Category Archives: RUSSIA

A Mysterious 25,000-Year-Old Structure Built of the Bones of 60 Mammoths

A Mysterious 25,000-Year-Old Structure Built of the Bones of 60 Mammoths

Mysterious bone circles consisting of hundreds of mammoths bones helped scientists understand how people survived the last ice age. According to a new analysis, the bones at one location in Russia were more than 20,000 years old.

25,000-year-old mammoth bone structure, Kostenki, Russia: 12.5 meters in diameter

The wall of the 30 ft building was constructed using a combination of 51 lower jaws and 64 individual mammoth skulls. There were also a small number of reindeers, goats, rabbits, dogs, red foxes, and arctic fox bones.

Researchers said the bones were most likely sourced from animal graveyards.

In the site, which is situated near the current village of Kostenki, some 500 km south of Moscow, an archeologist from Exeter University discovered remains of charred wood and other soft non-woody plants.

It indicates that people used to burn wood as well as bones for fuel, and the communities who lived there had learned where to forage for edible plants during the Ice Age.

Dr. Alexander Pryor, who led the study, said: “Kostenki 11 represents a rare example of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers living on in this harsh environment.

“What might have brought ancient hunter-gatherers to this site?

“One possibility is that the mammoths and humans could have come to the area en masse because it had a natural spring that would have provided unfrozen liquid water throughout the winter – rare in this period of extreme cold.

“These finds shed new light on the purpose of these mysterious sites.

“Archaeology is showing us more about how our ancestors survived in this desperately cold and hostile environment at the climax of the last Ice Age.

“Most other places at similar latitudes in Europe had been abandoned by this time, but these groups had managed to adapt to find food, shelter, and water.”

The last Ice Age swept northern Europe between 75-18,000 years ago and reached its coldest and most severe state around 23-18,000 years ago.

Most communities fled the region, likely due to a lack of prey to hunt and scarce plant resources they depended upon for survival, the scientists said.

The bone circles, of which more than 70 are known to exist in Ukraine and the west Russian planes, were eventually abandoned as the climate grew colder and more inhospitable.

Archaeologists previously assumed the circular mammoth bone structures were used as dwellings, but the new study, published in the journal Antiquity, suggests this may not always have been the case.

Liquid Blood Extracted From 42,000-Year-Old Foal Found Frozen in Siberia

Scientists Extracted Liquid Blood From 42,000-Year-Old Foal Found in Siberian Permafrost

On an expedition to the Batagaika crater in Siberia a team of Mammoth tusk hunters uncovered the nearly preserved remains of a 42,000-year-old foal.

Instead, the young foal showed no signs of external damage, retaining its fur, tail and hooves and the hair on its leg and head, has preserved by the permafrost of the region or permanently frozen ground.

The Siberian Times reports that Russia’s North-Eastern Federal University and the Biotech sooam researcher in South Korea extracted blood and urine from the specimen, paving the way for further analysis aimed at cloning the long-dead horse and resurrecting the extinct Lenskaya lineage to which it belongs.

Scientists will take viable cells from the blood samples and grow them in the laboratory in order to clone the animal. Perhaps they will consider looking at SciQuip’s range of incubators to stimulate the growth of the cells.

Over the past month, scientists have made more than 20 unsuccessful attempts to extract viable cells from the foal’s tissue (Semyon Grigoryev/North-Eastern Federal University)

This task is harder said than done. More than 20 attempts to grow cells from foal’s tissue have been made by the team over the past month, but they were all unsuccessful, according to a recent report from the Siberian Times. Russian researcher Lena Grigoryeva said that the participants remain “positive about the outcome.”

The fact that the horse still has hair makes it one of the most well-preserved Ice Age animals ever found, Grigoryev tells CNN’s Gianluca Mezzofiore, adding, “Now we can say what color was the wool of the extinct horses of the Pleistocene era.”

In life, the foal boasted a bay-colored body and a black tail and mane. Aged just one to two weeks old at the time of his death, the young Lenskaya, or Lena horse, met the same untimely demise as many similarly intact animals trapped in permafrost for millennia.

The scientists extracted liquid blood samples from the 42,000-year-old animal’s heart vessels (Semyon Grigoryev/North-Eastern Federal University)

The foal likely drowned in a “natural trap” of sorts-namely, mud that later froze into permafrost, Semyon Grigoryev of Yakutia’s Mammoth Museum told Russian news agency TASS, as reported by the Siberian Times.

