2,000-year-old remains of nomadic ‘royal’ unearthed by Russian farmer includes ‘laughing man,’ haul of jewels and weapons

Russian farmer unearths the remains of a 2,000-year-old nomadic ‘royal’ buried alongside a ‘laughing’ man. A farmer found the haul when digging on his land in the south of Russia near the Caspian Sea.

Stunning gold and silver jewellery, weaponry, valuables and artistic household items were found next to the chieftain’s skeleton in a grave close to the Caspian Sea in southern Russia. Local farmer Rustam Mudayev’s spade made an unusual noise and it emerged he had struck an ancient bronze pot near his village of Nikolskoye in the Astrakhan region.

A chieftain was buried with his head raised as if on a pillow (pictured). It is believed the individual was a high-ranking ‘royal’ of a nomadic society more videos He took it to the Astrakhan History museum for analysis and an experts opinion on the find.

‘As soon as the snow melted we organised an expedition to the village,’ said museum’s scientific researcher Georgy Stukalov.’After inspecting the burial site we understood that it to be a royal mound, one of the sites where ancient nomads buried their nobility.’

WERE THE SARMARTIANS? 

The Sarmatians were a group of people who lived for almost a millennium from the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD. Their range stretched, at its largest in the 1st century AD, from the Caspian Sea across Eurasia and towards modern-day Poland.

The territory was known as Sarmatia and included today’s Central Ukraine, South-Eastern Ukraine, Southern Russia, Russian Volga and South-Ural regions, also to a smaller extent north-eastern Balkans and around Moldova. They had conflicts with the Roman Empire as they expanded east at their peak, allying themselves with Germanic tribes.

Towards the end of their reign, they faced competition from Germanic Goths and the Huns. The Sarmatians were eventually decisively assimilated by the burgeoning populations in Eastern Europe.

The burial is believed to belong to a leader of a Sarmatian nomadic tribe that dominated this part of Russia until the 5th century AD, and other VIPs of the ancient world, including a ‘laughing’ young man with an artificially deformed egg-shaped skull and excellent teeth that have survived two millennia.

‘We have been digging now for 12 days,’ said Mr Stukalov.’We have found multiple gold jewellery decorated with turquoise and inserts of lapis lazuli and glass.’The most ‘significant’ find is seen as a male skeleton buried inside a wooden coffin. 

This chieftain’s head was raised as if it rested on a pillow and he wore a cape decorated with gold plaques. Archaeologists found his collection of knives, items of gold, a small mirror and different pots, evidently signalling his elite status. They collected a gold and turquoise belt buckle and the chief’s dagger along with a tiny gold horse’s head which was buried between his legs, and other intricate jewellery.

Another grave was of an elderly man – his skeleton broke by an excavator – but buried with him was the head of his horse, its skull still dressed in an intricate harness richly decorated with silver and bronze when a farmer digging a pit on his land unearthed 2,000-year-old treasure inside the ancient burial mound of the tomb of a nomadic ‘royal’, along with a ‘laughing’ man (pictured) with an artificially deformed egg-shaped skull. Shaping and elongating the skull in this way was popular on various continents among ancient groupings like the Sarmatians, Alans, Huns and others.

The burial is believed to belong to a leader of a Sarmatian nomadic tribe that dominated this part of Russia until the 5th-century pieces of jewellery were found in the burial pit alongside the dead humans and animals and experts believe they were gifts for the dead.

The chief’s dagger was buried with him and places alongside his body, between his hand and leg (pictured)They collected a gold and turquoise belt buckle and the chief’s dagger along with a tiny gold horse’s head which was buried between his legs and other intricate jewellery.

Nearby was a woman with a bronze mirror who had been buried with a sacrificial offering of a whole lamb, along with various stone items, the meaning of which is unclear. Another grave was of an elderly man – his skeleton broke by an excavator – but buried with him was the head of his horse, its skull still dressed in an intricate harness richly decorated with silver and bronze.

Also in the burial mound was the skeleton of a young man with an artificially deformed egg-shaped skull. Local farmer Rustam Mudayev’s spade made an unusual noise and it emerged he had struck an ancient bronze pot near his village of Nikolskoye in the Astrakhan region.

