The Huldremose Woman: One of the best preserved and best dressed bog bodies
More than 500 bodies and skeletons were buried in the peat bogs in Denmark between 800 B.C. and A.D. 200.
In 1879, Niels Hanson, a school teacher in Ramten, was digging peat turfs from a peat bog near Ramten, Jutland, Denmark. While doing this, he recovered a bog body of an elderly Iron Age woman. The body became known as “Huldremose Woman” or “Huldre Fen Woman”.
The upper body of the Huldremose Woman.
The woman was more than 40 years old when she ended up in the bog.
Supposedly, the woman had passed away sometime between 160 B.C. and 340 A.D. It is believed that she lived at least 40 years, which to the standards of the time was a very long life. Like most of the bog bodies found in Denmark, the woman from Huldremose was fully clothed.
More than 130 years after its discovery, it remains one of the best preserved and best-dressed bog bodies. This discovery offered a rare opportunity to understand the clothing of the Iron Age in Northern Europe and Scandinavia.
The clothing of Huldremose Woman.
The clothes are well preserved, despite being almost 2000 years old.
She was dressed in a costume consisting of a woollen skirt (tied at the waist with a thin leather strap inserted into a woven waistband), a woollen scarf (139-144 cm in length and 49 cm in width, wrapped around the woman’s neck and fastened under her left arm with a pin made from a bird bone) and two skin capes.
The fur coats she was wrapped in were made from the skin of 14 sheep. The sewn-in objects have probably functioned as amulets. Not only was her costume of high quality; it was also colored in a multitude of colors. olor analysis has shown that originally the skirt was blue and the scarf was in red color.
The finding of the woman has encouraged many different debates and interpretations over the years. Medical analysis revealed that she had received a cut to her upper arm, removing her arm from the rest of her body before she was deposited in the peat.
A violent cut with a sharp tool had almost severed her right upper arm before she died.
It was previously believed that the cut to the arm was the cause of death and the woman died as a result of a subsequent loss of blood.
However, later forensic analysis found evidence of strangulation, her hair was tied with a long woolen rope, which was also wrapped around her neck several times.
Mystery messages engraved in Scotland’s rocks up to 5,000 years ago might soon be decoded using 3D scans
About 6,000 rocks that display distinctive “cup and ring” carvings, alongside other ancient engravings, dot the landscape of Britain, with at least one-third of them found in Scotland. Archaeologists have offered several explanations as to what these strange symbols mean. Some have said the ancients inscribed them for ritual ceremonies.
Others believe the carvings served much more practical purposes, that possibly these were territorial markers on ancient trade routes or mapped the stars in the sky.
However, in the words of George Currie, an amateur archaeologist who discovered some 670 rock carvings in Scotland, “many have symbolism that dates back thousands of years and we know little about why they were created.”
A spokesperson from Historic Environment Scotland (HES) noted that “the purpose and significance of rock art to prehistoric and more recent communities is poorly understood.” In 2022, HES was awarded £807,000 (around $1.1 million in U.S. dollars) by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to carry out a five-year-long project to reestablish this lost link to Scotland’s prehistoric past.
Cup and ring marks, Source: Historic Environment Scotland
We may never discover the full meanings of the engravings, but the project, making use of 3D scanners, will seek answers by documenting and analyzing a great number of rock carving examples. A result is expected probably by 2021: a database with 2D and 3D models of some of the decorated stones will be created, and perhaps some theories will follow too.
Experts from both the University of Edinburgh and the Glasgow School of Art are involved in the project activities, and scanning is expected to reveal new connections between the symbols, previously overlooked, between the rock carvings. Some are said to go as far back as to the Neolithic days.
Currie has also been invited to participate in the activities. Over a period of more than a decade, he has managed to discover, photograph, and GPS locate 670 rocks alone. While cups and rings are among the most recurring symbols of all, there are others that appear frequently, such as horseshoe shapes or some that remind of human footprints.
The Achnabreck Cup-and-Ring-Marked Rock. Source: Historic Environment Scotland
In statements in Mail Online, Currie, who comes from Dundee, said that “the idea is to cover the whole of Scotland to record all of the rock art in 3D where ever possible.” However, he remarks, challenges are certain to haunt the team as it is uncertain how scanning equipment will be brought to some of the locations of interest. Not all rocks are laid to rest in favorable terrains.