“A lot of mud and silt which the foal gulped during the last seconds of the foal’s life were found inside its gastrointestinal tract,” Grigoryev says.

Researchers collect liquid blood from the ice age foal found frozen in Siberian permafrost.

This is only the second time researchers have extracted liquid blood from the remains of prehistoric creatures. In 2013, a group of Russian scientists accomplished the same feat using the body of a 15,000-year-old female woolly mammoth discovered by Grigoryev and his colleagues in 2013, as George Dvorsky reports for Gizmodo.

(It’s worth noting that the team studying the foal has also expressed hopes of cloning a woolly mammoth.) Significantly, the foal’s blood is a staggering 27,000 years older than this previous sample.

The NEFU and South Korean scientists behind the new research are so confident of their success that they have already begun searching for a surrogate mare to carry the cloned Lena horse and, in the words of the Siberian Times, fulfill “the historic role of giving birth to the comeback species.”

It’s worth noting, however, that any acclaim is premature and, as Dvorsky writes, indicative of the “typical unbridled enthusiasm” seen in the Russian news outlet’s reports.

Speaking with CNN’s Mezzofiore, Grigoryev himself expressed doubts about the researcher’s chances, explaining, “I think that even the unique preservation of blood is absolutely hopeless for cloning purposes since the main blood cells … do not have nuclei with DNA.”

He continued, “We are trying to find intact cells in muscle tissue and internal organs that are also very well-preserved.”

What the Siberian Times fails to address are the manifold “ethical and technological” questions raised by reviving long-gone species. Among other concerns, according to Dvorsky, scientists have cited the clone’s diminished quality of life, issues of genetic diversity and inbreeding, and the absence of an adequate Ice Age habitat.

It remains to be seen whether the Russian-South Korean team can actually deliver on its ambitious goal. Still, if the purported July 2018 resurrection of two similarly aged 40,000-year-old roundworms “defrosted” after millennia in the Arctic permafrost is any indication, the revival of ancient animals is becoming an increasingly realistic possibility.

90,000-year-old human hybrid found in ancient cave

90,000-year-old human hybrid found in ancient cave

The idea of free love seems to have started even earlier than in the 1960s. A small bone fragment belonging to an ancient hominin called “Denny” by the team, who had a mother Neanderthal and a dad Denisovan-the two nearest extinct relatives of the living humans today, was discovered in an international team of researchers.

90,000-year-old bones provide the first direct evidence of interbreeding between Neanderthals and their close relatives the Denisovans.

The two races have been known to live on the Eurasian Mixed Continent, Neanderthals in the west of the continent until some 40,000 years ago and Denisovans in the east.

Previous genetic studies of ancient hominin remains have shown that they sometimes interbred, but Denny is the only known example of a first-generation child with equal parts Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA.

The bone fragment was found in 2012 at Denisova Cave in Russia and taken to the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig for genetic analysis, after being identified as a hominin bone due to its protein composition. It is thought that the bone is a fragment of the arm or leg of a young female, who would have been aged around 13 when she died some 90,000 years ago.

“It is striking that we find this Neanderthal/Denisovan child among the handful of ancient individuals whose genomes have been sequenced,” said Prof Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute. “Neanderthals and Denisovans may not have had many opportunities to meet. But when they did, they must have mated frequently – much more so than we previously thought.”

Genetic analysis of the bone indicates that the mother was more closely related to the 55,000-year-old Neanderthal remains found in the Vindija Cave in western Europe than those of another, the so-called Altai Neanderthal, that lived in the Denisova Cave at an earlier date. This means that Neanderthals must have at some point traveled between western and eastern Europe.

The team also found evidence in the genome that the Denisovan father had at least one Neanderthal ancestor further back in his family tree – between 8,000 and 17,000 years before Denny lived.

“An interesting aspect of this genome is that it allows us to learn things about two populations – the Neanderthals from the mother’s side, and the Denisovans from the father’s side,” said Dr. Fabrizio Mafessoni, also from the Max Planck Institute.

A reconstruction of what the Neanderthal-Denisovan Denny might have looked like when she was alive

Expert comment

Rebecca Wragg Sykes – Archaeologist based at the Université de Bordeaux

It’s hard to overstate the importance of finding Denny. A decade ago we had no clue that her father’s people even existed, much less that children like her existed.

In May 2010 the first Neanderthal genome was published, proving that rather than usurping them, early Homo sapiens made babies with them. But just the month before, samples from a tiny finger bone in Denisova Cave, Siberia revealed an entirely new hominin species.

