The World's Oldest Known Wooden Statue Is Over 7,000 Years Older Than Stonehenge

The further back in time you go, the sparser the archaeological record grows. Many materials used by humans - wood, leather, fabric - simply don't last and are swallowed by Earth under the implacable march of time. The Shigir Idol, in that context, is a marvel.

This wooden figurative statue with a number of mask-like faces was carved thousands of years ago, and preserved for millennia in the acidic, antimicrobial environment of the Shigir peat bog in the Ural Mountains in Russia.

Now, we have learned the statue seems to be even older than we thought.

In ten pieces, the idol was first discovered in 1890 and regarded as a curiosity, a totem pole-like carving from an earlier age. Its true significance wouldn't start to emerge for more than another century. Radiocarbon dating revealed in the 1990s that the Shigir Idol was much older than we had guessed, placing it at around 9,750 years old.

Scientists were stunned. Not just because of the spectacular preservation of the artifact - many experts thought that the style of art was too sophisticated for the people of that time period.

Then, in 2018, another bombshell. The initial radiocarbon dating was performed from a sample on the outside of the wooden post, which had been subjected to ambient conditions and preservation efforts. A team of scientists conducted a new analysis, using a sample extracted from the artifact's more pristine core, and found that it was closer to 11,600 years old. Read the free article.