It was nice to see, in this age of "sell it for as much as you can" that Nikolay Tarasov donated the object to the museum so that others could see it and learn. Much kudos to him!
The figure is believed to be an ancient pagan god.
(The Siberian Times)
Siberian fisherman accidentally nets 4,000-year-old pagan god
A Siberian man looking for fish accidentally found a god.
Nikolay Tarasov, 53, netted the extraordinary 4,000-year-old figurine
while fishing in his hometown of Tisul, in Russia’s Kemerovo region.
The small object got tangled in his net and Tarasov was getting ready
to chuck it back into the river when he glanced down to take another
look.
That’s when he saw a face staring back up at him.
“I stopped and washed the thing in the river and realized it wasn't a
stone of an unusual shape, as I thought earlier, but a statuette,” the
man told the Siberian Times.
Tarasov donated the figure to the Tisul History Museum free of charge.
The figure has a grim facial expression and round eyes. On the back, the carver has etched in plaited, wavy hair.
Tisul’s History Museum was stunned when Tarasov brought them the find.
Experts said it was made out of horn that has fossizlied. They have
dated it to the Bronze Age and believe it may have belonged to the
Okunev or Samus cultures, a group of people thought to have inhabited
Tisul in ancient times.
“Quite likely, it shows a pagan god. The only things we have dated
approximately to the same age are a stone necklace and two charms in the
shapes of a bear and a bird,” said museum director Marina Banschikova.
Tarasov’s hunch about the object turned out to be right, but even he was surprised when he realized how old it was.
Siberian driver Nikolay Tarasov found the Bronze Age figure while fishing near his home in Tisul, Russia.
(The Siberian Times)
“I knew when I looked closely at my find that it must be not even a
couple of hundred years old, but older. But I still needed to sit down
when the experts told me that this object was carved at the very
beginning of the Bronze Age,” he said.
The man decided to donate the figure to his local museum free of
charge—even though it may be worth more than its weight in gold,
according to the Siberian Times.
“To sell it and make profit? What are you talking about?” asked
Nikolay. “People should see it, and learn the history of their region.
It was quite clearly precious for the museums of any country.”
