The mysterious bronze head is 6000 years old
In 2009 was published the news of the discovery of an old bronze mask. It is supposed to be the oldest bronze statue found so far in the world.
A mysterious Californian head ... a bronze artifact dating back over 6,000 years was recently discovered in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California. The artifact, which is a head sculpted in bronze, appears to represent a mythological creature with pointed ears and an elephantine nose, and was discovered by a park employee who was planting flowers near one of the paths of the famous American park. “I immediately thought it was a fantastic object,” Delaine Hackney said of her finding the bronze head. "I was the one who showed it to my friend who teaches archeology at Berkeley, saying that he had never seen anything like it and whether it could be valuable."
The artifact in fact turned out to be much more valuable than Odder Delaine could have thought. Her friend, Dr. Cindy O'Brian took the sculpture to the archaeological department in Berkeley where she did a series of tests including isotropic to trace the date of the bronze head which was found to be around 4000 BC.
This makes it the oldest bronze artifact ever found, as it is 500 years older than the first bronze objects found in China and dates back to around 3000 to 3500 BC.
The strange statue brings with its presence many questions: was the statue brought to the park or has it always been there? If someone brought it, who and when did they lose it in Golden Gate Park? What crop should it be associated with? If it had always been there, what civilization does it belong to? Perhaps bronze was used in the Americas before China? In all cases the statue gives evidence that ancient man had the ability to create bronze much earlier then previously thought. The university will do further testing to confirm the date, as well as detailed analyzes of the bronze and blue eye stone.
"We're hoping that they will confirm the isotropic dating and that we can find out what kind of creature the statue represents," said Dr Cindy O'Brian. "If we are able to understand what the statue represents we should be able to find the culture that created the statue. We also intend to return to the path where the statue was found and see if we can discover other clues to its origin."
