A Message From a Mysterious Ancient Culture in Siberia

On the right bank of the Askiz river, a unique archaeological site from the early first millennium C.E. has been found. It is associated with the enigmatic Tashtyk culture in ancient Siberia and for a change, it sheds light not only on how they died, but who they were.

The Tashtyks’ unusual funerary practices had already been described in numerous articles and research but we know little about how they lived before the evil day. Now at the new site dubbed Kazanovka 14, archaeologists have gained rare insight into their culture, their adaptations to the environment and their relationships in this “oasis” in southern Siberia.

The Askiz is a tributary of the Abakan River. It passes through the balmy Minusinsk Basin in the southern Siberian republic of Khakassia, where the previously unknown site was found during the field season of 2021.

The Minusinsk Basin is a territory bordered by mountains and forests, with abundant lakes, fertile land and the mildest climate in Siberia. One might call it an oasis of the steppe. The winter winds blow the snow away from the mountains, making the area a perfect place to keep sheep, who can roam freely. It is therefore little wonder that the Minusinsk hollow attracted semi-nomadic tribes and their flocks throughout history. Archaeologists over the years have uncovered sites of a number of cultures from the third millennia B.C.E. onward.

While performing construction works along the Mezhdurechensk–Tayshet railroad from 2019 to 2021, various sites from the Early Bronze Age to the later Middle Ages were discovered. These included burials of many cultures and settlements. One of the sites, called “Kazanovka 14,” was excavated in 2021.

The salvage excavation of Kazanovka 14 was carried out by Anton Vybornov of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography SB RAS Novosibirsk, Russia, under the leadership of Timoshenko Alexey. It was here that the scholars found new evidence of how the Tashtyks lived their life, after finding the remains of a burned-down wooden structure, and a remarkable petroglyph – an engraved sandstone slab.

Their discoveries were reported in the journal of Problems of Archaeology, Ethnography, Anthropology of Siberia and Neighboring Territories. As Anton Vybornov told Haaretz, Kazanovka 14 was a Tashtyk seasonal camp, as indicated by characteristic finds known from the vast majority of burial grounds of which this “culture” is famous.

A little bit Scythian

The Tashtyk culture was common in the Khakassian Minusink basin, in southern Siberia, from almost 2,000 to about 1,600 years ago. But the culture is not easy to define, Vybornov says. In some ways, they seem to have carried on some Scythian traditions. In other ways, they evince Hunnic – Sarmatian types of cultures, mixed with local traditions known in the Basin. The Tashtyk culture is also considered to be a local southern Siberian phenomenon on which basis the later medieval Yenisei Kirgizian state would arise.

One thing we can be sure about is their idiosyncratic and colourful burial practices.

Tashtyk funerary practices involved either cremation or inhumation. The remains were buried either in box graves dug into the ground and lined by wood, or massive crypt burial mounds. The ash and cremated bones were put inside a leather bag that was then stuffed with dry grass. The bag was arranged inside a leather-dressed dummy, and a mask was placed on the area of the face.

In the case of Inhumation, which was also common, the deceased was dressed in leather. Their heads were wrapped with shrouds, orin any case a cloth tissue, and a mask was placed on top.

The masks were the most extraordinary feature of these burials. They were essentially portraits of the dead made using clay and plaster and embellished with red paint. On the forehead, a spiral was drawn, and the cheeks and chin were blushed with the paint as well.

Once the dummies or bodies had been prepared, they were placed in box graves or crypts, among grave goods, including pottery and metal vessels. The crypts were big, with a corridor leading inside. When its mortuary duty was finished, the crypt was sealed, burned, and covered, to stand for eternity overlooking the Basin. While we can say plenty about their way of death, as revealed by the abundance of Tashtyk burial sites and practices, we cannot say much about their way of life. Barely any Tashtyk settlements have been found, hence the importance of Kazanovka 14.

Just below the surface, three to 20 centimetres below the modern deposits, the archaeologists unearthed what seems to have been a seasonal campsite of this semi-nomads, who moved from winter to summer camps and practised farming throughout the years in this fertile land. In the southern part of the camp, they found a charred destruction layer that they believe came from a collapsed structure built of wooden sticks attached horizontally or vertically together. The excavators also detected holes in the ground in the area of the structure, indicating the placement of wooden posts that supported the walls and/or the ceiling.

