KEMEROVO, RUSSIA—Nikolay Tarasov was fishing with a net in a river near his home in Tisul, Russia, when he recovered what he thought was an unusual stone, but he realized it was carved with almond-shaped eyes, a large mouth with full lips, and a ferocious expression before he threw it back into the water. “On the reverse side on the head the carver etched plaited hair with wave like lines. Below the plait there are lines looking like fish scales,” he told The Siberian Times. He donated the figurine to the Tisul History Museum, where it was dated to the early Bronze Age. The 4,000-year-old figure was carved in horn that had fossilized. “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 Marina Banschikova, director of the museum.
