The ancient Scythians had cultural roots in Siberia

Scythian shepherds and horse-riding warriors who inhabited central Asia and eastern Europe about 2,500 years ago may have had cultural roots several thousand kilometers east in Siberia, a new study suggests.SN: 27/7/23).

The remains of at least one person and 18 horses found atop a roughly 2,800-year-old tomb in southern Siberia may come from a Scythian-style sacrificial ceremony for a king or other elite person buried there, report archaeologist Gino Caspari and his colleagues on October 7. Antiquity. Artifacts found in Burial Mound Tunnug 1 include two bronze belt devices decorated with stylized animals like those in later Scythian art, riding equipment, and metal and bone arrowheads.

The people in Tunnug 1 belonged to an unidentified grass population, says Caspari, of the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany. “Cultural features found in this early burial became key to Scythian culture much further west.” This suggests that it took only a few hundred years for the mounted Siberians to travel west across much of Asia, influencing the artistic and burial practices of the Scythians in the process, the researchers say.

The discoveries at the Siberian site may represent the remains of a burial ritual like that described by the Greek historian Herodotus for dead Scythian kings in Eurasia, researchers say. In Herodotus’ written account, 50 sacrificial servants for the king rode on 50 sacrificial horses. The dead were held in place atop the ruler’s burial by stakes driven through their bodies, creating a group of “spectral knights”.

The poor preservation of exposed bones in the Siberian area prevents the recovery of the original number of men and horses on the upper surface of the mound. But the remains of birch stakes among the bones and artifacts of Tunnug 1 match a spectral horseman scenario, Caspari says.