Now known as D3, this bone was at least 10,000 years younger than Denny. Thanks to ancient DNA, today we’ve identified five Denisovans. But we know more about their history as a species than we do about their technology or even their appearance. Some of them had genes for dark hair, skin, and eyes, but how tall they were or what their faces were like are mysteries.

Despite all samples so far coming from one site, they were far from isolated. Both they and Neanderthals bred with H. sapiens, but in different times and places. Asians and Native Americans have more Neanderthal DNA than Europeans, which might reflect more interaction in that region, or elsewhere in a group which later moved eastwards.

Denisovan blood is even more unevenly distributed: living populations of Oceania and Australia have up to 25 times more than anywhere else. It’s clear we’re seeing only a fraction of the true picture.

Another extinction theory may soon bite the dust

Neanderthals and Denisovans weren’t shy of each other, either. D3’s genes showed interbreeding tens of thousands of years before she died. Denny’s father’s forebears were also making babies with Neanderthals up to 17,000 years earlier. Intriguingly, those far-off encounters were with a Neanderthal lineage different from that of Denny’s mother.

Finding the child of a Neanderthal and a Denisovan should make us sit up and think. Until now, most evidence has pointed to small, localized populations in both species. Added to this, studies mapping the distances that stone tools were moved from their source pointed to relatively limited territories.

On this basis, dominant theories emphasized Neanderthals as socially ‘exclusive’: avoiding outsiders, limited to topographic, cultural and genetic valleys. If that’s true, it’s unlikely we would ever find the result of such an encounter, so Denny is telling us something about these models is wrong.

Populations were likely small, so the startling fact of Denny’s parentage means the other part of the equation must be wrong: Denisovans and Neanderthals must have been quite keen on strangers. But how did populations who were happy to blend stay so distinct genetically? One theory is that mixed children had a tougher time reproducing, but we just don’t know yet.

Why does this matter? One of the most influential ideas about why the Neanderthals disappeared is that H. sapiens had more extensive territories – if we map the distances stone tools were carried, early H. sapiens come out ahead. But finding Denny strongly suggests stone tool mobility can’t be a real measure of sociability. Another extinction theory may soon bite the dust.

Worms Frozen for 42,000 Years in Siberian Permafrost Wriggle to Life

Worms Frozen for 42,000 Years in Siberian Permafrost Wriggle to Life

Sample of Permafrost sediment has been frozen for 42,000 years and has been recently thawed to expose live nematodes.  the roundworms began to move and eat, setting a record for the time an animal can survive cryogenic preservation.

In addition to revealing new limits of endurance, it just might prove useful when it comes to preserving our own tissues. Russian biologists dug up more than 300 samples of frozen soil of different ages and locations throughout the Arctic and took them back to their lab in Moscow for a closer look.

The samples collected from remote parts of northeastern Russia contained nematodes from two different genera, which the researchers placed into Petri dishes with a nutrient medium.

Tiny nematodes like this one were found to be unexpectedly hardy, reviving after thousands of years frozen in Arctic ice

The worms were left for several weeks at a relatively warm 20 degrees Celsius (68 Fahrenheit) as they gradually showed signs of life.

Some of the worms – belonging to the genus Panagrolaimus – were found 30 metres (100 feet) underground in what had once been a ground squirrel burrow which caved in and froze over around 32,000 years ago.

Others from the genus Plectus were found in a bore sample at a depth of around 3.5 metres (about 11.5 feet). Carbon dating was used to determine that sample to be about 42,000 years old.

Contamination can’t be ruled out, but the researchers maintain they adhered to strict sterility procedures.

They aren’t known for burrowing so deep into permafrost, seasonal thawing is limited to around 80 centimetres (under 3 feet), and there’s been no hint of thawing beyond 1.5 metres (5 feet) when the area was at its warmest around 9000 years ago.

So we can be fairly confident these worms really did awaken from one incredibly long nap.

Reviving ancient organisms is itself nothing new. In 2000, scientists pulled spores from Bacillus bacteria hidden inside 250 million-year-old salt crystals and managed to return them to life.

We might be impressed by their fortitude, but we can’t apply bacteria’s life-preserving tricks to our own complicated tissues. So finding animals that can remain dormant for tens of thousands of years is a discovery well worth paying attention to.

Roundworms are known to be hardy creatures. Nematodes have been revived in 39-year-old herbarium samples, but nothing has previously been seen on a scale quite like this.

Close relatives, the tardigrade, are also well known for having a talent for surviving extreme conditions, repairing broken DNA and producing a vitrifying material when they dry out.

