3,000-year-old elite body was buried with sacrificed group of horses in Siberia. Why?

Long after cattle fed ancient communities and dogs were integrated into society, horses still roamed free.

The time of their domestication is contested, with some researchers arguing they were tamed in 4000 B.C. by the Mesopotamians or the Chinese and others arguing their domestication can be attributed to the Scythians 1,000 years later, according to the American Museum of Natural History.

The horse-fairing Scythian culture was dominant in eastern Europe, but with easy transport, “their distribution fluctuated widely over time” and the community became to be synonymous with other horse-dependent groups.

Now, the burial of an elite member of this society surrounded by horses is shedding light on where the Scythians truly originated, according to a study published Oct. 8 in the peer-reviewed journal Antiquity.

‘Sparked imaginations’

“The horseback-riding Scythians have sparked the imaginations of people since the days of Herodotus (a Greek historian),” study author Gino Caspari, a researcher from the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology and the University of Bern, said in an Oct. 7 news release from Antiquity. “But the origins of their culture have long remained hidden in remote corners of the Eurasian steppes.”

In southern Siberia, thousands of miles east from known Scythian communities, archaeologists discovered the burial of a woman from the late ninth century B.C., around 3,000 years ago, according to the study.

The burial was in the shape of a mound, with multiple clusters of bones, researchers said.

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One cluster belonged to an elite individual, researchers said, but the rest belonged to horses that had been sacrificed on the individual’s behalf, according to the release. At least 18 different horses were identified.

They were also buried with horse tack, or the equipment used to ride the horse, according to the study.

“Complete and broken bronze snaffle bits and drilled boar tusks make up most of the horse-tack assemblage,” researchers said. “The most common item found near the sacrificed horses are drilled boar tusks and, in some instances, imitation tusks made from antler.”

‘Childhood dream come true’

The style of the burial and the type of horse-riding equipment match later Scythian culture, according to the study.

“Horse sacrifices are apparent across all Scythian-type cultures during the first millennium B.C. and especially in the context of elite funerary rituals,” researchers said.

The practice is also similar to funerary rituals of Bronze Age Mongolian horse cultures, suggesting the Scythians may have also lived even further east and south at some point in time, according to the release.

“After years of tough fieldwork in Siberia, it is just wonderful to hold some of the oldest Scythian animal-style items in our hands,” Caspari said. “Unearthing some of the earliest evidence of a unique cultural phenomenon is a privilege and a childhood dream come true.”

The research team includes Caspari, Timur Sadykov, Jegor Blochin, William Taylor, Daria Fomicheva, Alexey Kasparov, Sergey Khavrin, Anna Malyutina and Sönke Szidat.

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