The oldest idol of Russia was over the Black sea
Wooden figure caught the Mesolithic — middle stone age and was the oldest of the great surviving sculptures of humanity.
An international group of researchers with the participation of Russian scientists conducted radiocarbon Dating of the Big Shigir idol, which is stored in the Sverdlovsk regional Museum of Yekaterinburg and originally had a height of over five meters.
The Dating showed that it was created 11 600 years ago — earlier than any other sculpture of large size, known to man.
The idol was made thousands of years before the largest freshwater lake in place of the Black sea connected with the pool and the Atlantic ocean became salty. Previous Dating idol underrated its antiquity. Earlier research workers have studied the age of the artifact, the Deputy Minister of culture of Russia has tried to prosecute in court on article 243 of the criminal code. The corresponding scientific article published in Antiquity.
Big Shigir idol was found in the Ural peat in the nineteenth century. The owner of the land, count Alexei Alexandrovich Stenbok-Fermor gave an idol of the Ural society of devotees of natural science (now Sverdlovsk local history Museum) and at that time the height of the carved sculpture was 5.3 meters. However, following the revolution, the unrest of the lower part of it was lost under unknown circumstances, and now he is only 3.4 meters in height.
Idol, except the head with distinct facial features, has seven more “masks” — areas on the body, which shows this or that animal or object.
The question of its Dating always was quite acute. It is not like other famous idols and not associated with any known archaeological culture. So it was dated to the iron, the bronze age, the Neolithic. Doubt at his age, has yielded several radiocarbon datings, which showed an extremely ancient date to 9,000 years ago.
In the new work used the most modern means of radiocarbon Dating. With their help, the archaeologists age 11 600 years — deep Mesolithic (middle stone age). Thus, the Big Shigir idol was the earliest large sculptures known to mankind. Older only carry small figurines of the Paleolithic the size of a few centimeters. The age of the idol indicates a developed religious ideas before the transition of humanity to agriculture and animal husbandry.
Idol is so old that was made nearly four thousand years before the rise of the Black sea. According to several informed numerous geological and archaeological findings of the theories to the events that occurred between 7 500-8 000 years ago, the Black sea was a freshwater lake. And then the isthmus, separating it from the Mediterranean, were overcome by the Titanic volume of salt water that flooded the coastal area and turned the lake into the sea.
For nearly a year, the number slivovskaya in the form of a tremendous waterfall of seawater at 200 times the daily volume of Niagara. In the mythology of the ancient Greeks, this event was displayed as “Dardania flood”, as researchers have linked it with the old Testament description of the flood, by geographic characteristics also occurred in the area of modern Black sea.
In 2014 the Deputy Minister of culture of Russia Grigory Pirumov wrote to the police of the Sverdlovsk region, a statement in which he accused the scholars (authors of new work, and one of the first groups involved in radiocarbon Dating) that they are in the analysis of the damaged idol, made of Siberian larch. Only in 2016, the case was closed due to the fact that experts have not found on the idol traces of the corresponding damage.