Sacrificial burial confirms eastern origins of the Scythians

Archaeologists have discovered evidence of sacrificial burial rituals at the Early Iron Age burial mound of Tunnug 1 in Tuva, Siberia, indicating that the equestrian Scythian culture, the best known in Eastern Europe, is originating far to the east.

The Scythians were a people of the Eurasian steppe, famous for their horse-centered culture and their distinctive “animal style” art, which depicts stylized animals in a series of specific poses.

Their mobile lifestyle meant that their distribution varied considerably over time. The Scythians are known to have migrated from Central Asia to the Pontic steppe in southwestern Russia and Ukraine, but their exact origins remain obscure.

“Equestrian Scythians have sparked people’s imagination since the time of Herodotus,” says lead study author Dr. Gino Caspari of the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology and the University of Bern. “But the origins of their culture have long remained hidden in remote corners of the Eurasian steppes.”

To trace the elusive beginnings of the Scythians, a team of researchers from several institutions studied one of the earliest examples of a royal burial mound containing Scythian material culture; the Tunnug 1 kurgan from the late 9th century BC in Tuva, southern Siberia. Their results are published in the journal Antiquity.

The fragmented remains of at least one human and 18 horses were discovered on the mound, suggesting that they were sacrificed in honor of the elite individual buried inside.

The bones were found in association with Scythian animal-style artifacts and riding equipment, indicating that the burial is an early example of the horse-centered funerary rituals of the later Scythians, described thousands of miles away to the west in classical texts.

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

The presence of “Scythian-style” burials as far east as Tuva suggests that the origins of Scythian culture, so long obscured, lie across the Eurasian steppe, highlighting the mobility of first equestrian cultures.

Additionally, the burial also shares many similarities with examples from Late Bronze Age Mongolia. This suggests that some of the funerary rituals of the Scythians originated even further east and south, with the Bronze Age equestrian cultures of Mongolia.

“The evidence from Tunnug 1 reinforces the crucial role Tuva plays in Eurasian prehistory,” concludes Dr Caspari. “Our findings highlight the importance of Inner Asia in the development of transcontinental cultural ties. The findings also suggest that these burial practices played a role in the broader process of cultural and political transformation across Eurasia, contributing to the emergence of later pastoral empires.”