There was also a hearth, and together with pottery vessels, bone and metal objects, and animal remains, there were several spots of burnt clay accumulations. This leads Anton to surmise that the structure might have been a potter’s workshop, a possibility worth considering even though the research is still basic and further analysis is required. Alternatively, the structure could have been a simple house, a hut, or even a yurt. It seems the site ceased to exist when the fire consumed the wooden structure and what was within, sealing the place for good – until it was uncovered by the expedition in 2021.

Kazanovka 14 not only sheds light on the Tashtyk way of life. It also opens a window to their artistic world and their perception of themselves and their surroundings. The fire might have burned down their house, but signs of the Tashtyks’ artistic spirit survived the conflagration long after their death. Among the ash and debris, the archaeologists found astragalus bones, which are animal ankle bones, with marks incised on them, including crosses, circles, and lines. These are familiar from other sites and might have been used as game pieces. A sense of spaceBut the most exciting discovery of the season was the engraved sandstone slab.

The depictions on the sandstone are divided into three panels. The lower has what seemed to be a stylistic representation of trees. The upper features three horizontal lines with smaller stripes in between. The middle panel was bordered by three vertical lines on each side with stripes in between, similar to the upper panel.

The panel’s centre is oddly empty, with some elements on the side and a semicircle in the middle. Despite its cryptic nature, Vybornov and his team were extremely excited by the find, a whisper left behind by these enigmatic people about themselves and their world, an unintentional message from the past. Learning about the finds and the burnt structure found in Kazanovka 14, and the petroglyphs on the slab, one wonders if it might show that very structure.

When asked about it, Vybornov said that it had been his first thought as well, but at this stage that remains pure speculation. Only further research and analysis of the material, and correlation to old and new finds hopefully to be made, can unveil what the message the Tashtykians wanted to deliver actually was.

How did an 8000-year-old community deal with climate change?

Cosmos Magazine reports that archaeologists including Rick J. Schulting of the University of Oxford have determined that Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov, a cemetery on an island in northern Russia’s Lake Onega, was used for a 200-year period during the so-called mini–Ice Age.

Some 8200 years ago, a great sluice of meltwater from a now-vanished ice sheet pulsed into the North Atlantic, causing a mini-Ice Age that lasted for around 200 years. 

Across vast swathes of northern Europe, plant life began to change – broadleaf trees were outcompeted by hardier pines suited to the frigid temperatures – and animals and humans alike would have been forced to adapt to the sudden, drastic changes.

Now, in a new study out today in Nature Ecology & Environment, archaeologists from the University of Oxford have opened a small, misty window into this early Holocene upheaval, to see how one community changed in response. 

The site, the Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov (YOO) cemetery in northern Russia, sits on an island in the vast Lake Onega, 350 kilometres northeast of St Petersburg.

Radiocarbon dating of remains in the cemetery shows that it was mainly used for a short window of around 200 years, spanning some 10 generations and that its use coincided with this mini-Ice Age. 

So why might people suddenly decide to organise their dead at a time of stress? The clue, the researchers say, lies in the lake. 

Lake Onega would have been a relative paradise as freezing temperatures closed in. With its own microclimate and lush stores of fish and plant life, it would have drawn big game such as elk to its milder shores, as well as beleaguered humans on the hunt for food. At the same time, shallower lakes in the region would likely have experienced harsh winter fish kills. 

That’s an awful lot of people milling into a small area – a well-known recipe for disaster. But humans are a resilient bunch, and the researchers believe the Lake Onega communities responded by building a more complex, more united society – their cemetery, the final resting place of their loved ones, was yet another display of social belonging and organisation.

The claim is a bold scientific leap, but it’s not unconvincing. Some 200 years on, when the climate improved, the cemetery was abandoned. 

“Whatever ‘complexity’ we see at YOO,” the authors write, “was thus situational and reversible.” 

Did this tight band of people disperse back into the landscape in smaller, nomadic groups? We’ll probably never know the exact truth of the events, but archaeology offers a tantalising vision of an ancient community in flux, at the mercy of a changing climate.

24,000-Year-Old Animal Found Alive After Being Preserved in Siberian Permafrost

During the Upper Paleolithic era, a multicellular organism was frozen almost the time in history when humans first set foot into North America. About 24,000 years later, it has been found alive after sleeping for millennia. 

This turned out to be a very huge discovery and might have changed the theory of how long organisms and perhaps humans can be preserved for generations.

Discovery of Bdelloid Rotifer 

Bdelloid rotifer – a freshwater creature – is too tiny to see with the naked eye, measuring around 150 and 700 μm. The microorganism can be found in waters around the world. This animal survived being frozen for many years through a remarkable means of cloning itself multiple times through an asexual reproduction form called parthenogenesis, according to Accuweather.