Potentially, the project could answer many other questions, such as why people have revisited the rocks, inscribing new symbols over rocks that had already had engravings. Meanwhile, new findings of rock carvings are still being encountered, with one major discovery of a “previously unrecorded example” being reported by BBC Scotland Highlands and Islands reporters in 2014.
Archaeologists stumbled upon new rock art with cup and ring engravings while trying to relocate one rock in the county of Ross-shire. As they examined the rock, the team was dazzled by corresponding marks on the other side of the rock as well. The discovery counted as a rare find.
Cup and ring marks survive in large numbers from Scotland and have offered a variety of meanings.
Although Britain is the focus of the interest in cup and ring rock carvings, these symbols are not exclusively found only on the island. Differing from place to place, examples have been documented overseas, with many being located in Ireland and Scandinavia, one example being Hartola, Finland, where researchers point out that the cup markings are notably wider compared to the Scottish ones.
More can be seen in the Italian region of Piedmont, but also across Switzerland, on Sardinia, or in Israel. Similar forms can be seen as far away as Gabon and Australia.
Nearly 2 million years ago, an early human used a stone tool to carve hunks of meat held in its mouth, an activity that left behind wear marks in its teeth.
And the direction of the grooves suggest that this individual had a dominant right hand.
Scratch that: Marks on Homo habilis teeth suggest which hand the early human used to cut its meat.
Right-handedness is significantly more common than left-handedness in modern humans, and the trait emerged early in the lineage’s evolution, researchers have said. This discovery, which presents the oldest evidence of right-handedness, could prompt a deeper look into the fossil record, to determine when human ancestors first demonstrated right-handed dominance.
Right-handed “handy man”
The fossil, a mostly intact upper jaw, was found in an archaeological dig site in northern Tanzania, in a location with stone tools and large mammal bones nearby. The jaw belonged to Homo habilis, a human ancestor that lived 2.4 million to 1.4 million years ago and is the oldest known ancestor in the Homo lineage.
Homo habilis means “handy man,” and though the newly discovered specimen’s hands were nowhere to be found, its jaw and teeth provided researchers with unexpected evidence of whether it was a so-called “righty” or “lefty.”
The teeth were very well-preserved, with enamel still covering most of their surfaces. Close inspection of two central incisors in the jaw revealed concentrations of scratch marks; in one tooth in particular, they were primarily angled to the right side of the body.
According to the scientists, these marks were created over time, as the “handy man” was cutting up his meat. He would have gripped a hunk of flesh in his mouth, steadied the meat by pulling on it with one of his hands and used the other hand — which was probably the dominant one — to saw pieces of meat with a stone tool, which would occasionally scrape against his teeth.
a. A right-handed Homo habilis would have pulled at the meat with the left hand and cut with the right. b. A stereomicroscopic composite of the cast of one of the teeth used in the analysis.
The right-leaning direction of these scrapes — which have also been detected in fossil teeth belonging to Neanderthals and other human relatives — told the scientists that a tool held in the right hand had made the marks.
“Righty” vs. “lefty”
Humans aren’t the only mammal species that favors one hand over the other; this trait appears in animals “from kangaroos to chimpanzees,” the study authors wrote. However, having a dominant hand that appears overwhelmingly across an entire species is uniquely human; 90 percent of people are right-handed, the researchers estimated, compared with 50 percent of individuals in humans’ primate relatives.
But when did humans first develop a preference for using the right hand over the left? Fossil arm bones might hold clues, but researchers would need both arms from a single individual to tell which hand the individual used more often in life, and that’s proven hard to find in the fossil record.
However, this new discovery suggests that scientists could find the evidence preserved in fossil teeth, which are more plentiful than matched pairs of arm bones, the researchers said. While this is as yet the only example of dominant hand use in humans’ early lineage, other fossils may provide the clues researchers need to trace the origins of “righty” vs. “lefty,” the scientists said.
The findings were published online in the November issue of the Journal of Evolution.
Listen to the Recreated Voice of a 3,000-Year-Old Egyptian Mummy
Media outlets have likened the sound to a “brief groan,” a “long, exasperated ‘meh’ without the ‘m,’” and “rather like ‘eeuuughhh’”
Nesyamun was a priest and scribe whose duties included ritualistic chanting and singing.
In the nearly 200 years since his mummy’s arrival at the Leeds City Museum in northern England, an ancient Egyptian priest named Nesyamun has slowly but surely revealed his secrets.
