The horse-riding Scythian culture, familiar from Eastern Europe, originated much further to the east, with archaeologists finding evidence for sacrificial funerary rituals at the Early Iron Age burial mound of Tunnug 1 in Tuva, Siberia.
Famous for their horse-centred culture, the Scythians of the Eurasian Steppe, are known for their ‘animal style’ art, a style of art in which the stylized animals are presented in a series of specific poses.
With a highly mobile way of life, their distribution changed wildly throughout time.
To tease out the elusive origins of the Scythians, a team of researchers from a number of institutions surveyed one of the earliest known royal burial mounds to contain Scythian material culture—the late 9th century BC kurgan of Tunnug 1 in Tuva, southern Siberia. The results are published in Antiquity.
The mound contained the fragmented remains of at least one human and 18 horses which were sacrificed in congregation, probably to honour the individual buried inside.
According to the authors, the bones were found in association with Scythian animal style artefacts and horse riding equipment, an early example of horse focused funerary rituals of the later Scythians described thousands of kilometres to the west in Classical texts.
Dr. Caspari says, “After years of hard work in Siberia as a field archaeologist, it is wonderful to have been able to hold some such Scythian animal style items.” “It is a privilege and a life’s dream come true to be unearthing some of the earliest evidence of a very unusual cultural phenomenon.”
Finding “Scythian-style” burials as far east as Tuva shows the origins of Scythian culture may actually be outside of the steppe, across ‘the other side of the Eurasian steppe’, and highlights the mobility of early horse cults.
Additionally, the burial has numerous parallels with Late Bronze Age examples from Mongolia. From this we can at least infer that the Scythians did not invent their peculiar funerary rituals — at least parts of them — from nothing, that they drew at least in part from the Bronze Age horse cultures of Mongolia.
Dr. Caspari concludes: “The evidence from Tunnug 1 reinforces the central place of Tuva in Eurasian prehistory.” “Our findings reveal the value of Inner Asia in the establishment of transcontinental cultural connections.” Additionally, the findings show that these funerary practices belong to the wider process of cultural and political transformation throughout Eurasia and were involved in the genesis of later pastoralist empires.
Reference:
Storey M. Sacrificial burial confirms Scythians’ eastern origins. ‌Physics
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