US anti-intellectualism is the greatest threat to the survival and progressive development of humanity! Its task is to prevent humanity from psychologically evolving and keep it submerged in a US dating from the early 1920s (when Edward Barneys worked his magic and invented ‘consumer capitalism’)! Humanity is only allowed to progress physically if the advances made exist only for the perpetuation of predatory capitalism! This, my dear reader, is how we have arrived at the online US institute of mass thought control known as ‘Wikipedia’! If a government, institute or political group wants to ‘disinform’ effectively – all it has to do is create a page and within seconds the new ‘lie’ has penetrated everybody’s living room. Is Ukraine a Neo-Nazi State – check Wikipedia! Has Zionist Israel committed endless War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in Palestine? Just check Wikipedia! Did a sky-fairy create the entirety of material reality during a seven-day pub-crawl – more or less on a whim – just check Wikipedia! And on and on the anti-intellectualism goes!
What about the supposed ‘oldest’ human constructed object so far known to exist? Well, before we approach this problem, we must acknowledge the enjoyable subject of ‘US anti-intellectual archaeology’! Yes – when one lie, error or deliberate sleight of hand is published upon social media – we can be assured that soon it will be everywhere – with all perpetuators stating its reality with the authority of a genuine ‘Professor’ – hardened through years of experience working within a bona fide University! The ‘errors’ can be traced to their source – but despite this – a ‘new’ and ‘inaccurate’ reality is created with all the certainty of a faith-based religion that must not be questioned (without the ‘smelling’ of a burning bonfire being stacked somewhere upon a local heath)! An entertaining example of this is the false idea that the Shigir Idol was discovered in ‘1894’! I also expect someone will state with equal alacrity that Stalin (or the ‘NKVD’) had it stored in a gulag – ironically constructed directly over the spot where it was discovered!
The religionists are keen to prove material science ‘wrong’ – whilst simultaneously using it to develop the most powerful military weapons – to protect and expand the capitalist State the religionists so lovingly support! The power of their imagined god lies in the denomination of the banknotes that prop HIM up (and the small print and the business contracts that benefit HIS followers)! The people that constructed the 17-foot totem pole, assuming they forged it in their own image, looked very ‘Chinese’ – with high cheekbones, almond (narrow) eyes and flat noses – although I draw the line at these Asiatic people being around 5.3 metres tall! Again, such an idea feeds into the Biblical nonsense of ‘giants’ roaming the Earth before the Great Flood dealt them a hefty blow! Although it is a strange coincidence that this single larch-tree was 160 years old when it was felled, stood for around 20 years (without being dug into the ground) and then finally ‘fell’ into a nearby paleo-lake – where it floated around for about a year – before sinking into the murky depths to be covered and preserved by peat. Russian Serfs, being beaten with whips, threatened with guns (and occasionally ‘raped’ at break-times) – were next to look on its foreign features whilst prospecting for gold on January 24th (Old Style) or February 5th (New Style) during 1890!
Of course, most modern Russian people are ‘White’ Scandinavians who arrived in what is today considered ‘Russia’ (a land mass which has extended ‘Westward’ in recent years) around one thousand years ago in boats – generally referred to as the ‘Volga Vikings’! These Northern Europeans colonised much of West and Central ‘Russia’ either wiping-out, expelling or ‘mixing’ with the indigenous Asiatics (many of which now live in the East of modern Russia). It is these ‘Asiatics’ who are probably the genetic descendants of those people who carved this tree into a massive totem. Modern (European) Russians look nothing like the people who constructed this object and possess no DNA link. The Giant Shigir Idol was discovered in what was the Shigir Peak Bog – situated in the Middle Urals, 80 kilometres northwest of Yekaterinburg (in the Kalata Village) – now the modern City of Kirovgrad. Eleven thousand years ago, this area was a substantial ‘lake’ – which slowly evolved into a peat bog.