Employed as a high-ranking priest and scribe at the Karnak state temple in Thebes, Nesyamun performed rituals filled with both song and speech. Active during the turbulent reign of Ramses XI, who served as Egypt’s pharaoh between 1099 and 1069 B.C., he died in his mid-50s, likely due to a severe allergic reaction, and suffered from ailments including gum disease and heavily worn teeth. And, as evidenced by inscriptions on his coffin, Nesyamun hoped his soul would one day speak to the gods much as he had in life.
A new study published in the journal Scientific Reports fulfills the 3,000-year-old priest’s vision of the afterlife, drawing on CT scans of his surprisingly intact vocal tract to engineer an approximation of his voice.
The sound bite, created with a speech synthesizing tool called the Vocal Tract Organ, reconstructs “the sound that would come out of his vocal tract if he was in his coffin and his larynx came to life again,” says study co-author David Howard, a speech scientist at Royal Holloway, University of London, to the New York Times’ Nicholas St. Fleur.
The clip itself is brief and vaguely underwhelming, capturing a single vowel sound media outlets have described as “resembl[ing] a brief groan,” “a bit like a long, exasperated ‘meh’ without the ‘m,’” “a sound caught between the words ‘bed’ and ‘bad,’” and “rather like ‘eeuuughhh.’”
Per the Washington Post’s Ben Guarino, Howard and his colleagues used a CT scan of Nesyamun’s vocal tract—a biologically unique speech-supporting tube that stretches from the larynx to the lips—to 3-D print a copy of his throat.
They then hooked this artificial organ to a loudspeaker and played an electronic signal mimicking the sound of a “human larynx acoustic output.” (Howard has previously used this technique on living humans, including himself, but the new research marks the first time the technology has been used to recreate a deceased individual’s voice, reports CNN’s Katie Hunt.)
Though the study serves as proof-of-concept for future voice recreation research, it has several practical limitations. As co-author and University of York archaeologist John Schofield tells Gizmodo’s George Dvorsky, Nesyamun’s supine burial position curbed the experiment’s scope.
Schofield explains, “The vocal tract has only one shape here—the shape as he lies in his sarcophagus—that produced just one sound.”
Another limiting factor, says Howard to CNN, was the priest’s lack of tongue muscles, which had long since wasted away. In truth, the speech scientist adds, the noise heard in the audio isn’t a “sound he would ever likely have made in practice because the bulk of his tongue isn’t there.”
Daniel Bodony, an aeroacoustics expert at the University of Illinois who was not involved in the study, tells the Post the team’s electronic approximation “sounds tinny” because Nesyamun’s mummy lacks fleshy, vibrating vocal folds capable of adding “richness and emotion” to one’s words.
In the future, the researchers may be able to overcome this and other obstacles by modifying their software to better approximate such factors as the size of the priest’s tongue and the position of his jaw. The team’s eventual goal is to move beyond singular vowel sounds to words and even full sentences.
“When visitors encounter the past, it is usually a visual encounter,” says Schofield to the Post. “With this voice we can change that. There is nothing more personal than someone’s voice.”
Still, some scholars—including Kara Cooney, an Egyptologist at the University of California, Los Angeles—have expressed concerns over the implications of the new study.
Though she acknowledges the work’s potential, Cooney tells the Times, “When you’re taking a human being and using so much inference about what they looked or sounded like, it can be done with an agenda that you might not even be aware of.”
Egypt says another trove of ancient coffins found in Saqqara
Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed another trove of ancient coffins in a vast necropolis south of Cairo, authorities said Monday.
The Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said in a statement that archaeologists found the collection of colorful, sealed sarcophagi buried more than 2,500 years ago at the Saqqara necropolis.
This undated photo provided by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said more than 80 coffins were found.
Archaeologists also found colorful, gilded wooden statues, the ministry said. Details of the new discovery will be announced in a news conference at the famed Step Pyramid of Djoser, it said.
Egypt has sought to publicize its archaeological finds in an effort to revive its key tourism sector, which was badly hit by the turmoil that followed the 2011 uprising. The sector was also dealt a further blow this year by the coronavirus pandemic.
Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouly and Tourism and Antiquities Minister Khalid el-Anany toured the area and inspected the new discovery, which came just over two weeks after the ministry revealed 59 sealed sarcophagi, with mummies inside most of them, in the same area of Saqqara.