A horse’s head buried on top of the old man’s body still carries an intricate silver and bronze harness which was also uncovered after the farmer took his find to the Astrakhan History museum for analysis and an experts opinion on the find. ‘As soon as the snow melted we organised an expedition to the village,’ said museum’s scientific researcher Georgy Stukalov.

‘After inspecting the burial site we understood that it to be a royal mound, one of the sites where ancient nomads buried their nobility,’ the archaeologist said we have been digging now for 12 days,’ said Mr Stukalov. ‘We have found multiple gold jewellery decorated with turquoise and inserts of lapis lazuli and glass’

A chieftain was buried with his head raised as if on a pillow and wearing a cape adorned with gold plagues the most ‘significant’ finds is seen as a male skeleton buried inside a wooden coffin. This chieftain’s head was raised as if it rested on a pillow and he wore a cape decorated with gold plagues.

The shape is likely to have been ‘moulded’ either by multiple bandaging or ‘ringing’ of the head in infancy. Such bandages and or rings were worn for the first years of a child’s life to contort the skull into the desired shape. Shaping and elongating the skull in this way was popular on various continents among ancient groupings like the Sarmatians, Alans, Huns and others.

Such deformed heads were seen as a sign of a person’s special status and noble roots, and their privileged place in their societies, it is believed. The burials date to around 2,000 years ago, a period when the Sarmatian nomadic tribes held sway in what is now southern Russia.

‘These finds will help us understand what was happening here at the dawn of civilisation,’ said Astrakhan region governor Sergey Morozov. Excavation is continuing at the site. Nearby was a woman with a bronze mirror who had been buried with a sacrificial offering of a whole lamb, along with various stone items, the meaning of which is unclear.

The gold jewellery and the buckle (pictured) are thought to be signs of the person’s nobility and would only have been afforded to the most wealthy people.

This 2,500-year-old female mummy dubbed the “Altai Princess” is one of few known mummies with visible tattoos

Tattoos aren’t just a trendy way for people to express themselves – they’re also apparently a time-honoured tradition dating back almost three thousand years.

A Siberian mummy, who researchers believe was buried 2500 years ago, will show off her intricate ink when she finally goes on display this month, and her shockingly well-preserved body art makes her look surprisingly modern.

The mummified body of the young woman, believed to be between 25 and 28 years old, was found in 1993, researchers told The Siberian Times.

Since then she has been kept frozen in a scientific institute, but she will soon be available to the public to be viewed from a glass case at the Republican National Museum in Siberia’s capital of Gorno-Altaisk.

The woman, dubbed in the media as the Ukok “princes,” was found wearing expensive clothing – a long silk shirt and beautifully decorated boots – as well as a horsehair wig.

Archaeologists told the paper that because she was not buried with any weapons she was not a warrior and that she was likely a healer or storyteller.

Though her face and neck weren’t preserved, she was inked across both arms and on her fingers, in what researchers say was an indication of status.

“The more tattoos were on the body, the longer it meant the person lived, and the higher was his position,” lead researcher Natalia Polosmak told the Times.

The woman was buried beside two men whose bodies also bore tattoos, as well as six horses. Researchers think the group belonged to the nomadic Pazyryk people, and that their body art is something special even in comparison to other mummies who have been found with tattoos in the past.

“Those on the mummies of the Pazyryk people are the most complicated and the most beautiful,” Polosmak told the Times.

“It is a phenomenal level of tattoo art,” she said. “Incredible.”

Not everyone was pleased that the mummy was uncovered.

Controversy erupted after she was discovered, as many believed she should not have been removed from her burial site. Some locals even believed her grave’s disruption caused a “curse of the mummy” which they blamed for the crash of the helicopter carrying her remains.

“The Altai people never disturb the repose of the interned,” Rimma Erkinova, deputy director of the Gorno-Altaisk Republican National Museum told the Times. “We shouldn’t have any more excavations until we’ve worked out a proper moral and ethical approach.”

Local authorities in the region have declared the area a ‘zone of peace,’ so no more excavations can be done in an effort to prevent plundering, though scientists believe there are many more mummies that can be found.

