t̳e̳r̳s̳ and gatherers of the Urals.
The purpose of the idol was purely mystical. The researchers believe that it would have some religious purpose, and hence, those inscriptions in a dead language so old, that to this day no one has yet been able to decipher. Quite a challenge, no doubt.
It was carved with a stone. And the wood is larch; there where the ring count of the tree reveals that it was about 150 years old when it was felled.
The entire body of the idol is covered by symbols.