The Saqqara site is part of the necropolis at Egypt’s ancient capital of Memphis that includes the famed Giza Pyramids, as well as smaller pyramids at Abu Sir, Dahshur and Abu Ruwaysh. The ruins of Memphis were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1970s.
The plateau hosts at least 11 pyramids, including the Step Pyramid, along with hundreds of tombs of ancient officials and other sites that range from the 1st Dynasty (2920-2770 B.C.) to the Coptic period (395-642).
This undated photo provided by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities
2,000-Year-Old Roman Road Uncovered in British Field is Like No Other–And of ‘Global Importance’
Workmen have uncovered a suspected Roman road in a field dating back 2,000 years that could be the only one of its kind in Britain and of ‘world importance.’
Archeologists say the cobbled ford uncovered in Worcestershire could be the finest Roman example of its type in the UK. In fact, the only existing roads in such a state of preservation are found in Pompeii and Rome.
The stretch, measuring 32-ft by 9.6 feet wide (10 x 2.9 meter), was discovered during routine utility work by Severn Trent Water a few weeks ago in an area called Evesham.
The exact location of the discovery is being concealed but it was found by a river where a Roman-era villa complex was previously uncovered four years ago.
Excavations are now taking place to find out more about the site, but experts say everything points to it being a genuine Roman structure—built 1,900 years ago.
“At the moment everything is ticking the boxes for it to be Roman but it still feels too good to be true so we are keeping an open mind,” said Aidan Smyth, archeology officer from Wychavon District Council where the water works were being dug, adding that seeing it first hand “took his breath away.”
The owners of the property contacted Wychavon District Council and a team from Historic England is now expected to analyze the excavations.
The road is a ‘ford,’ or a small river crossing, and also has ruts in the stones indicating it was was used by carts for a long time.
“If it is a first-century Roman feature it is the only one of its kind to be found in Britain to date,” said Smith, who noted no one was building roads like this during the Medieval Period.
Aidan Smyth investigates the Roman road
“If it was to be a Roman feature, with its only comparisons in Rome and Pompeii, you could argue it’s of world importance, not just of national importance. The stonework is absolutely perfect.”
Smith explains in the video below how the Romans were the only road builders to ever build their roads like they built walls. During excavations Smith explains the team found “batted” stone curbs, meaning to be laid at a steep angle rather than vertically. They were made of a different stone than the flat cobbles passersby would walk upon.
“Now I’ve lots of evidence in this part of Evesham for Medieval batted stone walls, my problem is I’ve not got anything Roman to compare it with,” Smith said. “So it’s not that it isn’t Roman, it just could have a Medieval phase to it.”
The native Picts, a Celtic-language speaking tribe, once populated the Scottish Islands, similar to the natives that live on what is now Scotland.
Archaeologists and volunteers are working to preserve human bones exposed by recent storms in an ancient cemetery above a beach on the Orkney Islands.
Several powerful storms on Scotland’s Orkney Islands have now revealed ancient human remains in a Pictish and Viking cemetery dated back to about 1,500 years ago.
To order to protect the damage to the former Newark Bay cemetery on Orkney’s largest island, volunteers are now placing sandbags and clay around. The site dates from the middle of the sixth century when ancient Pictish people inhabited the Orkney Islands.
The site is currently being protected by sandbags.
Picts or Norse?
The cemetery was used for about 1,000 years, and numerous burials from the ninth to the 15th century were Norsemen or Vikings who had seized the Orkney Islands from the Picts. Now, storm waves are destroying the low cliff where the ancient site is located, Peter Higgins from the Orkney Research Center for Archaeology (ORCA), said.
“Every time we have a storm with a bit of a south-easterly [wind], it really gets in there and actively erodes what is just soft sandstone,” Higgins explained.
Approximately 250 skeletons were taken out of the cemetery about 50 years ago, but researchers do not know how far the site extends from the beach. They believe that hundreds of Pictish and Norse bodies are still buried there.
“The local residents and the landowner have been quite concerned about what’s left of the cemetery being eroded by the sea,” Higgins said.
Uncovered bones are usually either coated with clay to protect them or removed from the site after their positions are thoroughly labeled, so it is rather unusual for bones to end up on the beach, he explained.
Researchers do not know yet of the exposed bones belong to Picts or Vikings, as no burial objects or funeral clothes were spotted, and the bodies were buried four of five layers under the surface.
