A 2,700-Year-Old Figurine Revives a Weighty Mystery

A bronze statuette recovered from a river in Germany may have been part of an early Scandinavian weight system, some archaeologists believe.

Two summers ago, while snorkeling in the marshy streams of the Tollense River on Germany’s Baltic coast, a 51-year-old truck driver named Ronald Borgwardt made a startling discovery.

Poking around in the peat, he picked up a six-inch-tall bronze figurine with an egg-shaped head, looped arms, knobby breasts and a nose that would make an anteater envious.

The statuette, sporting a belt and a neck ring, was only the second of its kind unearthed in Germany, though the 13th found near the Baltic Sea. The first turned up around 1840. All are similar in shape and proportion.