This discovery, therefore, brought about questions on the reversible standstill lack of life theory or mechanism of the cryptobiosis.

These findings were done by researchers from the Soil Cryology Laboratory in Pushchino, Russia. It was discovered from a soil sample collected from permafrost in northeastern Siberian.

This age discovery was really surprising to the researcher as it felt really unbelievable that the animal was alive and doing well.

The permafrost sample of this creature was collected from the Alazeya River, which flows from Siberia into the Arctic. Researchers also confirmed that there was no movement of the bdelloid rotifer due to the icy nature of the ground.

Research Findings

“The takeaway is that a multicellular organism can be frozen and stored as such for thousands of years and then return back to life – a dream of many fiction writers,” Malvin, an author on this study stated.

He further talked about how big this discovery was and how it has totally changed the ideology of organism preservation.

This discovery might have been revolutionary and has added to the small number of organisms that have been found to be able to survive such extraordinary timespans but more are still yet to be uncovered.

The more complex an organism becomes, the more difficult it is to preserve alive, like in mammals, as per Smithsonian Magazine.

Other Organisms That Survived Extraordinary Timespans

In Russia, a pair of prehistoric nematodes, also called roundworms, were discovered and successfully revived, it is said to have been between 30,000 and 42,000 years old.

Studies have shown that over the years, a lot of organisms have been revived from their frozen state but what makes this new discovery more interesting is that none of these past organisms is as complex as the bdelloid rotifer.

Additionally, there have been discoveries on the dead but frozen larger species like the 20,000-year-old woolly rhino that was discovered by a Siberian farmer in the area of Yakutia in 2021 and the 57,000-year-old Pleistocene grey wolf puppy, the most perfectly preserved animal of its kind.

More research is still to be made on this study. The hope is that insights from these tiny animals will offer clues as to how better to cryo-preserve the cells, tissues, and organs of other animals, including humans.

Did ‘unicorns’ co-exist with humans? Yes, but they were just rhinos

Sorry, guys, but I’m going to be a killjoy on this one. But first, the good news: According to a study published last month in the American Journal of Applied Science, a species called Elasmotherium sibiricum — the “Siberian unicorn” — went extinct much later than previously thought.

Researchers from Tomsk State University believe they’ve found fossil evidence of a Siberian unicorn prancing around just 29,000 years ago — more than 300,000 years after they were thought to have gone extinct.

Homo sapiens was stomping around by then, which means our ancestors may have encountered this beast.

But, um.

No.

Despite the image on that post, the Siberian unicorn was far from being, you know, a unicorn. It was a rhino.

Note that this finding isn’t cool: Whenever scientists discover evidence that something survived for hundreds of thousands of years past its assumed expiration date, it’s worth noting.

If the fossil — which is just a small fragment of the skull — was correctly categorized and radiocarbon dated, then it suggests that a small group of the species was able to survive in what’s now Kazakhstan, even as the rest of its kind died off.

Figuring out why that happened could help scientists understand how the planet was changing during that period and how resilient these kinds of animals are to climate shifts.

I just don’t get why we’re trying to pretend this rhino was a unicorn.

My roommate tried to convince me:

“Well, what’s the relative length and girth of the horn?”
“I guess it’s slightly longer than a modern rhino.”
“I rest my case.”

So that’s something, I guess. Forbes reports that the horn was “likely multiple feet long.”

Still, I have to agree with Ben Guarino at Inverse, who argues that the Siberian unicorn “was a unicorn in the same way that a seahorse is a mustang.”

We can’t even really entertain the idea that this shaggy beast inspired unicorn mythology, because the time and place it lived just doesn’t jibe with that.

But, hey, scientists and future scientists of the world, take this as a lesson: Giving your newly discovered species (or even your research boat) a good name can go a long way.

Never hesitate to throw in a shout-out to a pop star or a mythical creature. Never. You are not too good at this. Science is not too good for this.

Because in an age when sources of entertainment are literally endless, people all over the world spent this morning reading about the radiocarbon dating of a shaggy ancient rhino.

Golden Pectoral and Bronze Mirror- Discoveries of Archaeologists in a Siberian Barrow

The archaeological site Chinge-Tey is located in the Touran-Uyuk valley in northern Tuva, a republic in the Asian part of the Russian Federation. It is called the ‘Siberian Valley of the Kings’ because of the many large barrows with rich equipment, dating back more than 2.5 thousand years. Some of them are referred to as princely barrows.

