A 2,000-year-old statue has been found abandoned near garbage cans in Greece

Police in Greece said on Wednesday they were investigating how an ancient Greek statue came to be dumped in a black plastic bag near garbage cans in the northern city of Thessaloniki.

The organized crime unit said it was being investigated “After a 32-year-old man went to the police to remove a statue he had apparently found in a black bag near the rubbish bins.”

According to the first assessment by the archeology service, the headless statue is from the Hellenistic period (between 323 and 31 BC), the police statement said. Authorities also released a photo of the statue, which measures 32 by 10 inches.

It will be transferred to the crime investigation team in northern Greece for laboratory tests, then to the antiquities service for evaluation and conservation, the statement added.

Police have long had to contend with illegal trafficking in antiquities due to the number of artifacts at sites across the country dating back to ancient Greece.

Road and construction works throughout Greece still have new finds from that era on a regular basis.

Ancient statues have been found in the trash before in Europe. In 2023, a statuette of Venus from the Roman era was discovered in a landfill in Rennes, France. That same year, ancient bronze statues were found in a landfill in Tuscany, Italy.

In 2013, an 1,800-year-old carved stone head possibly depicting a Roman god found in a old landfill in England.