The 2,50-year-old rug is a wonderful reflection of the Advanced Culture of the Pazyryk Nomads

In 1948, Altai Mountains excavated the oldest hand-knotted oriental rug. It was discovered in the grave of the prince of Altai near Pazyryk, 5400 feet above sea level, and clearly shows how well hand-knotted rugs were produced thousands of years ago.

The Pazyryk carpet was woven in the 5th century B.C., making it approximately 2,500 years old, according to radiocarbon dating.

The advanced weaving techniques and the sophisticated design and construction, used in this rug, suggest the art of carpet weaving to go back much further than the 5th century B.C.. to be at least 4000 years old. Today the rug is in the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, Russia.

When the prince of Altai died, he was buried in a grave mound with many of his prized possessions, including the Pazryk Carpet. Unfortunately, soon after, the grave mound was robbed of its prized possessions, with the exception of the rug.

The rug was semi-frozen because the thieves did not bother to cover up the hole they had dug to retrieve the items, rendering the hole exposed to the elements within the tomb.

The combination of low temperature and precipitation within the tomb subsequently froze the carpet, and preserved it in a thick sheet of ice, protecting it for twenty-five centuries. This somewhat ironic story is the reason that the Pazyryk rug still exists today.

Although it was found in a Scythian burial mound, most experts attribute the Pazyryk rug to Persia.

Its design is in the same style as the sculptures of Persepolis, The outer of the two principal border bands is decorated with a line of horsemen: seven on each side, twenty-eight in number — a figure which corresponds to the number of males who carried the throne of Xerxes to Perspolis. Some are mounted, while others walk beside their horses. In the inner principal band, there is a line of six elks on each side.

The extra figures inside the elks are depicting the inwards and the vertebra of the elk, all parts in real positions with nearly clinical precision:

1. The heart, just above the front legs (a yellow framed red sphere, black contoured).

2. The aorta (a long red protuberance on the heart).

3. The maw, on the right-hand side of the sphere (a large yellow area with a widening upwards on the end).

4. The intestine, in the rear end (a yellow square surrounded by a light blue and a yellow bow).

5. Possibly the urethra, on the upper part of the right hind leg (a yellow line with a black point), better to see on some others deer on the border.

6. The vertebra, directly below the brown back contour (an alternating black-white chain).

World’s oldest wooden statue is TWICE as old as Stonehenge

Gold prospectors first discovered the so-called Shigir Idol at the bottom of a peat bog in Russia’s Ural mountain range in 1890. The unique object—a nine-foot-tall totem pole composed of ten wooden fragments carved with expressive faces, eyes and limbs and decorated with geometric patterns—represents the oldest known surviving work of wooden ritual art in the world.

More than a century after its discovery, archaeologists continue to uncover surprises about this astonishing artefact. As Thomas Terberger, a scholar of prehistory at Göttingen University in Germany, and his colleagues wrote in the journal Quaternary International in January, new research suggests the sculpture is 900 years older than previously thought.

Based on extensive analysis, Terberger’s team now estimates that the object was likely crafted about 12,500 years ago, at the end of the Last Ice Age. Its ancient creators carved the work from a single larch tree with 159 growth rings, the authors write in the study.

“The idol was carved during an era of great climate change, when early forests were spreading across a warmer late-glacial to postglacial Eurasia,” Terberger tells Franz Lidz of the New York Times.

“The landscape changed, and the art—figurative designs and naturalistic animals painted in caves and carved in rock—did, too, perhaps as a way to help people come to grips with the challenging environments they encountered.”

According to Sarah Cascone of Artnet News, the new findings indicate that the rare artwork predates Stonehenge, which was created around 5,000 years ago, by more than 7,000 years. It’s also twice as old as the Egyptian pyramids, which date roughly 4,500 years ago.

As the Times reports, researchers have been puzzling over the age of the Shigir sculpture for decades. The debate has major implications for the study of prehistory, which tends to emphasize a Western-centric view of human development.

