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Just how much imagination can play a trick on you if you want to believe strongly enough that an object is a true discovery is evident in one find: a piece of iron with decorative fittings, a loop design and copper alloy. Researchers quickly came to the conclusion: it had to be a crown. As it turned out later, it was actually the fitting from a bucket from the 6th century AD. (Museum der Archäologie Herne/LVR-Landesmuseum Bonn)

Kul-Oba an ancient archaeological site, a Scythian burial tumulus (kurgan), located near Kerch in eastern Crimea. Kul-Oba was the first Scythian royal barrow to be excavated in modern times. Uncovered in 1830, the stone tomb yielded a wealth of precious artifacts which drew considerable public interest to Scythian world. Of particular interest is an intricately granulated earring with two Nike figurines and Serpent-Legged Goddess, now in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.The tomb was built around 400 to 350 BC. The body of the king lay by the east wall on a sumptuous wooden couch. His social position was highlighted by...

The genetic variation within the Scythian nomad group is so broad that it must be explained with the group assimilating people it came in contact with. This is shown in a new study on Bronze and Iron Age genetics of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, situated in the Black Sea region... This is likely the strategy needed for the group to have been able to grow as fast, expand as vast and to remain established for as long as they did. The findings emphasize the importance of assimilation to maintain Scythian dominance around the Black Sea region... The vast area of the...

...As he and his team began to slice into the mound, located 30 miles east of Stavropol... It took nearly a month of digging to reach the bottom. There, Belinski ran into a layer of thick clay that, at first glance, looked like a natural feature of the landscape, not the result of human activity. He uncovered a stone box, a foot or so deep, containing a few finger and rib bones from a teenager... Nested one inside the other in the box were two gold vessels of unsurpassed workmanship. Beneath these lay three gold armbands, a heavy ring, and...

A Sarmatian burial mound excavated this summer in Russia’s Southern Ural steppes has yielded a magnificent but unusual treasure. The artefacts contained within the mound are helping to shed light on a little-known period of the illiterate nomadic culture that flourished on the Eurasian steppe in the 1st millennium BC and interacted with the Persian Achaemenid and Greek civilizations. The archaeological study of this remarkable ancient tomb, or kurgan, was carried out by the expedition of the Institute of Archaeology (Russian Academy of Sciences), led by Professor Leonid T. Yablonsky.

Foreign religions grew rapidly in the 1st-century A.D. Roman Empire, including worship of Jesus Christ, the Egyptian goddess Isis, and an eastern sun god, Mithras. Of the religions that expanded rapidly in the 1st-century Roman Empire, worship of Mithras was particularly popular among Roman soldiers, who spread his cult during their far-flung travels... Mithras's temples, called Mithraea, are the best archaeological evidence of the god's worship, and most of them featured a characteristic depiction of Mithras slaying a bull, a scene called the tauroctony... In the later Roman Empire, Mithras blended in with another sun god, Sol Invictus, the "unconquered...

Ancient mummy opened: Scythian cavalier had bone disease Posted : Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:15:04 GMT Goettingen, Germany - An autopsy on the body of an ancient Scythian cavalier found in the Altai Mountains shows he had a degenerative bone disease for several years before he died, German scientists said Friday. The 2006 find of the preserved body and the man's rich possessions on the Mongolian side of the mountains was a scientific sensation. The Scythians were a nation of horsemen in central Asia. The man, who died about 2,300 years ago at the age of 50 or 60, would...

Results of Dr. Joachim Burger's DNA Comparison between Samartan Amazon Warrior Women and Meiregul, Kazakh child.

Archaeologists find 2,500-year-old mummy in Mongolia, tattoos and all Thu Aug 24, 2:18 PM ETAFP/DDP/GAI-HO Photo: This undated picture released by the German Archaeological Institute (GAI) shows a mummified body from... BERLIN (AFP) - An international group of archaeologists has unearthed a well-preserved, 2,500-year-old mummy frozen in the snowcapped mountains of Mongolia complete with blond hair, tattoos and a felt hat. The president of the German Archaeological Institute, Hermann Parzinger, hailed the "fabulous find" at a press conference to present the 28-member team's discovery in Berlin. The Scythian warrior was found in June at a height of 2,600 meters (8,500...

The myth of the Amazons, a tribe of bloodthirsty blond women thundering across arid battlefields to the horror of their male foes, has lingered for centuries. Their exploits seized the imagination of the Greek scribes Homer, Hippocrates, and Herodotus. But proof of their existence had always been lacking. Now, a 2,500-year-old mystery may have been solved, cracked by an American scientist whose 10-year odyssey led her tens of thousands of miles in pursuit of the truth. After unearthing a culture of ancient warrior women in the Russian steppes, Dr. Jeannine Davis-Kimball followed a trail of artifacts to a remote village...

December 22, 2004 Women warriors from Amazon fought for Britain's Roman army By Lewis Smith THE remains of two Amazon warriors serving with the Roman army in Britain have been discovered in a cemetery that has astonished archaeologists. Women soldiers were previously unknown in the Roman army in Britain and the find at Brougham in Cumbria will force a reappraisal of their role in 3rd-century society. The women are thought to have come from the Danube region of Eastern Europe, which was where the Ancient Greeks said the fearsome Amazon warriors could be found. The women, believed to have died...

