Siberian fisherman catches Bronze Age statue

When Nikolai Tarasov from Siberia went fishing in his hometown of Tisul, he never expected he’d end up with such a haul: instead of his usual catch of fish, he found a 4,000-year figurine of an ancient god. “I stopped and washed the thing in the river and realised it wasn’t a stone of an unusual shape as I thought, but a statuette,” he told The Siberian Times.

Tarasov has since donated the object to the local history museum, where it has now been dated to the Bronze Age. The director of the museum, Marina Banshchikova, said: “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.”