Last year, Polish archaeologists from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków discovered two intriguing graves. The first of them was in the central part of a destroyed, almost completely flattened barrow with a diameter of approx. 25 m. Almost invisible to the naked eye, It was detected by aerial laser scanning.

The wooden burial chamber, built in the framework of solid beams, contained the remains of two bodies. The chamber itself was covered with three layers of beams. The floor was covered with planks. According to the researchers, the deceased were a woman who died at the age of approx. 50 years old and a 2-3 years old child.

Next to the remains of the woman, the researchers found gold ornaments, an iron knife, a bronze mirror and a very well preserved wooden comb decorated with engraved ornament.

‘A particularly interesting artefact was a golden pectoral ornament, a decoration hung at the neck in the shape of a sickle or crescent’, says the head of the Polish part of the expedition, Dr Łukasz Oleszczak from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He emphasises that objects of this type, known from mounds in southern Siberia, have so far been found almost exclusively in the graves of men.

‘They were considered symbols of belonging to a social group, caste, perhaps warriors – in any case, men. Its presence in the grave of a woman is a very interesting deviation from this custom. This certainly confirms the unique role of the deceased in the community of the +Valley of the Kings+’, the archaeologist says.

He points out that the woman was buried in the central part of the tomb located in the immediate vicinity of the great barrow that, according to the researchers, belongs to a nomad prince. ‘It seems that, like the others buried in this barrow, she belonged to the prince’s entourage’, says Oleszczak.

He mentions the condition of the grave goods made from organic material. The researchers from the Polish-Russian expedition had previously found arrow shafts, an ice axe handle, a piece of a quiver. The woman’s grave contained a wooden comb connected with a leather loop to a mirror made of bronze. This set of cosmetic items was placed in the grave in a leather pouch.

The second grave discovered in the last season of excavation was located outside the ditch surrounding the barrow. It was the skeleton of a teenage child, placed in a small pit surrounded by stones. It did not contain any equipment.

‘Graves of children on the perimeter or just outside the ditch surrounding the barrow are a typical part of the funeral rites of this early Scythian culture’, adds Dr. Oleszczak.

The archaeologists also found evidence that a treasure of objects made of bronze was most likely deposited around the perimeter of the barrow at some point. Evidence of this is the discovery of tens of horse tack parts, a bronze ice axe, as well as an ornament in the form of a goat.

They were located with a metal detector. According to Dr. Oleszczak, the treasure was scattered by deep ploughing in the 20th century, when a kolkhoz operated near the cemetery.

In 2021, Polish archaeologists continued their research within the barrow they started to excavate two years earlier. Back then, they found two burials – a central, robbed one, and an intact side grave that contained the body of a young warrior, richly equipped with weapons, a knife, a whetstone and gold ornaments. This is one of the 10 tombs located in a row on the north-south axis in the western part of the cemetery.

According to the researchers, the graves come from the 6th century BCE, when the peoples of Scythian origin lived in these areas. According to the experts, it was the Aldy-Bel culture. In the early Scythian period, the Touran-Uyuk valley was one of the most important ritual centres of the Scythian and Siberian worlds. It was from there, from the mountains of southern Siberia, that the people originated who dominated the steppes of Eastern Europe.

The Scythians were known for being warlike. Their achievements have been described, among others, by the famous Greek historian Herodotus.

The research was supported by a grant awarded by the Polish National Science Centre. The excavations were carried out in cooperation with scientists from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, under the supervision of Konstantina V. Chugunova.

Archaeology shock: Ancient skeleton and gold found buried in Siberia’s ‘Valley of Kings’

The incredible archaeological discovery was made by a team of Polish researchers on the Southern Siberian Steppe. This barren part of the Russian Federation is known as the “Siberian Valley of the Kings” thanks to mysterious structures dotting its landscape.

Ancient mounds raised from the ground by a long-lost civilisation, known as kurgan barrows, give a hint as to what lies beneath the soil. Archaeologists from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków made their discovery at the Chinge Tey dig where nine of these kurgans were built in a row.

According to lead archaeologist Dr Łukasz Oleszczak, the Scythian remains date back at least 2,500 years.

He told the Polish Press Agency (PAP): “Inside was the skeleton of a fully equipped young warrior.

“Near the skull of the deceased, there were decorations: a gold sheet pectoral, a glass bead, a gold spiral braid ornament.”

Alongside the warrior’s skeletal remains, the archaeologists have found many of his weapons.

