[Archaeology Magazine] Gold leopard braceletAtyrau Provincial Administration
Posted on 02/10/2025 2:26:41 PM PST by SunkenCiv
The archaeologists discovered ancient Sarmatian burial sites in the Atyrau Region, dating back to the fifth century B.C. Excavations at the Karabau-2 mound, located 10 kilometers north of Karabau village, Kyzylkoga district, uncovered nine graves, seven of which remained preserved, reported the regional administration on Jan 27.
The graves contained human remains, gold jewelry, weapons, and ceramic vessels. Some were collective burials, leading archaeologists to classify them as "royal tombs."
Marat Kasenov, the head of the excavation team, noted that around 1,000 artifacts were found, including 100 gold ornaments decorated with images of leopards, bears, tigers and antelopes. Two rare wooden bowls, never seen before in similar excavations, were also discovered and are now being restored.
Further excavations at the Karakuduk-1 and Karakuduk-2 mounds, located 9.7 kilometers northwest of Karabau, revealed silver pictograms, iron and bronze weapons, and household items. A rare discovery at Karabau-2 was two touchstones with gold handles, historically used by the Sarmatians to test gold authenticity.
Galamat Bazarbayev, the head of the Atyrau Museum’s archaeological research department, highlighted another significant find—gold appliques on clothing weighing two grams and a massive 370-gram gold bracelet shaped like a mountain leopard...
"These discoveries challenge previous beliefs that the Atyrau region was only on the edge of the Sarmatian civilization. The results suggest that the Caspian Lowland, the Zhaiyk River, and the area near the Zhem River were central to the Sarmatian empire," said Marat Kasenov.
(Excerpt) Read more at astanatimes.com ...
[Archaeology Magazine] Gold leopard braceletAtyrau Provincial Administration
Is that from the Good Samaritan’s grave or those other guys?
It floors me to see how intricate that ancient artwork appears.
The Sarmatians are new to me. I’m not up on my Kazakhstan history. I have a couple of coins, though.
They were Iranian nomads with a language similar to that of the Scythians. Herodotus calls them Sauromatae and thinks they are descended from the union of Scythian men and Amazon women.
He says that the women go out hunting on horseback, with or without their husbands, go to war, and wear the same clothes as the men. He says that one of their marriage customs is that a woman cannot marry until she has killed a male enemy. (Book 4, chapters 110-117)
Spring Beshbarmak with mutton is excellent. If horse, ask for a yearling. Meat is too tough if older than that.
Alien magnifiying lenses. 😁
Sarmatian <> Samaritan.
But they are anagrams of each other.
Well known Amazon Woman:
Sounds good.
I can eat gyros, but something about the smell of mutton does for me. :(
Not sayin’ it was aliens, but maybe it was Somemartians.
calling it an empire is stretching it - more like a weak confederation of warlords
Technically, they weren’t Kazakhs but an Iranian speaking group.
These are among the “Scythian” cultures that roamed north of Iran, east of the thracians/nordics, south of the slavic and finno-ugric peoples and west of the tocharians/Tibetan plateau
In my opinion they were a continuation of the Alans or Alanni - Alan is a variation of “Aryan” meaning Iranian/Nort-Indian (NOT Nordic :)) and their linguistic (and genetic) descendents are the Ossetians.
They, along with most of the IraniC peoples were chased or murdered by Turkic groups in central Asia and what is now Ukraine and then some were assimilated by the various Slavic groups OR they migrated to Iran, northern India.
As an aside, the “Tocharians” - Tok Aryans - who were an Indo-European speaking people living in what is now Zinjiang province of western China, were chased out in circa 200 BC by the XIongnu (the Huns) and they moved to Bactria, then Afghanistan before finally settling in western India and becoming the ancestors of the Rajasthani peoples.
The term “Scythian” is as meaningless as “barbarian” — scythian being the generic term the Greeks gave to north-western barbarians (”barbarians” being the generic Greek term for non-Greeks!)
It’s as funny as the Zhou dynasty Chinese giving names to the groups of people around them (and we don’t know what these people called themselves as the Chinese/Huaxia people had writing and the others didn’t) - the “northern barbarians”, the “western barbarians”, the “southern barbarians” :)
Anyway, so the “Scyths” were just the generic terms for a whole buncha peoples - whether Iranian or Slavic or other
The Sarmatians are a later group of different Alani (Aryani) tribes who were definitively Irani speaking
Yup, same goes for Genghis Khan.
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