World’s Oldest Animated Character is a Goat

A piece of pottery has been revealed to exhibit the world’s oldest known instance of animation: a cavorting goat. (Follow the link to see an animated image of the goat in action.)

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, much like those in a zoetrope. Giving the bowl a spin, one would see a goat leaping to snatch leaves from a tree…

Just like ArchaeoBlog (where we found this article), we count nine images. But it must be that New Math we keep hearing about.

In a further comment, researchers have also proven scientifically that this piece of pottery is a better piece of animation than all the Disney cheapquels put together. “Give me a few seconds of a leaping goat over the whole of Bambi 2 any day of the week, pal,” one remarked.

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