Even those superpowered critters have never been seen to survive so long in states of preservation, with the current tardigrade record being only around 30 years. Learning more about the biochemical mechanisms nematodes use to limit the damage of ice and hold off the ravages of oxidation on DNA over the millennia might point the way to better cryopreservation technologies.

We’ve studied other organisms that can handle having their liquids turned to ice for inspiration, such as wood frogs, in the hope of finding better ways to store human tissues for transplants, or even – just maybe – whole bodies for revival.

 “It is obvious that this ability suggests that the Pleistocene nematodes have some adaptive mechanisms that may be of scientific and practical importance for the related fields of science, such as cryomedicine, cryobiology, and astrobiology,” the researchers write in their report.

But the find does have a slightly darker side. There are concerns that the melting of permafrost could release pathogens locked up in deep freeze for tens of thousands of years.

Nematodes are unlikely to pose much of a concern, but their survival is evidence that a diverse array of organisms – from bacteria to animals, plants to fungi – could potentially return after a long absence.

Exactly what this means for surrounding ecosystems is still anybody’s guess. We can only hope a few groggy worms are all we have to worry about in Siberia’s melting ice. This research was published in Doklady Biological Sciences.

Amazingly preserved 46000-year-old frozen horned lark found in Siberia

Frozen bird discovered in Siberia is 46,000 years old, scientists discover

Researchers in Siberia discovered a frozen bird in the permafrost in 2018.

A frozen bird, pictured, was so well preserved that fossil hunters thought that it had ‘died yesterday’ has turned out to be 46,000 years old, from the middle of the last ice age

Examination of the remains of the bird found that it had lived there more than experts expected. The analysis revealed that the bird is about 46,000 years old and covered by permafrost in Siberia.

An analysis of the DNA found that the bird was a ancestor of two different lark subspecies — one in Mongolia and one in Siberia. It provides unique insight into the ecosystem this lark lived in during the last Ice Age.

The specimen — an ancestor of the modern horned lark, pictured — was found preserved in permafrost in a mine tunnel near the village of Belaya Gora in north-east Siberia
The specimen — an ancestor of the horned lark — was found preserved in permafrost in a mine tunnel near the village of Belaya Gora in north-east Siberia

Scientists from the University of Stockholm and the Swedish Museum of Natural history studied the frozen bird and determined it was a horned lark that roamed the sky of our planet between 44,000 and 49,000 years ago.

“Not only can we identify the bird as a horned lark. The genetic analysis also suggests that the bird belonged to a population that was a joint ancestor of two subspecies of horned lark living today, one in Siberia, and one in the steppe in Mongolia. This helps us understand how the diversity of subspecies evolves,” revealed Nicolas Dussex, a researcher at the Department of Zoology at Stockholm University.

The study of the frozen bird revealed its distinct charcoal-colored feathers, typical of the horned lark. Despite its age, the feathers are in excellent condition.

Such well-preserved animals “allow for studies of morphological traits, as well as the ecology and evolution of a range of extinct and extant animal species,” the researchers revealed.

Experts also explained that the fact that such a miniature and fragile specimen was found nearly intact suggests that mud and dirt were most likely deposited gradually, or that the ground where it once lived was relatively stable.

The discovery of the bird, as well as its age, comes as a big surprise to experts. They say that although frozen remains of large mammals have been discovered many times, the remains of a frozen bird dating back from the late Pleistocene permafrost deposits has never before been found.

The next step for experts is to map the ancient bird’s genome in order to better understand how the species compares to modern subspecies of horned larks.

Speaking to CNN, Love Dalén from the Swedish Museum of Natural History explained that “this finding implies that the climatic changes that took place at the end of the last Ice Age led to the formation of new subspecies.”

A study detailing the discovery has been published in the Journal Communications Biology.

Scientists working in Siberia have also found the preserved remains of other animals such as ancient wolves, woolly mammoths as well as wooly rhinos among other species.

Such discoveries are described by scientists as “priceless treasures,” that allow them to recover DNA and even RNA samples.

Scientists at the Centre for Palaeogenetics have access to abundant samples from similar discoveries from the same site in Siberia. Among the more fascinating is an 18 000-year-old puppy named “Dogor” which is currently being studied in order to determine if it is a wolf or a dog.

Other findings include a 50 000-year-old cave lion cub “Spartak.”