In 1888, the owner of the territory, Count Aleksey Alexandrovich Stenbock-Fermor, donated 40 finds (an act which laid the foundation for the Shigir Collection) to the museum of the Ural Society of Natural Science Lovers (now the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore). Then it was regularly replenished by different donations from many other individuals – including the purchase of items from prospectors, as well as modern archaeological excavations carried-out by various groups. This collection contains objects such as combative and hunting weapons (arrowheads, spears, bone daggers with blades made of thin flint slithers and wooden bows); fishing tools (heads of spears and harpoons, fish hooks, ice picks for chiselling holes, floats and weights for nets, wooden spears and oars); Houseware; woodworking tools (stone axes, copper chisels and iron axes) as well as objects of ancient metallurgy and much more.
The Giant Shigir Idol was discovered in the second Kuryinsky mine at a depth of 4 metres within the peat during early 1890, and by order of Count A.A. Stenbock-Fermora was donated to the Museum. The idol is made of a split larch trunk and was once stood as an imposing figure of 5.3 metres high with a three-dimensional head and a board-shaped body (and I believe four very long branches served as two upper arms and two lower legs). Due to its age and general poor preservation – the structure began to fall apart. In 1914, archaeologist Vladimir Yakovlevich Tolmachev performed a scientific physical reconstruction of the idol. This gave the world a first glimpse of the enormity of this structure!
In 1997, in the laboratories of the Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) and the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Leningrad), independent examinations were carried out to radiocarbon determine the age of the idol. Russian scientists discovered that the Giant Shigir idol was about nine thousand five hundred years old (9,500 BP – ‘Before Present’) altogether – or constructed around seven thousand five hundred years (7,500 BCE) ‘Before the Common Era’ – using conventional dating – also termed ‘BC’ (Before Christ).
During 2014-2015, a new comprehensive scientific study was carried out at the Centre for Archeometric Research named after A.I. Klaus-Chier – at the University of Heidelberg (Germany). The results of this study suggested the age of this structure to be around eleven thousand six hundred years old (11,600 BP) – or nine thousand six hundred years (9,600 BCE). As this research involved at least ‘seven’ (7) distinct samples taken at different ‘depths’ of the wood (four primary – and three secondary) – the implications of the results took a number of years to interpret correctly. The 1997 Russian dating was confirmed as being ‘correct’ – but not ‘accurate’. The sample taken during 1997 was secured far too near the surface wood that had been extensively treated with preservative wax (and other substances) throughout the preceding decades!
These properties had penetrated the ancient wood to various and unspecified degrees – so that it was difficult to locate a ‘clean’ area of wood for testing. During 2021, archaeologists from the University of Göttingen in Germany (and from the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences) – together with the Chief Researcher from the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum – collaborated to re-examine the acquired data (and apply improved scientific technological methodology). The conclusion of this academic ‘refinement’ process discovered that the ‘preservatives’ used had polluted the experiment and reduced the age of the structure by about eight hundred years (800)! Furthermore, the tree itself that comprised the Giant Shigir Idol possessed 159 growth-rings and was felled during its 160th year of life! These ancient people had carved the designs using the very sharp lower jawbones of beavers – and they had done this immediately after the tree was cut-down!
The total age of the wood that constitutes this structure was found to be around twelve thousand two hundred and fifty years old (12,250 BP)! If the tree was aged 160 years when cut down – then the Giant Shigir Idol was constructed around twelve thousand and ninety 12,090 BP) – although many academic papers seem to round this date to twelve thousand one hundred (12,100 BP) years ago! This dating indicates that the Giant Shigir Idol was constructed at the end of the last Ice Age (the Pleistocene Period) and the beginning of the current Holocene Period. This research indicates that the Great Shigir Idol has been ‘dated’ on at least three occasions:
1) 9,500 BP – (1997) – Russia
2) 11,600 BP – (2015) – Russia-Germany
3) 12,100 BP (2021) – Russia-Germany
The problem has always been its antiquity – even at ‘9,500 BP’ – a date many Archaeologists considered far too early by several thousand years for modern human beings to be producing such construction work – whilst giving expression to such well-developed and sophisticated intellectual and imaginative processes! In other words, the socio-economic conditions that broadly defined the outer lives of modern human people during this time, could not generally cause the inner evolutionary changes that would lead to an outward expression of such deliberate and sophisticated labour – as exhibited in the Giant Shigir Idol! Far from being resolved, this problem is greatly magnified with each new extension of the construction date! The earlier the date of production – the greater the conundrum becomes, as it is logically assumed that the further back the time period becomes, the more primitive the outer conditions appear and the less likely the creative spark. As this is the case, an earlier date suggests the average human mind was less likely to conceive of such a project and devise a division of labour throughout the local community that would cooperate to produce such a work of art.
