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Scientists discovered a strange, tall, humanoid wooden figure under four meters of peat in a Russian bog. The figure, dubbed the Shirgir Idol (after the bog where it was found), is more than twice as old as the Egyptian pyramids. Gold miners stumbled upon pieces of the wooden figure in 1894. 100 years later, radiocarbon dating helped researchers trace the sculpture back some 9,900 years, which made it the oldest monumental sculpture in the world. The most recent analysis of the idol, published in Antiquity journal, pegged the figure at about 11,500 years old.

In 1894, gold prospectors near the city of Yekaterinburg in Russia unearthed not gold, but wood, and a very special wood at that. Specifically, they unearthed what's now known as the Shigir Idol, a 5-meter (16-foot) carved wooden statue that was marked with recognizable human faces and hands, as well as several intricate markings. The statue was believed to be merely a few thousand years old, and it simply sat on display at a Russian Museum for many years. In 1990s, researchers conducted a radiocarbon analysis of the statues to finally determine how old it really is, and turned up...

　 Beaver's teeth 'used to carve the oldest wooden statue in the world' By The Siberian Times reporter 15 June 2017 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. Two years ago German scientists dated the Idol as being 11,000 years old. Picture: The Siberian Times 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...

A stunning wooden statue pulled from a Russian peat bog 125 years ago has been dated as being 11,000 years old after 'sensational' new analysis. This means the remarkable Shigir Idol, which is covered in ‘encrypted code’ and may be a message from ancient man, is by far the oldest wooden sculpture in the world. Previous dating attempts claimed it was made 9,500 years ago. ... The idol was originally dug out of a peat bog in the Ural Mountains in 1890. 'The first attempt to date the idol was made 107 years after its discovery, in 1997. The first...

<p>'A mysterious wooden idol found in a Russian peat bog has been dated to 11,000 years ago - and contains a code no one can decipher.</p> <p>The Shigir Idol is twice as old as the Pyramids and Stonehenge - and is by far the oldest wooden structure in the world.</p>

Gold prospectors first discovered the so-called Shigir Idol at the bottom of a peat bog in Russia’s Ural mountain range in 1890. The unique object—a nine-foot-tall totem pole composed of ten wooden fragments carved with expressive faces, eyes and limbs and decorated with geometric patterns—represents the oldest known surviving work of wooden ritual art in the world. More than a century after its discovery, archaeologists continue to uncover surprises about this astonishing artifact. As Thomas Terberger, a scholar of prehistory at Göttingen University in Germany, and his colleagues wrote in the journal Quaternary International in January, new research suggests the...

Remarkable new details about giant moose released as archaeologists confirm stone structure is world's oldest. Children were involved in the construction of a geoglyph in the Urals which was only discovered thanks to images taken from space. It predates Peru's famous Nazca Lines by thousands of years, archaeologists have announced. But they are no nearer answering why ancient man made it, nor can they yet fathom which group built the geoglyph; archeological traces found so far in the area do not show a culture with sufficient refinement... Located near Lake Zyuratkul in the Ural Mountains, it stretches for about 275...

The army insists that the 200 T-72 and T-80 tanks found in the woods next to a railroad station in the Urals last week, was part of a normal movement of military equipment, and the vehicles were under guard. But a week ago, people living in village of Elanskaya (outside the city of Yekaterinburg) noted the vehicles, unguarded, and unlocked, but without ammo or ignition keys. Local kids began crawling in and out of the tanks. Videos of all this began showing up on local, then national, web news programs. The government controlled national media tried to ignore it at...

Walter Ciszek (1904-1984) Before there was an Armistice Day, Walter Ciszek was born on November 11, 1904, and lived through a crucified century. Death came gracefully in 1984 on the feast of the Immaculate Conception. In boyhood he was a bully in a gang on the gritty streets of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, and Ciszek’s Polish immigrant father dragged him to the police station, hoping to put him into a reform school. Everyone thought he was joking when the eighth grader announced that he would enter the Polish minor seminary. The seminarian swam in an icy lake and rose before dawn...

The Diocese of Allentown is asking the Vatican to canonize a Shenandoah priest who survived more than two decades of imprisonment in the Soviet Union. The diocese sent three crates of materials concerning the Rev. Walter Ciszek’s life to Rome two weeks ago. The crates included six cardboard boxes that contained things such as sworn testimony from 45 witnesses and thousands of typed pages of his writings and meditations. The documents reportedly took 16 years to compile. The Vatican is slated to review them beginning Tuesday. “They arrived last week,” Sister Albertine of the Father Walter Ciszek Prayer League in...