39000 Years Old Frozen Woolly Mammoth found in Siberia, goes on display in Tokyo

39000 Years Old Frozen Woolly Mammoth found in Siberia, goes on display in Tokyo

After 39,000 years, a baby wooly mammoth is making her public debut. The prehistoric creature, nicknamed Yuka, is being put on public display in Japan, after being shipped from her home in Siberia, Russia.

Yuka, a 39,000-year-old baby mammoth, was found with liquid blood in her veins, a positive sign for scientists wishing to study the animal’s DNA.

Yuka was found trapped in ice on the New Siberian Islands. Though parts of her body were exposed to the elements and predators, the young animal is thought to be the most well-preserved mammoth specimen known to science.

She has been carefully shipped in a large crate packed with dry ice to an exhibition hall in Yokohama, south of Tokyo.

Baby mammoth Yuka was discovered earlier this year in Siberia.

Visitors can stroll past the creature and see its orange-brown tufted hair and soft tissue, and imagine it wandering the icy planes thousands of years ago.

Yuka was first believed to be 10,000 years old, but subsequent tests showed the two-year-old mammoth was much older, dating to about 39,000 years, according to the Siberian Times.

Scientists were able to extract blood for testing, the first time the extinct creature’s blood has been harvested by scientists.

According to a May report by the Times, Russian and South Korean scientists are working on extracting the mammoth’s DNA to bring the species back to life.

Visitors to the Japanese museum can see Yuka on display with her trunk fully extended and her legs sprawled.

A worker looks at 39,000-year-old female woolly mammoth Yuka upon her arrival at the exhibition hall in Yokohama, Japan.

She is also covered in a layer of permafrost.

The majority of woolly mammoths died out some 10,000 years ago, though a small group of mammoths lived on Wrangel Island in the Arctic until around 1700 B.C.

Mammoth expert Norihisa Inuzuka ssays aid that Yuka allows scientists to “dig deeper into the reasons why species became extinct and apply the lessons learned to the human race, which might be facing its own dangers of extinction.”

Could this 300 million-year-old ‘screw’ be proof of aliens?

Could this 300 million-year-old ‘screw’ be proof of aliens?

Russian scientists have been pondering its existence since it was found in the 1990s – with many people believing it to be proof of highly advanced lost human civilization, aliens or a fossilized sea creature.

They say the screw is the remains of an ancient form of technology that proves extra-terrestrials visited Earth millions of years ago. However, scientists say the ‘screw’ is nothing more than a fossilized sea creature called a Crinoid.

A paleontological analysis was carried out, which revealed the stone was formed between 300 and 320 million years ago. 

The team also claims that an x-ray of the stone shows that another screw is present inside it. However, they have not allowed international experts to examine the object, nor have they revealed what the screw is made of.

Since the initial finding, much debate has surrounded the discovery, with scientists scoffing at the suggestion that it reflects an ancient screw and suggesting there is a much less exciting explanation.

Location of Kaluga Oblast in Russia, where researchers claim to have found a 300-million-year-old screw

The Mail Online reports that scientists who have examined photographic evidence of the object say that there is a more earthly answer to the phenomenon – the ‘screw’ is actually the fossilized remains of an ancient sea creature known as a crinoid.

Crinoids are a species of marine animals that are believed to have evolved around 350 million years ago. They are characterized by a mouth on the top surface that is surrounded by feeding arms.  Today, there are around 600 crinoid species, but they were much more abundant and diverse in the past.

A stalked crinoid has drawn by Ernst Haeckel.

Over the years, geologists have found countless fossils representing whole crinoids or their segments, some of which do resemble screws.

Scientists have suggested that the screw-like shape seen in fossil samples may be the reversed-shape of the creature, which dissolved while the rock was shaped around it.  

Left: The fossilized remains of a whole crinoid. Right: Fossilized segments of crinoids

“It is thought that the fossilized creature in the mysterious rock is a form of ‘sea lily’ – a type of crinoid that grew a stalk when it became an adult, to tether itself to the seabed,” write the Mail Online.

“However, some say that the stalks of crinoids were typically much smaller than the ‘screw’, with slightly different markings, and have discarded the theory.”

Nigel Watson, author of the UFO Investigations Manual told Mail Online: “Lots of out-of-place artifacts have been reported, such as nails or even tools embedded in ancient stone. Some of these reports are…misinterpretations of natural formations.”

“It would be great to think we could find such ancient evidence of a spaceship visiting us so long ago, but we have to consider whether extra-terrestrial spacecraft builders would use screws in the construction of their craft,” he added. “It also seems that this story is probably a hoax that is being spread by the internet, and reflects our desire to believe that extra-terrestrials have visited us in the past and are still visiting us today in what we now call UFOs.”

