Fisherman often toss around the term ‘I got lucky’ to humbly admit having caught something extraordinary. But that phrase is inadequate for the Russian fisherman who recently accidentally caught a 4,000-year-old Bronze statue of a Pagan god.
The best thing about this whole story is that Nikolay Tarasov, who caught the statue, is not a professional fisherman. Rather, he has a driving job in southern Russia and simply goes fishing on his days off. On one of these days, he used a net while fishing and suddenly felt it grow heavier when he tried to pull it out.
According to Tarasov, he thought the net had snagged on a rock but then he asked a friend to help him pull it out. And with it came the Bronze statue – 12 inches long and about 2 inches wide. Although it is a small figurine, it is of immense importance to historians and archaeologists because it has been identified as belonging to the Bronze Age.
The statue of the pagan god shows a rather ferocious face with almond-shaped eyes and a large mouth. Tarasov further says about his find that, “I took it to a local museum. I needed to sit down when the experts told me that this object was carved at the very beginning of the Bronze Age. On the reverse side on the head the carver etched plaited hair. Below the plait there are lines looking like fish scales. The people I showed it to quite literally jumped for joy. I suspected it might be a couple of hundred years old, but had not considered it might by older.”
Eventually, experts dated the statue as more than 4,000 years old and cited it as a very rare find. Tarasov refused to have any compensation for the statue although the experts say that it is more precious than a similar statue in gold.
Source: Siberian Times
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