What is the world's oldest wooden statue trying to tell us? Etchings on haunting seven-faced 9,500-year-old idol 'could hold a message to modern man'

Scientists are closer to dating the Shigir Idol, found in 1890 in Kirovgrad, Sverdlovsk region, in the Ural Mountains, which contains secret encrypted codes written around 9,500 years ago. The haunting Shigir Idol is twice as old as the Egyptian pyramids and was preserved 'as if in a time capsule' in a peat bog. Russian experts now say the remarkable relic contains encoded information on the 'creation of the world'. While the messages remain 'an utter mystery to modern man', the Russian academic said its creators 'lived in total harmony with the world, had advanced intellectual development, and a complicated spiritual world'. German scientists are close to a precise dating - within five decades. The results are likely to be known in late February or early March