How the World’s Oldest Wooden Sculpture Is Reshaping Prehistory
Большая статья в NYT об идоле из Сибири, которому более 12 тысяч лет. Речь о том, что мы почти ничего не знаем о цивилизации, которая создавала подобные деревянные скульптуры, потому что они не сохранились, кроме этой.
Four views of the head of the Shigir Idol, a nine-foot-tall totem pole made of larch and discovered in a Russian peat bog in 1890.Credit...Sverdlovsk Regional Museum
At 12,500 years old, the Shigir Idol is by far the earliest known work of ritual art. Only decay has kept others from being found.
By Franz Lidz
The world’s oldest known wooden sculpture — a nine-foot-tall totem pole thousands of years old — looms over a hushed chamber of an obscure Russian museum in the Ural Mountains, not far from the Siberian border. As mysterious as the huge stone figures of Easter Island, the Shigir Idol, as it is called, is a landscape of uneasy spirits that baffles the modern onlooker.
Dug out of a peat bog by gold miners in 1890, the relic, or what’s left of it, is carved from a great slab of freshly cut larch. Scattered among the geometric patterns (zigzags, chevrons, herringbones) are eight human faces, each with slashes for eyes that peer not so benignly from the front and back planes.
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Four views of the head of the Shigir Idol, a nine-foot-tall totem pole made of larch and discovered in a Russian peat bog in 1890.Credit...Sverdlovsk Regional Museum
At 12,500 years old, the Shigir Idol is by far the earliest known work of ritual art. Only decay has kept others from being found.
By Franz Lidz
The world’s oldest known wooden sculpture — a nine-foot-tall totem pole thousands of years old — looms over a hushed chamber of an obscure Russian museum in the Ural Mountains, not far from the Siberian border. As mysterious as the huge stone figures of Easter Island, the Shigir Idol, as it is called, is a landscape of uneasy spirits that baffles the modern onlooker.
Dug out of a peat bog by gold miners in 1890, the relic, or what’s left of it, is carved from a great slab of freshly cut larch. Scattered among the geometric patterns (zigzags, chevrons, herringbones) are eight human faces, each with slashes for eyes that peer not so benignly from the front and back planes.
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