In 1997, Russian scientists carbon-dated the totem pole to about 9,500 years ago. Many in the scientific community rejected these findings as implausible: Reluctant to believe that hunter-gatherer communities in the Urals and Siberia had created art or formed cultures of their own, says Terberger to the Times, researchers instead presented a narrative of human evolution that centered European history, with ancient farming societies in the Fertile Crescent eventually sowing the seeds of Western civilization.

Prevailing views over the past century adds Terberger, regarded hunter-gatherers as “inferior to early agrarian communities emerging at that time in the Levant. At the same time, the archaeological evidence from the Urals and Siberia was underestimated and neglected.”

In 2018, scientists including Terberger used accelerator mass spectrometry technology to argue that the wooden object was about 11,600 years old. Now, the team’s latest publication has pushed that origin date back even further.

As Artnet News reports, the complex symbols carved into the object’s wooden surface indicate that its creators made it as a work of “mobiliary art,” or portable art that carried ritual significance.

Co-author Svetlana Savchenko, the curator in charge of the artifact at the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore, tells the Times that the eight faces may contain encrypted references to a creation myth or the boundary between the earth and sky.

“Woodworking was probably widespread during the Late Glacial to early Holocene,” the authors wrote in the 2018 article. “We see the Shigir sculpture as a document of a complex symbolic behaviour and of the spiritual world of the Late Glacial to Early Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of the Urals.”

The fact that this rare evidence of hunter-gatherer artwork endured until modern times is a marvel in and of itself, notes Science Alert. The acidic, antimicrobial environment of the Russian peat bog preserved the wooden structure for millennia.

João Zilhão, a scholar at the University of Barcelona who was not involved in the study, tells the Times that the artefact’s remarkable survival reminds scientists of an important truth: that a lack of evidence of ancient art doesn’t mean it never existed.

Rather, many ancient people created art objects out of perishable materials that could not withstand the test of time and were therefore left out of the archaeological record.

“It’s similar to the ‘Neanderthals did not make art’ fable, which was entirely based on the absence of evidence,” Zilhão says. “Likewise, the overwhelming scientific consensus used to hold that modern humans were superior in key ways, including their ability to innovate, communicate and adapt to different environments. Nonsense, all of it.”

Remarkable 3,900-Year-Old Suit Of Bone Armor Found In Siberia

Archaeologists are intrigued by the discovery of the complete set of well-preserved bone armour which is seen as having belonged to an ‘elite’ warrior. The armour was in ‘perfect condition’ – and in its era was ‘more precious than life’, say experts.

It was buried separate from its owner and no other examples of such battle dress have been found around Omsk. The analysis is expected to determine its exact age but Siberian archaeologists say it dates from 3,900 to 3,500 years ago. 

Nearby archaeological finds are from the Krotov culture, lived in a forest-steppe area of Western Siberia, but this bone armour more closely resembles that of the  Samus-Seyminskaya culture, which originated in the area of the Altai Mountains, some 1,000 km to the south-east, and migrated to the Omsk area. The armour could have been a gift, or an exchange, or was perhaps the spoils of war.

Boris Konikov, the curator of excavations, said: ‘It is unique first of all because such armour was highly valued. It was more precious than life because it saved a life. 

‘Secondly, it was found in a settlement, and this has never happened before. There were found separate fragments in burials, like on Rostovka burial ground.’

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Currently, the experts say they do not know which creature’s bones were used in making the armour. Found at a depth of 1.5 metres at a site of a sanatorium where there are now plans to build a five-star hotel, the armour is now undergoing cleaning and restoration.

‘We ourselves can not wait to see it, but at the moment it undergoing restoration, which is a long, painstaking process. As a result, we hope to reconstruct an exact copy’, Boris Konikov said. 

Scientist Yury Gerasimov, a research fellow of the Omsk branch of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, said: ‘While there is no indication that the place of discovery of the armour was a place of worship, it is very likely. Armour had great material value. There was no sense to dig it in the ground or hide it for a long time – because the fixings and the bones would be ruined.

‘Such armour needs constant care. At the moment we can only fantasise – who dug it into the ground and for what purpose. Was it some ritual or sacrifice? We do not know yet.’