Cultural Transition
Historians claim that the first Norse immigrants to the Orkney Islands established there in the late eighth century, leaving a rising new monarchy in Norway. They used the Orkney Islands to begin their own voyages and Viking raids, and ultimately, all the islands were ruled by the Norse, according to The Scotsman.
The relationship between the Picts and the Norse on the Orkney Islands is highly argued by scholars. They cannot know for sure whether the Norse took over by force, or were settlers who traded and entered marriage with the Picts. However, now, the ancient cemetery at Newark Bay may help researchers answer their questions.
“The Orkney Islands were Pictish, and then they became Norse,” Higgins said. “We’re not really clear how that transition happened, whether it was an invasion, or people lived together. This is one of the few opportunities we’ve got to investigate that.”
A part of the scientific work on the remains would require testing genetic material from the ancient bones, which might demonstrate that some people living on the Orkney Islands today are successors of people who lived there more than 1,000 years ago.
The scientific study of bones from the ancient cemetery at Newark Bay could reveal clues to the cultural transition from Pictish to Norse domination of the Orkney Islands.
“We’re fairly confident that we’re going to find that some local residents are related to people in the cemetery,” Higgins said.
Egypt announces discovery of 3,500-year-old Luxor tomb
Pharaonic tomb belongs to royal goldsmith who lived more than 3,500 years ago during the reign of the 18th dynasty.
Mummies were found in the New Kingdom tomb that belongs to a royal goldsmith in a burial shaft
Has announced the discovery of a pharaonic tomb in the southern city of Luxor belonging to a royal goldsmith who lived more than 3,500 years ago during the reign of the 18th dynasty.
The tomb is located on the west bank of the river Nile in a cemetery where noblemen and top government officials are buried.
Antiquities Minister Khaled el-Anany said the tomb is not in good condition, but it contains a statue of the goldsmith and his wife, as well as a funerary mask.
He said a shaft in the tomb contained mummies belonging to ancient Egyptian people who lived during the 21st and 22nd Dynasties.
An Egyptian antiquities worker is seen in the recently discovered tomb of Amenemhat, a goldsmith from the New Kingdom
The tomb was discovered by Egyptian archaeologists and could boost Egypt’s slowly recovering tourism industry.
In 2022, archaeologists unearthed several mummies, 10 colourful wooden sarcophagi and more than 1,000 funerary statues near the city of Luxor.
Ushabti figurines (small carved figurines) were often placed with the deceased in ancient Egyptian tombs to help with responsibilities in the afterlife.
Inside the tomb, archaeologists wearing white masks and latex gloves inspected the sarcophagi, which were covered with intricate drawings in red, blue, black, green, and yellow – and featured the carved faces of the dead.
It was opened to add more mummies during the 21st Dynasty, about 3,000 years ago, to protect them during a period when tomb-robbing was common.
Some coffins had deteriorated and broken over the years
Archaeologists find 3,000-year-old megalithic temple in Peru
A 3,000-year-old ancient temple has been discovered in Peru by a team of Peruvian archaeologists, who think it may have been used by pagans for ‘rituals of water worship’.
The religious monument is over 131ft long and is located in the springs of the Zaña Valley river about 500miles from Lima, the modern capital of Peru.
Inside the temple archaeologists found a square with an alter that was likely used to offer important fertility rituals with water taken from the Zaña Valley river.
The religious monument, as seen here, is over 131ft long and includes the remains of large stone blocks and a central staircase
The megalith structure was found at the Huaca El Toro site in the Lambayeque region of Peru by a team led by Walter Alva, the archaeologist who discovered the tomb of the Lord of Sipan in 1987.
The temple still features the remains of large stone blocks and a long staircase. ‘This discovery is unique because it is the only megalithic architecture in Lambayeque,’ said Dr Alva.
The site was discovered in October 2021 but the news of its finding was delayed to reduce the risk of treasure hunters taking artefacts that hadn’t been secured.
The temple comes from a time when water was considered divine and was used in a number of rituals and religious practices, researchers claim.
Archaeologists from Peru, seen here, found stunning walls surrounding the monument as well as a central alter likely used for fertility rituals
They were able to determine this temple was home to a cult that worshipped water by studying the way they alter is positioned and how it looks.
The altar includes holes similar to those found in other temples from the period. ‘This is typical of water altars that are in other places, and it is located in the springs of the Zaña Valley river’, Mr Alva said.
Mr Alva said they have identified a circular column, where evidence of sedimentation of rains and rituals was found.
