Complex Numbers

Idol Speculation

Wood isn't known for its long-term durability. Smithsonian notes an exception.

    This Wooden Sculpture Is Twice as Old as Stonehenge and the Pyramids  
New findings about the 12,500-year-old Shigir Idol have major implications for the study of prehistory

Some environments preserve wood better than others, though:

Gold prospectors first discovered the so-called Shigir Idol at the bottom of a peat bog in Russia’s Ural mountain range in 1890.

For our purposes, I'm going to call this carved hunk of tree St. Peat.

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.

I'm wondering how they determined it was ritualistic and not just, you know, ars gratia artis. Was it like "Oh, our ancestors were all cowardly and superstitious, and whatever they did, they did to appease the gods and/or spirits?" Because they definitely weren't cowardly (couldn't be), and what religion they did have probably wasn't regarded as superstition any more than you regard your religion as superstition.

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.

Technically, by some accounts, we're still in an Ice Age, just one that's in retreat.

“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.”

Or perhaps because art changes over time. Maybe not as quickly as today's deliberate art "movements," but then, as now, people get bored and/or inspired and make art. I've heard that hunter/gatherer societies had lots of free time, more than us civilized folks.

The debate has major implications for the study of prehistory, which tends to emphasize a Western-centric view of human development.

I imagine it's hard to make definitive conclusions about a society from one lone artifact, but that's no excuse to let one's preconceptions fill in the gaps.

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.”

H-Gs aren't "inferior." Just different. Don't get me wrong; I like civilization. But it does have its downsides.

João Zilhão, a scholar at the University of Barcelona who was not involved in the study, tells the Times that the artifact’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.

Much is made of cave art, and for good reason: it's a window into the thoughts of humans (and related species) of the past. But I find it difficult to believe that they confined their paintings to cave walls; that's just where the art would be best preserved. Artists today (using the term very broadly) would leave their mark everywhere, if they could; and some do. For all we know, every stone was covered in graffiti, every tree carved, every cliffside covered in murals.

We're not so different from the people who carved St. Peat, in other words: creative, curious, aware of our mortality, at least moderately intelligent, social, communicative. Sure, we likely have different priorities in life ("make money" instead of "look out for tigers," e.g.), and we, or at least most of us, have more knowledge about the world around us. But as I keep saying, don't conflate knowledge with intelligence.

And don't be so sure that a 12,500-year-old work of art was what you interpret it to be.