Gerasimov, who is engaged in the restoration, said: ‘Each armour plate in the ground was divided into many small fragments, which are held only by this ground. The structure was removed from the excavation, in ‘monolith’ as archaeologists say – namely, intact with the piece of ground, not in separate plates, and taken to the museum. 

‘Now we need to clean these small fragments of bone plates, make photographs and sketches of their location, and then glue them in a full plate.’

He is certain that the armour belonged to a ‘hero’, an ‘elite warrior who knew special methods of battle’ and would have ‘given good protection from weapons that were used at the time – bone and stone arrowheads, bronze knives, spears tipped with bronze, and bronze axes’. 

The archaeological site where the armour was found includes a complex of monuments belonging to different epochs. There are settlements, burial grounds, and manufacturing sites. Burials have been found here from the  Early Neolithic period to the Middle Ages. 

The site, beside the Irtysh River, is now owned by Popov Omsk Radio Factory which has supported the archaeological research.

Konikov, who worked on the site as a researcher for many years and is now a representative of the plant, supervising the excavations, said: ‘Our goal is to save the site, to research it and to promote it. 

‘We organise excursions for schoolchildren and draw the attention of citizens to this unique site.’

Archaeologists Find A 2,500-Year-Old Grave In Siberia That Contains An Ancient Warrior Couple

On an investigation to a 2,500-year-year-old tomb of an ancient warrior and princess was discovered in Siberia. The pair are believed to have died in their 30s and were buried with a baby and an ‘elderly’ servant woman, archaeologists say.

The woman may have been 60 years of age when she died, as she died and was entombed in a crumpled position under the feet of the couple, who may have been spouses.

Remains of the child were scattered throughout the grave, which archaeologists say probably happened when rodents ate the flesh of the deceased. 

Experts unearthing the find in southern Siberia say the four people probably succumbed simultaneously to the same infection, and the servant was buried alongside them to look after the family in the afterlife. 

The warrior couple, the woman specifically, maybe proof of the lost Scythian civilisation, which inhabited the region of modern-day Russia until 2,200 years ago.

The fighter woman in the grave was buried with the same weaponry as the man, the researchers say, which is unusual.  In surviving records and other graves from the same time frame and location, female warriors were buried with a bow and arrows, long-range weapons, 

But the woman in the newly unearthed grave was armed with a long-handled weapon, either a hatchet or an axe, and a short sword. These weapons are best suited for hand-to-hand combat and a bloody melee and this difference is indicative of the Scythian culture, researchers say.   

Dr Oleg Mitko, head of Archeology at Novosibirsk State University, said: ‘We have an impressive set of weaponry. 

‘We found close fight weapons in a female grave, which is not so typical. The woman had a battle-axe.. so she was a part of warrior strata.’

Senior researcher Yuri Teterin said: ‘The man had two axes and two bronze daggers.

‘It is a brilliant burial in that there is an authentic bronze weaponry.’ The man also had a bronze mirror, the researchers say.

Wooden handles of the weapons have no survived millennia in soil, but the metallic elements have. The couple, the baby and servant, are from the Tagar culture, part of the Scythian civilisation, researchers believe. 

The older woman had two broken teeth and her possessions were only a broken comb and a small ceramic vessel, indicating she had little personal wealth.  

Larger ceramic vessels – believed to have been full of food – were also discovered which were filled with mutton and beef, researchers say. 

When they were buried 2,500 years ago, the grave goods and food would have been buried alongside the people because it was believed it helped people in the afterlife.

Scientists say there is no immediate evidence of battle wounds to suggest a cause of death, but further research will be undertaken.

One theory is that they succumbed to an infection at the same time, leading to them all being buried simultaneously. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus left a detailed account of the Scythians and their young women warriors.

But physician Hippocrates added that a young woman would cease her role as a fighter after ‘she takes to herself a husband’.

‘They do not lay aside their virginity until they have killed three of their enemies, and they do not marry before they have performed the traditional sacred rites.’

‘Yet in this case, the woman warrior appears part of a family unit.

Archaeologist Anatoly Vybornov said: ‘Both male and women took part in hostilities. Violence was an acceptable and legal way to solve the problems then.’