Shamanic greeting from the Bronze Age: Carved snake staff in perfect condition

Finnish archaeologists have discovered a 4,400-year-old life-size wooden stick in the shape of a snake. It may have been a ritual tool of a Neolithic shaman. The half-metre long stick with a wide-open snake mouth was carved from a single piece of wood. It lay perfectly preserved in the peat of a prehistoric wetland near the town of Järvensuo, about 100 km northwest of Helsinki.
Stylised snake figurines are known from the eastern Baltic regions and Russia, but nothing similar has been found in Finland until now: "They (Russian figurines) don't resemble a real snake as much as this one does," said Satu Koivisto, an archaeologist at the University of Turku. "My colleague found it in one of our excavations last summer. I thought he was making fun of us, but when I saw the snake's head, I shuddered. Personally, I don't like live snakes, but after this discovery, I started to like them," she said.

Experts believe that the staff may have held an important place in the register of magical tools shthat communicated with spirits in a similar way to traditional Indian shamans today. Prehistoric people in this region probably practiced rituals in which the world as we know it is inhabited by invisible supernatural beings or spirits. These ideas and beliefs persist in some remote northern regions of Scandinavia, Europe and Asia to this day: 'There seems to be a connection between snakes and humans. It is reminiscent of Nordic shamanism from a historical period when snakes had a special role as spiritual helpers to the shaman. Although the time gap is huge, the possibility of such continuity is appealing," the study published in the journal Antiquity states.
Some admit the possibility that the typical snake shape was only acquired by the stick's exposure to the environment in the peat: "It is a remarkable thing. The stick seems to have been purposefully modified into a snake shape," said Peter Rowley-Conwy, an archaeologist and emeritus professor at Durham University in the UK. "A skeptic might ask whether the zigzag shape was intentional or an accidental result of 4,000 years of soaking. I have worked on various peat bogs with preserved wooden finds, fragments of which were often badly distorted."

In any case, the stick from Järvensuo looks like a real snake. Its slender body is made up of two zigzag carved folds that continue into a tapered tail. The flat, scythe-like head with an open mouth is particularly realistic. Experts suggest it resembles European vipers when crawling or swimming. The site of the find was probably once a lush wet meadow. The staff may have been discarded or ritually deposited here.

In the air, the wood would quickly succumb to decay, but the specific conditions of swamps, rivers and lakes can preserve organic materials from oxygen and preserve them for thousands of years. The site near Järvensuo is thought to be the former shore of a shallow lake that was inhabited by groups of people in the Late Stone Age. "Recent excavations have yielded many organic remains that have allowed archaeologists to create a more comprehensive record of the site," Koivisto said. Among the finds were a wooden tool with a bear-shaped handle, wooden paddles and various objects made of pine or birch bark...

Koivisto warns that once wetland archaeological sites dry up, artifacts like the "snake stick" may be irretrievably lost: "Wetlands are more important to us than ever. Especially because of their vulnerability and the degradation of organic data sources following drainage, subsequent land use and climate change. We need to hurry before these valuable materials disappear for good."

Roman Němec

Sources: livescience.com, cambridge.org, doi.org, smithsonianmag.com