Though much about this Iron Age burial site remains shrouded in mystery, experts suggest that the woman and the horses may have once been propped up in a gruesome tableau of death.
Trevor Wallace/AntiquityThe remains of one of the 18 horses that were sacrificed at this Iron Age burial site.
More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek historian Herodotus wrote such a gruesome account of the burial rites of the Scythian people that modern-day scholars have dismissed his work as pure exaggeration. The Scythians, Herodotus wrote, would strangle scores of servants and horses, then gut and stuff the horses, and prop the dead men on their backs.
And though many have long believed that Herodotus was simply trying to make the Scythians seem barbaric, a recent discovery suggests that his accounts may have been chillingly accurate.
A study of ninth-century B.C.E. burial mounds in Russia has uncovered evidence of macabre funerary rites — complete with 18 horses and one human sacrifice victim. Though it’s unclear which culture conducted the burial, they certainly seem to have taken a page from the Scythians’ book, or perhaps vice versa.
Unearthing The Ancient Burial Site In Tuva, Russia
Trevor Wallace/AntiquityThe burial mound found in Tuva, Russia is 2,800 years old and contains gruesome traces of human and animal sacrifice.
According to a study published in Antiquity, researchers made the discovery while investigating an Iron Age site in Tuva, Russia, an area known as the “Valley of the Kings” due to the ancient royal and elite burials found there. The site, which dates back to the ninth century B.C.E., contained a kurgan, or burial mound. And it was exactly what researchers had hoped to find.
“It was honestly real dream come true,” study author Gino Caspari told All That’s Interesting, “because it was exactly the type of tomb we had been looking for to answer our questions regarding the cultural origins of the Scythians. Now after years of hard work we have a first part of the answer.”
Within the mound, the researchers uncovered the remains of one elite individual alongside 18 horses and one woman. The horses and the woman had apparently been sacrificed in the elite’s honor.
“Trauma and butchery marks suggest the intentional slaughter of the horses and the removal of meat and other soft tissues before burial,” the study’s authors explained about the gruesome find. “Careful dating and taphonomic analysis at individual sites suggests that… at least sometimes, horses were left exposed on the surface for some time prior to burial.”
Though the researchers aren’t sure which culture conducted the burial, they found that it bore a striking similarity to funerary rites attributed to the mysterious Scythian people. Though the Scythians lived thousands of miles to the west, some of their customs may have been adopted by others, if not the other way around.
In recent years, discoveries of Scythian burials in Siberia have shed further light on their culture, including a 12-year-old warrior girl, a warrior couple buried 2,500 years ago, and another kurgan also found in the “Valley of the Kings.”
The Gruesome History Of Scythian Burial Rites
Much of what we know about the Scythians comes from the Greek historian Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century B.C.E. Some modern-day historians believe that Herodotus took liberties with his account of the Scythians in order to emphasize their barbarism, including reports that they made leather from the skin of their enemies.
“Herodotus talks about a lot of things that are clearly mythical or fantastic in nature and so it is hard to distinguish truth from fiction as we move further away from the world of the ancient Greeks (talking about gold guarding griffins and ants that mine precious metals),” Caspari remarked to All That’s Interesting. “But it seems he might have had at least some reliable sources.”
Indeed, the study’s authors note that some of his statements about the ancient nomads are “archaeologically verifiable, including human and horse sacrifices.”
Metropolitan Museum of ArtMuch of what we know about Scythians comes from Herodotus, though information has also been gleaned from cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia.
Of the Scythians, Herodotus wrote: “They take the most trusted of the rest of the king’s servants… and strangle fifty of these and fifty of their best horses and empty and clean the bellies of them all, fill them with chaff, and sew them up again.”
“Then they fasten half of a wheel to two posts, the hollow upward, and the other half to another pair of posts, until many posts thus prepared are planted in the ground, and, after driving thick stakes lengthways through the horses’ bodies to their necks, they place the horses up on the wheels so that the wheel in front supports the horse’s forequarters and the wheel behind takes the weight of the belly by the hindquarters… Then they take each one of the fifty strangled young men and mount him on the horse.”
Wikimedia CommonsA depiction of a Scythian warrior, famed for their skills on horseback.
Thousands of years ago, such a burial would have been a heart-stopping sight. In the words of Caspari, “Imagine riding across the steppes and stumbling upon such an arrangement of rotting corpses. Few things will tell you so clearly that the people of these lands are not to be messed with.”
The new discovery in Tuva offers a fascinating — if gruesome — glimpse at the funerary rites of a mysterious ancient culture. Meanwhile, intriguing questions about the people behind this grisly burial still remain.
“Archaeology is often a slow process and it takes time to carefully document everything in order to arrive at valuable conclusions,” Caspari remarked to All That’s Interesting. However, Caspari also noted that he and his team have uncovered a number of fascinating artifacts at the site, including some archaeological “murder mysteries” that demand further investigation.
After reading about the gruesome burial mound discovered in Tuva, Russia, go inside the complicated story of human sacrifice in the pre-Columbian Americas. Then, discover the story of Europe’s bog bodies, many of which were seemingly victims of human sacrifice.