As scientific analysis is an ongoing process involving trial and error – this is not the problem the anti-intellectuals, religionists and inverted thinkers believe it to be. Where such people are striving to prove the scientific process ‘wrong’ or ‘incorrect’ – problems such as the Great Shigir Idol serve as grist for the mill for the scientific process to improve its methodology and understanding. Material science has always advanced using this method. When the Great Shigir Idol was constructed – three distinct packages of data were manufactured, stored in the wood and passed to future generations:
a) The general physical characteristics of the builder’s faces (which transmit ‘ethnicity’ and ‘race’).
b) The type of intellectual and imaginative processes operating in the minds of the builders. These ethereal inner processes conceived the object, worked out how to build it, chose what symbols to carve upon it and how these symbols were to be created and interpreted.
c) The physical Labour skills used to construct the object. What material was needed, where this material had to be gathered, (apparently, further research into pollen deposits at this time has revealed that there was a larch forest 2 km from the site of its construction) – and how this labour was to be distributed throughout the tribe or clan.
The wood of the object itself conveys the local climate, the immediate environment and many of the changes effecting both over an extended period of time. The Great Shigir idol is evidence of the complex spiritual world of Asiatic human beings inhabiting the Urals – reflecting the mythology of that time. The Great Shigir Idol is made of a split larch trunk and once stood at an impressive 5.3 metres (around 17 feet if you are British and of a certain generation) high – whilst sporting a three-dimensional head and a deliberately sculptured (board-shaped) body. The 2014 research identified eight distinct ‘heads’ or ‘faces’ (possibly ‘masks’) – which are probably designed to explain a religious myth about the origin of the world, and the animals and people inhabiting it. All over the object are geometric patterns, with many representing the natural elements such as water and air – as well as the genders of ‘male’ and ‘female’.
I have heard a number of Slavic academics stating that they believe that some of the patterning on the exterior of the Great Shigir Idol constitutes a written ‘language’. If correct, this finding would constitute the world’s ‘oldest’ written language! I am not adverse to this idea and I believe such a suggestion requires further investigation! Based upon the mythology of the Ugrians, Natalia Chairkina sees in these images a reflection of a vertical model of the universe logically divided into the Upper, Middle and Lower worlds (similar to the ‘trigram’ and ‘hexagram’ of the Chinese book ‘Classic of Change’) – which accommodate seven spheres of empty space. Archaeologist Peter Van Petersen of the National Museum of Denmark has suggested that the idol may have served as a warning at the border of a forbidden territory to scare off invaders or undesirables – or to test the courage of an individual or group. A number of Archaeological experts also note the similarity of design with the monumental stone ruins in Göbekli Tepe in Turkey (which is of a similar age). As many of the marking are both difficult to see and ambiguous in design – it is currently very difficult to produce a definitive interpretation. The best policy is for everyone to ‘look’ at this remarkable structure themselves – and up their own mind. Conventional science has already proven its improbable age! Let’s follow Lenin’s example and sit in our kitchens and ‘think’ great thoughts!
Russian Language Sources:
https://ixyt.info/ru/events/2368556
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Шигирский_идол
English Language Reference:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618220306455?via%3Dihub
THE SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 