Oldest Animation Discovered
A 5,200-year-old bowl found in Iran’s Burnt City in the 1970s features a series of five images that researchers have only recently identified as being sequential. Spin the bowl and it appears that a goat is leaping to snatch leaves from a tree.
Italian archaeologists found the pottery at a burial site, but not until years later did Iranian archaeologist Dr. Mansur Sadjadi notice the animation aspect.
While no one questions the early instance of animation, researchers have been at odds over the significance of the earthenware bowl’s artwork. It was originally thought to depict the goat eating from the Assyrian Tree of Life, but archaeologists now assert that it predates the Assyrian civilization by a thousand years.
Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO) has made an 11-minute documentary on the discovery.
From an article by Ryan Ball for Animation Magazine
