2,000-Year-Old Tumulus Of Unknown Culture Discovered In Siberia – Who Were These People?

Conny Waters - AncientPages.com - Archaeologists have discovered a curious 2,000-year-old tumulus in Siberia. The find was made when the land was prepared for a new cemetery called Shinnoye on the outskirts of Krasnoyarsk, the second biggest city in Siberia.  No one knew at the time that "something" old was hidden beneath the ground.

While bulldozing the land, workers discovered the hill was an ancient burial mound created by a Scythian-type culture over 2,000 years ago. However, currently, it's unknown which Scythian-type culture the 2,000-year-old tombs belonged to.

Who is buried in the tumulus? Credit: Dimitry Vinogradov

The history of the Scythians is still partly incomplete. "From about 700 to 300 BC, one particular group of migratory peoples, identified as Scythians by the Greeks, suddenly appeared on the Eurasian steppes.

Some modern scholars suggest three theories to explain their sudden and mysterious appearance. Some believe they migrated there from the north, others from the east, or perhaps from the south.

Although the geographic origins of the Scythian people are hotly debated, evidence for the time of their first appearance in history is not. They suddenly appeared simultaneously and near the same area of the Israelites’ disappearance.

They are mentioned in the Bible and several other ancient sources. However, for some unknown reasons, they vanished without a trace. ¹

Scythians have long been "considered highly mobile warriors who ranged widely across the steppe grasslands. Herodotus describes Scythian populations as living in wagons and engaging in raiding and warfare, and this view has persisted throughout history". ² In recent years, scientists have confirmed that Scythians were now always Nomadic warriors of the Pontic Steppe.

"The Scythian epoch was clearly a period of contradictions, with strong evidence for complex interactions between agro-pastoralists and pastoralists that contributed to population aggregation in urban locales," said Ventresca Miller, who is also the assistant curator of Asian archeology at the U-M Museum of Anthropological Archaeology. "This study highlights the potential use of using isotopic analysis to directly assess prevailing models of economies and mobilities during the Scythian era."

The floor of the wood-walled tomb. Credit: Dimitry Vinogradov

Obviously, most scholars agree many unanswered questions still surround the Scythians. When a team of archaeologists from the Siberian Federal University, led by Dmitry Vinogradov was called in to investigate the puzzling 2,000-year-old tumulus in Siberia, it quickly became clear scholars had encountered traces of an unknown ancient culture.

The ancient tomb contained "contain dozens of bodies in a large rectangular pit, that had been walled with timber and carpeted in birch bark.

The upper part of the tomb was damaged by the worksbut parallels with tombs from the era suggest it once had a wooden roof, thus creating what is known as a box tomb, Vinogradov explained.

Preliminary counts suggest the tomb may have contained as many as 50 people buried with grave goods ranging from beads to bronze plaques, miniature symbolic bronze daggers and battle axes, as well as knives, mirrors, and needles; and ceramic vessels that had contained foods: all items the deceased might have “needed” in the afterlife, Vinogradov speculates, the Haaretz reports.

One plaque depicted a stag, a popular Siberian Scythian animal art motif, but the question remained, which Scythian-type culture did this?

There are different Scythian types. Since these people often burned their dead, it is challenging to determine which culture created the burial mound known throughout the steppe as kurgans.

Bronze stag found in the burial mound, typical of the 'Scythian triad'. Credit: Dmitry Vinogradov

According to Haaretz, "the large number of skeletons in the newly discovered tomb may attest that it served as a family tomb used for generations, Vinogradov suggests. When the tomb was full, it was sealed off, set on fire and left to burn.

This conclusion is supported by the color and nature of the soil, which attests to high temperatures – and the fact that the bones had become mixed up inside, making the work for the physical anthropologist quite challenging."

Written by Conny Waters - AncientPages.com Staff Writer

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