World’s Oldest Animation

In the 1970s, a team of Italian archaeologists discovered a goblet in Iran’s “Burnt City.” Only recently, however, was it discovered that the goblet’s visuals create an animation.

According to an article from “The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies”:

The artefact [sic] bears five images depicting a wild goat jumping up to eat the leaves of a tree, which the members of the team at that time had not recognised [sic] the relationship between the pictures.

It goes on to discuss certain levels of controversy this goblet has brought up:

CHTHO’s cultural authorities claimed the image is a depiction of ‘Assyrian Tree of Life’: the earthenware bowl, which is wrongly known as ‘The Burnt City’s goat’, depicts the myth of ‘The Assyrian Tree of Life’ and a goat.

Depiction of ‘The Assyrian Tree of Life’ on this bowl which was made at least 1000 years before the Assyrian civilisation [sic] even appear in historical records is one of the most preposterous claims by the new breed of experts in post-revolutionary Iran.