We have often discussed the difficulty in maintaining the creationist view of the Earth being only a few thousand years old when carbon dating and other techniques show billions of years of existence. A new such conflicting data point has emerged from Russia where a peat bog yielded a wooden idol and is 11,000 years old. What is particularly cool is that this oldest wooden figure contains a code of some ancient language that has yet to be deciphered.
The Shigir Idol is twice as old as the Pyramids and Stonehenge. It was discovered some 125 years ago but was recently found to be much older than previously thought by scientists in Mannheim, Germany using Accelerated Mass Spectrometry.
The intriguing secret code makes the find particularly exciting.
By the way, does the face remind you of a later piece of art?
Idol? How do we know it’s not a toy? Will the archaeologists in the year 13015 dig up a Ghost Buster figure and pronounce it an “idol.”
Simms – there is a great novella called “A Canticle for Liebowitz” which deals exactly with the problem you have presented. I may not have spelled it correctly but it is in a collection of the Best Science Fiction written before they started giving Hugo Awards.
Annie
“I’m not so sure it’s safe.”
= = =
In today’s world, what is?
From privacy to artifacts…
Karen S
1, August 31, 2015 at 8:37 pm
Thank goodness such a treasure was not unearthed in Syria, in ISIS territory.
http://jonathanturley.org/2015/08/19/russian-orthodox-extremists-destroy-russian-avante-garde-art-in-the-hermitage/
I’m not so sure it’s safe.
Thank goodness such a treasure was not unearthed in Syria, in ISIS territory.
Wow. It’s similar to the Rosetta Stone. How exciting if linguists can decode the language.
I’ve never understood why anyone would use the Bible as a science book. It was never intended to teach us about biology, geography, astronomy, physics, math, or astrophysics.
It is in my opinion twisting its purpose to apply it to the sciences. If its authors described the double helix of DNA, they would have been immediately stoned to death, and we would never have heard of the Bible.
DBQ – the moon last night was, indeed, lovely.
So.. the dinosaurs roamed the earth for 150 million years, but went extinct a few centuries after Fred Flintstone started his Brontosaurus Burger franchise.
So the creationists are off by a few thousand years…
… Stop persecuting their religion and stuff.
Up Next: The Kremlin has the idol arrested and jailed with Pussy Riot for making an affront to Christianity…
I will be more excited when they translate it.
I do not need “a” creation story about supernatural beings to be awed by the grandure of the universe and my uniqueness in it.
Very well put. Somethings just don’t need a detailed explanation or precise dating. Somethings do not need to be “known”. They just are.
Self awareness in humans and then the speculation on our place in nature, the universe and the wonder of it all has manifested itself in religion, art and language. This artifact is just another example of such pondering. It does also seem that there maybe self awareness in other animal species on Earth……so if we want to contact another alien species to connect and communicate with, perhaps we should focus a bit closer to home. Evidently the octopi in Australia are going to war! https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28085-octopuses-seen-throwing-things-may-be-using-shells-as-weapons/
Take some time this month and especially next month to view the Harvest Moons and the Blood Moon in September if you want to be impressed by the universe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2015_lunar_eclipse The moon this morning at 6:15am my time, when I was letting the cat out of the shop, was spectacular. I made my husband put on his slippers and stand outside and view it. The sun was just coming over the horizon and the full moon was shinning like a giant headlamp in the sky. We know what causes this now, but in the past people had no…or little ….understanding of astronomy and the magnificence of it and the mystery was explained by supernatural stories. Give the poor people in the past a break. They were explaining to themselves with what they knew 🙂
[geez!! I had to really search for a link that didn’t include end times/rapture/apocalypse stuff….it is just an eclipse people…..get real.]
Chinggis’ ancestors make this pole and another pole. This pole from north. Other pole from south. Bi-polar ancestors. Best poles are from Cracow.
Chinggis translate language on pole: “watch out for woolly mammoth”.
Ha! Archaeology and historic study and discovery are sooo 20th century. These days we just Burn It All Down and Make SHTUFF Up.
Some of you posters have already been infected with the disease such poisonous finds entail : Thought.
Stop it! CRUSH. KILL. DESTROY.
If you want to talk about “a” creation story, then I choose to believe in the most scientifically provable version of “a” creation story which says “this” universe is some 14 BILLION years old. On that timescale this figurine was JUST carved! I do not need “a” creation story about supernatural beings to be awed by the grandure of the universe and my uniqueness in it. The best part of the story though, is that it is still unfolding before our eyes as we discover new things, whether on the scale of the universe or at the subatomic level; it continues to be my source of wonder.
Dave:
I dont think that I have any porn stars in my genetic code. How long does the Bible say that life has been on Earth? Maybe the wood carving came from another planet. Then it could be older. I was thinking that Christ was around about 2015 years ago. The statue looks like a pissed off Jesus. In Spanish that would be a pissed off Hey Zeus.
“If there is no why, why do we care …..about anything? We are but packets of quanta within a certain frequency field and have determined various moral principles from….?”
So without a deity, or many deities if you’re a polytheist, you wouldn’t care about anything? How shallow.
We are but packets of quanta? Well, walking around with the confirmed recognition that we are composed of particles born in the cores of former stars is pretty amazing. We don’t need the application of some ignorant myth in order to marvel at our existence, or existence generally.
Lunacy how some people (don’t, won’t, can’t) think.
I can settle all this for everyone. Read my new book and I will reveal the origins of the universe-pages 23 to 56. I will also reveal all the other stuff-pages 67 to 11111234.
‘a yet to be deciphered code’…..why would it be a ‘code’? is english…french….chinese….et.al. a ‘code’? Is ‘I d I o t’ a ‘code’ for ‘idiot’? How about a language? And how does accelerated mass specto produce a date? Is it more accurate than the Turin carbon dating? And in a peat bog nonetheless? Holy preservation……wonder where the peat came from…..and before the end of the last ice age and mankind survived that climate change and global warming without crap and trade. I like that little statute tell me more. Baal.
In answer to the question posed at the end of the article…..yes “the Scream” comes to mind.
Ah let’s be fair….it’s not “the” creationist view, it’s “a” creationist view. If there is anything that is most irksome it’s the lumping which occurs when one espouses an orderliness which might “smell” of Genesis.
Anyone running around decrying the science of physics for its view of subatomic particle and fixed nuclear orbits taught in the 40s to 60s? Many people still believe.
The peat bog reveals another instance of creativity. Therein lies a deeper question. It’s the “why”? We keep finding the ” how” and the ” what” but it’s the why that is the mystery.
Think of all the cataclysmic events which occurred to get us to where we are today. We discover a creativity which has evolved through that…..why? How is it that quanta reasons and creates?
Creationism speaks to a creation with a reason in answer to the why.
If there is no why, why do we care …..about anything? We are but packets of quanta within a certain frequency field and have determined various moral principles from….?
Hmmmm….Energy with self-awareness that thinks……? But it results from randomness—unguidedness.
Just a thought.