These included an ice axe stylised into the shape of an eagle, an iron dagger, bow fragments and arrows.

Dr Oleszczak added: “Objects made out of organic materials have also been well preserved.

“Among them is a leather quiver, arrow shaft, ice axe shaft and a belt strap.”

The Scythians were an ancient nomadic people who thrived between the 11th century BC and 2nd century AD to the east of the Roman Empire. Scythia covered much of what is today’s Siberia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and even touched upon China.

The Scythians were known for their warmongering practices, as demonstrated by the contents of their burial sites.

Unfortunately, many of the Scythian artefacts buried across Siberia are at risk of disappearing thanks to looters.

According to Dr Oleszczak, the first of two barrows found in Chinge Tey was robbed before the archaeologists uncovered them.

The archaeologists did, however, discover partially preserved bones and an arrowhead.

The researchers will analyse the second kurgan barrow for its contents next year.

The main discovery, however, was made in a third kurgan nearby.

Dr Oleszczak said: “For our research, we chose an inconspicuous, almost invisible kurgan with a diameter of about 25m.

“We had hoped it had remained unnoticed by robbers.”

The Polish archaeologists have joined an international team of researchers at Chinge Tey.

Their discovery comes after another team of archaeologists in Poland found the site of an unusual settlement from 2,500 years ago.

Archaeologists in northern Poland have also two neolithic structures predating the Great Pyramid of Giza by 2,000 years.

Researchers have also found signs of cannibalistic rituals at an ancient burial site in Poland’s Kuyavian-Pomeranian region.

Researchers Say 5000-year-old Metal Tubes May’ve Been Used As Straws For Drinking

A set of gold and silver tubes found 125 years ago in the northern Caucasus are likely drinking straws, not sceptres, according to a re-analysis of the ancient artefacts.

Russian archaeologist Nikolai Veselovsky uncovered the items in 1897 at the Maikop Kurgan burial mound in the northern Caucasus. This is a Bronze Age site of great significance, as it was found to contain three skeletons and hundreds of objects, including beads of semi-precious stone and gold, ceramic vessels, metal cups, and weapons.

The 4th millennia BCE mound dates back to the Maikop Early Bronze Age Culture (3700 to 2900 BCE), which were named after the burial site.

It was among these many objects that Veselovsky found eight long, thin tubes—burial goods carefully and deliberately placed to the right-hand side of a high-ranking individual found buried in ornate clothing.

The tubes, made from gold and silver, measured over 3 feet (1 meter) in length, four of which were decorated with a small gold or silver bull figurine. The items were eventually relocated to the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia, where they’re kept to this day.

In his accounting of the ancient relics, Veselovsky referred to the tubes as “scepters”—a reasonable guess, given the apparent status of the buried individual and the oh-so-careful positioning of the items. That these 5,000-year-old objects were used as scepters (i.e. wands or staffs held by ruling monarchs) seemed plausible, but new research published in Antiquity is now questioning this interpretation, arguing instead that the items were drinking straws.

Should this interpretation be correct, “these fancy devices would be the earliest surviving drinking straws to date,” Viktor Trifonov, an archaeologist at the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg and a co-author of the new paper, said in a press release.

Of critical importance to the reanalysis was the detection of barley granules inside one of the straws, in addition to cereal phytoliths (fossilized particles of plant tissue) and pollen grains from a lime tree.

This was taken as direct evidence that the tubes were used for drinking. And because traces of barley were found, the scientists say the beverage in question was likely beer.

It’s not a stretch to suggest that Bronze Age Maikop people consumed fermented barley. The practise dates back some 13,000 years to the Natufian period, while large-scale brewing operations began to appear in Asia during the 5th and 4th millennia BCE.

The notion that Maikop households were drinking barley beer flavoured with herbs and lime flowers is entirely plausible, but as the researchers point out, they “cannot prove conclusively the presence of a fermented beverage,” so “results should therefore be treated with caution, as further analyses are needed.”

Importantly, the tips of the Maikop straws were equipped with metal strainers, which likely performed the function of filtering out impurities—a common feature of ancient beer.

The scientists hypothesize that the drinking tubes, with straw-tip strainers, were “designed for sipping a type of beverage that required filtration during consumption,” and that this was done as a communal activity. A large vessel found at Maikop Kurgan would’ve been capable of holding seven pints for eight drinkers, the scientists say.

The straw-tip strainers found at Maikop Kurgan bear a striking resemblance to those found on Sumerian drinking straws. Ancient Sumerians of the 3rd millennium BCE are known to have sipped beer from communal vessels, as evidenced by archaeological artefacts and artworks depicting the practice.

