The Tobolsk Thinker

Stone sculpture of a seated man "Tobolsk Thinker"

(III - II millennium BC)

The sculpture was found in 1976 on the right bank of the Tobol River, near the city of Kostanay. Machine operators of the suburban Michurinsky state farm found this artifact while plowing the land next to a hill cut by a bulldozer. Archaeologists who examined the site of the figurine's discovery came to the conclusion that there was an ancient altar here.

 The find belongs to the range of anthropomorphic (human–like) sculptures of forest-steppe Asia and dates back to the end of the III - beginning of the II millennium BC. The figure is made of grayish-brown sandstone of various grains in the technique of picketing in combination with sanding. The product is 20.2 centimeters high, weighs 4 kilograms, and is well preserved. Some damage is present only in the lower part of the object – a number of small chips are fixed here and the base of the right leg is broken off.

The sculpture depicts a seated man, his large, forward-leaning head set low on a short, massive neck. The face is turned up to the sky. A large, high nose, a heavy, strong-willed chin, lips tightly closed. The most original part of the sculpture is the image of eye sockets. They occupy almost half of the face and are shown by two rounded notches with a convex edge. The curvature of the recesses is calculated in such a way that, in even daylight, the illusion of half-closed eyes appears.

Today, the original of the famous sculpture from the collection of the Kostanay Regional Museum of Local Lore is kept in the National Museum in Astana.