Pazyryk burials

Listen first. Wind moves through the larch trees at the edge of this high valley, and dry grass hisses against the stones. Underfoot, the ground is hard and uneven, and the air is thin and cool even in summer. In front of you rise low mounds of grey rock, softened by lichen. They do not look like much. Yet beneath stones like these, archaeologists found one of the most remarkable time capsules of the ancient world.

These are the Pazyryk burials, a group of large burial mounds in the Ulagan district of the Altai Republic. Archaeologists call mounds of this kind kurgans. Each one covers a deep shaft, and at the bottom of each shaft lies a chamber built from larch logs. The people who built them were horse-riding nomads of the Iron Age. They lived here roughly two and a half thousand years ago, in the later centuries before Christ.

These nomads belonged to the wide world of the steppe. Greek writers called many of these peoples Scythians — a broad name for horse-riding herders who ranged from the Black Sea to the edges of Siberia. Scholars now use the name of this valley for a whole culture: the Pazyryk culture. In other words, this quiet field gave its name to a civilisation. The mounds you see were made for its elite, perhaps chiefs and their families.

Here is the first surprise. The secret of this place is ice. After the burials, water seeped down into the log chambers. In this cold mountain climate, the water froze. The heavy stone cairns above shaded the ground and helped the cold to stay. Over the centuries, a lens of permanent ice formed around the dead. Wood, leather, felt, wool, and even human skin survived, when normally they would have rotted to nothing.

The second surprise is almost a paradox. Robbers broke into these tombs in ancient times, probably not long after the burials. They took metal, gold, and other valuables. But their tunnels let more water and cold air into the chambers. So the thieves may have helped to freeze the very things they left behind. Much of what survives today exists partly because of them.

The systematic excavations here were led by the Soviet archaeologist Sergei Rudenko. Work began in 1929, and he returned in the late 1940s to open more of the mounds. His teams had to melt the ice slowly, often with hot water, to free the objects without destroying them. It was cold, patient work. What came out of the ground changed how historians understand nomadic life on the steppe.

Among the finds was a woollen carpet, knotted by hand, with rows of horsemen and deer around a central field. It is often described as the oldest known pile carpet in the world. Its colours and its fine knotting show a skilled craft tradition, perhaps with links to Persia far to the southwest. Today the carpet is kept in the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, along with most of the finds from this valley.

The horses deserve their own moment. Many horses were buried with their owners, in a separate part of the shaft. Some wore felt and leather headdresses shaped like antlers or horns, as if the horses were being turned into fantastic deer. Their saddles, bridles, and decorations survived in the ice. Here, a horse was not just transport. It was wealth, companion, and perhaps a guide into the next world.

One of the men in these burials carried a striking detail. His skin was covered in tattoos. Fantastic animals twisted across his arms, shoulders, and legs — deer with beaks, curling beasts, creatures in the flowing style that scholars call animal style, a typical art of the steppe nomads. These are among the oldest well-preserved tattoos ever found. They show that the same images on carpets and saddles were also worn on the body.

The ice also preserved a link to ancient Greek writing. In one tomb, excavators found a small bronze vessel with stones inside, together with seeds of hemp. In the fifth century before Christ, the Greek historian Herodotus described Scythians throwing hemp seeds onto hot stones and breathing the smoke. For a long time, this was only a story in a book. Here, in this valley, archaeology seemed to confirm it.

The Pazyryk world reached beyond this valley. On the Ukok Plateau, further south in the Altai, archaeologists in the 1990s found a frozen burial of a woman from the same culture, with tattoos and a tall headdress. People often call her the Ice Maiden, and locals sometimes call her the Altai Princess. Her return to the Altai Republic, where she is now kept in the national museum in Gorno-Altaisk, matters deeply to many Altai people. For them, these burials are not only science. They are ancestors.

That feeling is worth holding as you walk among the mounds. Many Altai people treat burial places with great respect. Some believe that disturbing the dead brings misfortune to the living. You may see small ribbons tied to trees in the wider region, an old custom of offering. So move gently here. Do not climb on the stones or take any away. The mounds are graves first, and monuments second.

There is also a modern worry. The frozen tombs of the Altai depend on cold ground. As the climate warms, scientists fear that the remaining ice in unexcavated burials could melt. If that happens, the leather, wood, and textiles inside would decay before anyone can study them. The quiet of this valley hides a race against time that is still going on.

Now look again at the mounds in front of you. Notice the hollows at their centres, where shafts were dug by robbers and later by archaeologists. Notice the lichen, the wind, the wide sky over the mountains. Two and a half thousand years ago, people rode into this valley with their horses, their carpets, and their tattoos. As you walk back, listen to the grass once more... it was moving like this on the day they buried their dead.