As for the oldest evidence of drinking straws, that dates back to the 5th and 4th millennia BCE, as evidenced by artwork found in northern Iraq and western Iran.

The Maikop straws—if that’s indeed what they are—are special in that they’re the oldest surviving drinking straws in the archaeological record, but they appear to have originated in the Middle East, hundreds of miles away from the northern Caucasus. The presence of drinking straws so far away suggests this practice had spread to the surrounding areas.

“The finds contribute to a better understanding of the ritual banquets’ early beginnings and drinking culture in hierarchical societies,” Trifonov said. “Such practices must have been important and popular enough to spread between the two regions.”

Indeed, the presence of drinking straws in the Maikop Kurgan hint at cultural and economic ties between the regions. What’s more, the scientists say a “taste for Sumerian luxury and commensality” had emerged in the Caucasus by the fourth millennium BCE, and that the drinking straws would go on to carry significant symbolic importance given their use as funerary items for elite individuals.

As this and other archaeological finds have shown, drinking is fun, but it’s even better—and more socially useful—when performed in the company of others.

Russian Statue Discovered to Be Older Than the Pyramids

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 artefact.

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 sculpture is 900 years older than previously thought.

Based on extensive analysis, Terberger’s team now estimates that the object was likely crafted about 12,500 years ago, at the end of the Last Ice Age. Its ancient creators carved the work from a single larch tree with 159 growth rings, the authors write in the study.

“The idol was carved during an era of great climate change, when early forests were spreading across a warmer late-glacial to postglacial Eurasia,” Terberger tells Franz Lidz of the New York Times.

“The landscape changed, and the art—figurative designs and naturalistic animals painted in caves and carved in rock—did, too, perhaps as a way to help people come to grips with the challenging environments they encountered.”

According to Sarah Cascone of Artnet News, the new findings indicate that the rare artwork predates Stonehenge, which was created around 5,000 years ago, by more than 7,000 years. It’s also twice as old as the Egyptian pyramids, which date to roughly 4,500 years ago.

As the Times reports, researchers have been puzzling over the age of the Shigir sculpture for decades. The debate has major implications for the study of prehistory, which tends to emphasize a Western-centric view of human development.

In 1997, Russian scientists carbon-dated the totem pole to about 9,500 years ago.

Many in the scientific community rejected these findings as implausible: Reluctant to believe that hunter-gatherer communities in the Urals and Siberia had created art or formed cultures of their own, says Terberger to the Times, researchers instead presented a narrative of human evolution that centered European history, with ancient farming societies in the Fertile Crescent eventually sowing the seeds of Western civilization.

Prevailing views over the past century, adds Terberger, regarded hunter-gatherers as “inferior to early agrarian communities emerging at that time in the Levant. At the same time, the archaeological evidence from the Urals and Siberia was underestimated and neglected.”

In 2018, scientists including Terberger used accelerator mass spectrometry technology to argue that the wooden object was about 11,600 years old. Now, the team’s latest publication has pushed that origin date back even further.

As Artnet News reports, the complex symbols carved into the object’s wooden surface indicate that its creators made it as a work of “mobiliary art,” or portable art that carried ritual significance. Co-author Svetlana Savchenko, the curator in charge of the artifact at the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore, tells the Times that the eight faces may contain encrypted references to a creation myth or the boundary between the earth and sky.

“Wood working was probably widespread during the Late Glacial to early Holocene,” the authors wrote in the 2018 article. “We see the Shigir sculpture as a document of a complex symbolic behavior and of the spiritual world of the Late Glacial to Early Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of the Urals.”

The fact that this rare evidence of hunter-gatherer artwork endured until modern times is a marvel in and of itself, notes Science Alert. The acidic, antimicrobial environment of the Russian peat bog preserved the wooden structure for millennia.

João Zilhão, a scholar at the University of Barcelona who was not involved in the study, tells the Times that the artefact’s remarkable survival reminds scientists of an important truth: that a lack of evidence of ancient art doesn’t mean it never existed. Rather, many ancient people created art objects out of perishable materials that could not withstand the test of time and were therefore left out of the archaeological record.

“It’s similar to the ‘Neanderthals did not make art’ fable, which was entirely based on the absence of evidence,” Zilhão says. “Likewise, the overwhelming scientific consensus used to hold that modern humans were superior in key ways, including their ability to innovate, communicate and adapt to different environments. Nonsense, all of it.”