For now, the controversy surrounding the object remains very much alive, and unless the Kosmopoisk Group releases detailed information regarding the material of the ‘screw’, it is unlikely that consensus will be reached any time soon.

Scythian Burial With Golden Headdress Found in Russia

Scythian Burial With Golden Headdress Found in Russia

Once again scientists have found evidence supporting the existence of Amazon warriors who have previously been considered merely mythological characters.

Archaeologists from Russia currently conducting excavations in the Voronezh region have discovered an intriguing grave that belongs to a Scythian Amazon warrior. It’s a valuable historical discovery that sheds new light on the importance of fierce ancient female warriors.

The beautiful ceremonial headpiece placed on the head of the deceased woman makes this finding even more fascinating.

Since 2010, archeologists of the Russian Academy of Science Institute of Archeology have studied the Devitsa V burial mound in the district of Ostrogozhsky, and there they have found many interesting discoveries. This time they uncovered a burial that had been looted, but not entirely.

Inside burial mound, Maiden V archaeologists unearthed two well-preserved female skeletons. On tiled beds covered with grass beds, the women were put to rest. One of them was under his left shoulder with a bronze mirror. By her left side were put two spears and a necklace made from glass beads.

General view of the burial.

The other woman, who was between 45 to 50 years at the time of her deaths, had been adorned with a beautifully preserved headpiece, consisting of stamped gold plates with floral ornaments, as well as rims with amphora-shaped pendants.

Golden ceremonial headdress before restoration.

This type of ceremonial headdress is called a calaf and archaeologists have unearthed similar headpieces, but only in the richest “royal” mounds of Scythia (Chertomlyk, Tolstaya Mogila, Deev mounds, mounds near the village of Aksyutintsy, mound No. 8 of the Pesochinsky burial ground).

“Such head dresses have been found a bit more than two dozen and they all were in ‘tzar’ or not very rich barrows of the steppe zone of Scythia. We first found such head dress in the barrows of the forest-steppe zone and what is more interesting the head dress was first found in the burial of an Amazon”, says Valerii Guliaev, the head of Don expedition.

“Found calathos is a unique find. This is the first head dress in the sites of Scythian epoch found on Middle Don and it was found in situ on the location on the skull. Of course, earlier similar head dresses were found in known rich barrows of Scythia. However, only a few were discovered by archaeologists.

They were more often found by the peasants, they were taken by the police, landowners and the finds had been through many hands when they came to the specialists. That is why it is not known how well they have been preserved. Here we can be certain that the find has been well preserved”, noted Valerii Guliaev.

This finding suggests the woman was a Scythian warrior. The complex history of the mysterious Scythian culture is slowly being reconstructed. The Scythians flourished from about 700 to 300 B.C. but their origins are still debated. The Scythians never developed a written language or a literary tradition, making it troublesome to piece together their historical records.

Polish and Russian archaeologists have previously suggested an ancient necropolis located in the vicinity of Mangerok in the North Altai in Russia could be the ‘cradle of the Scythians’. Some think the Scythians originated from the Central Asian region of Persia, as a branch of the ancient Iranian peoples expanding north into the steppe regions from around 1000 B.C.

“The Amazons are a common Scythian phenomenon and only on Middle Don during the last decade our expedition has discovered approximately 11 burials of young armed women. Separate barrows were filled for them and all burial rites which were usually made for men were done for them, said Valerii Guliaev.

These nomadic warriors were often in conflict with their neighbors, particularly the Thracians in the west and the Sarmatians in the east.

The Scythian invaded Eastern Europe and archaeologists are now learning more about these skilled, ancient equestrian archers.

The Scythians were, just like the Parthians skilled horse archers and some scholars suggest they were the first people in history to wear trousers.

The discovery of the female Scythian warrior strengthens the theory the Amazons were real. Ancient Greek authors wrote the Amazons were huntresses, founders of cities, rivals and lovers of adventurous men. They battled the Greek hero Heracles and fought alongside the Trojans in the final hours of Troy, but many have wondered whether the Amazons really existed.

Left: A while back archaeologists found remains of an Amazon warrior in Armenia. Right: Female warrior.

Recently, archaeologists found a grave of an Amazon warrior who lived in the kingdom of Urartu in the Highlands of Armenia. The latest discoveries of graves belonging to ancient fearless female warriors confirm the Amazons did not exist in the realm of mythology but were real beings of flesh and blood who fought alongside men.