The Mongol mysteries: Are 'deer stones' a clue? By Guy Gugliotta The Washington Post Sometime around 1000 B.C., a Mongolian tribesman climbed on the back of a horse and surveyed the windblown steppe that stretched as far as the eye could see. The weather was turning colder, and there wasn't enough grass for his goats. It was time to move. From the moment that decision was made, a tradition was born. Horses — yesterday's beasts of burden — became a means of escape. Soon they would become the tool of conquest, and the people of the steppe — whether Scythian,...

The things found in at the burial site certify that the woman was from a distinguished tribe. According to the archaeologists, the golden head wear that looks like Kazakh Saukele (national headgear of women) is the most valuable item for the research. “The pointed golden head wear with zoomorphic ornaments has the top that looks like the arrows and is decorated with a spiral made of golden wire and jewels. A similar head wear used to be part of the official costume of the Saka tribe chieftains. It is quite possible that the woman was a daughter of a king...

An international archeological expedition to Lake Issyk Kul, high in the Kyrgyz mountains, proves the existence of an advanced civilization 25 centuries ago... The expedition resulted in sensational finds, including the discovery of major settlements, presently buried underwater... Last year, we worked near the north coast at depths of 5-10 metres to discover formidable walls, some stretching for 500 meters-traces of a large city with an area of several square kilometers... We also found Scythian burial mounds, eroded by waves over the centuries, and numerous well preserved artifacts-bronze battleaxes, arrowheads, self-sharpening daggers, objects discarded by smiths, casting molds, and a...

Top 10 Discoveries of 2006 Volume 60 Number 1, January/February 2007 How do you know it's been an extraordinary year in archaeology? When the discovery of the earliest Maya writing and a 2,500-year-old sarcophagus decorated with scenes from the Iliad don't crack ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 list: 1. Valley of the Kings Tomb KV63 was the first tomb to be excavated in the Valley of the Kings since Tutankhamun's in 1922. The chamber held seven 18th Dynasty coffins. 2. 3-Million-Year-Old Child After years of chiseling tiny bones out of sandstone blocks from Ethiopia's Rift Valley, paleontologists announced the discovery of a...

Surprising Discoveries in Silla's Royal Tomb No. 98 (including Greco-Roman artifacts) King Nae-Mool(birth/death: unknown/402 AD) and his queen's royal tomb in Dae-Roong-Won, Kyong-ju, S. Korea was excavated in 1973-75 to yield some truly unexpected findings later. Many artifacts were quite different from those known to be produced in Korea or China. Exotic designs and materials abound. Further research established that these artifacts originated from Central Asia, Black Sea, Caucasus, Persia and Eastern Mediterranean. This is quite far away from the South Eastern tip of Korean Peninsula, where this ancient Kingdom, Silla, located. The last of 5 short videos below shows...

'Descendants of the Dragon' confirmed at the Liaohe River ValleyIn thousands of years, the Chinese people have been deeming themselves as "the descendant of the dragon" though there is no enough solid proof to support the statement. But in this year, with continually findings of dragons in archeological work at the Liaohe River Valley, the statement that the Chinese people are "the descendant of the dragon" is further confirmed. In thousands of years, the Chinese people have been deeming themselves as "the descendant of the dragon" though there is no enough solid proof to support the statement. But in this...

January 9, 2002 Scythian Gold From Siberia Said to Predate the Greeks By JOHN VAROLI Vladimir Terebenin Some of the 5,000 pieces of gold found in a Siberian grave are being temporarily kept at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. T. PETERSBURG, Jan. 8 — Russian scholars from the State Hermitage Museum have concluded that a discovery of Scythian gold in a Siberian grave last summer is the earliest of its kind ever found and that it predates Greek influence. The find is leading to a change in how scholars view the supposed barbaric, nomadic tribes that once roamed ...

One of the most iconic living quarters in the history of mankind, the yurt is most closely associated with the nomadic peoples of central Asia. Herodotus, the father of history himself, was the first to describe yurts in the written word. According to him, yurts were the primary domiciles of the Scythians, who rode horses and lived in a nomadic fashion near the Black Sea from 600BC-300AD. The Ger Nomadic Mongolian families called their homes “gers.” Their dwellings were made up of same-sized orange mesh-like walls that curved around the center of the tent. Each yurt had 3-5 walls and...

RUSSIAN archeologists working in a remote area of southern Siberia have discovered a golden treasure hoard in the tomb of a warrior prince from a civilisation that died out more than 2,000 years ago. The tomb was found in Tuva, a republic within Russia and bordering Mongolia. Lying beneath thousands of huge rocks and buried in a deep pit covered with logs, it contains the remains of the Scythian prince and his consort, along with more than 45lb of golden treasure. The team's leader, Konstantin Chugunov, 39, a professor from the Hermitage museum in St Petersburg, has described it as ...