Ancient Siberian Ice Mummy is covered with ‘Really Special’ Tattoos

Performed tattoos with tigers, birds and a fantastic animal have been revealed on an ice mummy from more than 2000 years ago. The mummified woman was from the Pazyyk culture in Siberia, part of the wider Skytic world.

It is difficult to know the occurrence of tattoos during the prehistory because few bodies go back that far still have skin on them. But there are no remarkable exceptions, included Ötzi “The Iceman”, who lived around 3300 BC. and was preserved in ice.

Now Gino Caspari at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany and his colleagues has examined the body of a semi-nomadic Iron Age pastoralist from the Altai Mountains in Siberia, who were 50 years old when she died in the 3rd or 4th century BC. She is one of a handful of people who are whose deep burial chambers were encapsulated in permafrost, which made them “ice mummies” and retained their skin but leaves it dark and dried out.

“The tattoos are not visible when you look at the mummy with the naked eye,” says Caspari. So his team used high resolution, almost infrared photography for an extraordinary series of hidden images.

“We have planters who are hunted by tigers and leopards, and in a case of a griffin, and on our hands we have birds,” says Caspari. “Because of their age and the lively art style, Pazykk tights are something really special.”

A bird looks like a rooster, says team member Aaron deterred wolf at the Tennessee division in archeology, but he says tattooed pazyk bodies are marked with a mix of realistic and amazing animals, so the artist was not the bird to be creature.

The team also learned how the tattoos were made. “Our analysis shows that the tattoos were created using the direct puncture method, as opposed to being cut or” sewn “in the skin,” says Deter-Wolf.

Cross -cultural data suggests that this was done by means of a method today known as hand -poking, where a needle is dipped by ink and cubes that stabbed the skin, creating a dot image dot. Her tattoos were also made with carbon pigments, probably derived from charcoal, soot or ash.

Those on the woman’s right forearm were more technical and detailed than those on the left, so they may have been done by different people with different levels of skill, says Caspari. “Our study shows that tattooing was not only a widespread practice on the Eurasian steppes over 2000 years ago, but also makes it clear that it was a specialized craft that involved a lot of knowledge and practice,” he says.