‘This temple is facing the mountain. This place is strictly ceremonial because of the signs of burning that took place.’
‘The rituals were performed for fertility,’ he said. Stunning walls surround the monument and there is a central staircase that is 32ft wide and 49ft long.
The Peruvian team discovered 21 tombs on the site of the temple which is thought to date back to about 1,500 BC to 292 AD.
Inside the tombs, they found ceramic pieces and metal objects such as knives that were placed next to the graves.
They found a staircase on the site that was 32ft wide and 49ft long
Mr Alva says it is likely the tombs were later reused as 20 burial sites were from the later Inca Chimu culture which dates back to about 1,000 to 1,470 AD.
This isn’t the first major discovery made by Walter Alva and his team.
The archaeologist also discovered the tomb of the Lord of Sipan in 1987. Sipan was a ruler of Mochica culture and his remains were found intact in Northern Peru.
In 2007 he discovered a number of 4,000-year-old murals in Peru. They show a deer caught in a net and are thought to be the oldest murals in the Americas.
2,500-Year-Old Grave Of Ancient Warrior Couple Discovered In Siberia
On an investigation to a 2,500-year-year-old tomb of an ancient warrior and princess was discovered in Siberia. The pair are believed to have died in their 30s and were buried with a baby and an ‘elderly’ servant woman, archaeologists say.
The woman may have been 60 years of age when she died, as she died and was entombed in a crumpled position under the feet of the couple, who may have been spouses.
Remains of the child were scattered throughout the grave, which archaeologists say probably happened when rodents ate the flesh of the deceased.
Experts unearthing the find in southern Siberia say the four people probably succumbed simultaneously to the same infection, and the servant was buried alongside them to look after the family in the afterlife.
The warrior couple, the woman specifically, maybe proof of the lost Scythian civilisation, which inhabited the region of modern-day Russia until 2,200 years ago.
The pair are believed to have died in their 30s and were buried with a baby and an ‘elderly’ servant woman, archaeologists say. The elderly woman was likely in her 60s when she died. The bones of the child were scattered throughout the grave, probably by rodents
The fighter woman in the grave was buried with the same weaponry as the man, the researchers say, which is unusual. In surviving records and other graves from the same time frame and location, female warriors were buried with a bow and arrows, long-range weapons,
But the woman in the newly unearthed grave was armed with a long-handled weapon, either a hatchet or an axe, and a short sword. These weapons are best suited for hand-to-hand combat and a bloody melee and this difference is indicative of the Scythian culture, researchers say.
Dr Oleg Mitko, head of Archeology at Novosibirsk State University, said: ‘We have an impressive set of weaponry.
‘We found close fight weapons in a female grave, which is not so typical. The woman had a battle-axe.. so she was a part of warrior strata.’
Senior researcher Yuri Teterin said: ‘The man had two axes and two bronze daggers.
‘It is a brilliant burial in that there is an authentic bronze weaponry.’ The man also had a bronze mirror, the researchers say.
Wooden handles of the weapons have no survived millennia in soil, but the metallic elements have. The couple, the baby and servant, are from the Tagar culture, part of the Scythian civilisation, researchers believe.
In contrast to other female warriors from ancient Siberia, the female in the grave was armed in with a long-handled weapon, either a hatchet or an axe, and a short sword. These weapons are best suited for hand-to-hand combat
The couple, the baby and servant, are from the Tagar culture, part of the Scythian civilisation, researchers believe
The older woman had two broken teeth and her possessions were only a broken comb and a small ceramic vessel, indicating she had little personal wealth.
Larger ceramic vessels – believed to have been full of food – were also discovered which were filled with mutton and beef, researchers say.
When they were buried 2,500 years ago, the grave goods and food would have been buried alongside the people because it was believed it helped people in the afterlife.
Scientists say there is no immediate evidence of battle wounds to suggest a cause of death, but further research will be undertaken.
One theory is that they succumbed to an infection at the same time, leading to them all being buried simultaneously. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus left a detailed account of the Scythians and their young women warriors.
But physician Hippocrates added that a young woman would cease her role as a fighter after ‘she takes to herself a husband’.
‘They do not lay aside their virginity until they have killed three of their enemies, and they do not marry before they have performed the traditional sacred rites.’
‘Yet in this case, the woman warrior appears part of a family unit.
Archaeologist Anatoly Vybornov said: ‘Both male and women took part in hostilities. Violence was an acceptable and legal way to solve the problems then.’
