A very strange 5,000-year-old clay figurine has been found in Siberia. The Bronze Age statuette has a tattooed face and a bone mask. It was discovered inside a mass burial where it had been placed on the shoulder of a woman.
Scientists who examined the mysterious clay figurine say they have never seen anything like this before even though they possess plenty of historical information about the history, traditions, and customs of the Odinov culture in Vengerovsky district of Novosibirsk region, Western Siberia.
‘Interestingly, our anthropologists and genetics found that the Odino people were Mongoloids, yet the face of the figurine had clear Caucasian features. We don’t see the gender of the figurine, which is unusual, and we can’t say if it was dressed’, said Vyacheslav Molodin. Credit: Novosibirsk Institute of Archeology and Ethnography
It’s impossible to determine the gender of the small, about a palm size figurine, but it has clear Caucasian features.
According to Professor Vyacheslav Molodin, head of the Ust-Tartas 2 expedition, “this is without a doubt the find of the season, the find that any world museum from the Hermitage to the Louvre museum would love to exhibit.”
“We’ve never come across anything like this, despite our extensive knowledge of the Odinov culture’s burial rites.
The woman must have been an unusual person to have such a figurine ‘escorting’ her to the afterlife”, he said.
“The woman was laid to rest on top of a man, lying on her front so that she faced him.
Credit: Novosibirsk Institute of Archeology and Ethnography
The two of them were wrapped in a cocoon of birch bark, which was set on fire before the burial.
The little statuette had a stripe going along its face, which symbolized a tattoo. It was placed on its tummy, and then its head was broken off and turned upside down so that it ‘looked up’ in a ritual yet unseen by Novosibirsk archeologists.
There was a deepening in the middle of the clay statuette, which had a bronze plate and also some organic substance inside it. Further chemical tests are needed to establish what exactly was placed inside that deepening.
The bone mask made of a horse vertebrae that covered the statuette’s head depicted a bear’s muzzle, archeologists believe,” the Siberian Times reports.
Two more people were buried underneath the man and the woman in the tiered grave, which is quite typical for the Odino culture.
‘Given that the discovery is 5,000 years old, you can imagine how important it is to understand the beliefs of the ancient people populating Siberia.
Credit: Novosibirsk Institute of Archeology and Ethnography
“Interestingly, our anthropologists and genetics found that the Odino people were Mongoloids, yet the face of the figurine had clear Caucasian features. We don’t see the gender of the figurine, which is unusual, and we can’t say if it was dressed”, said Vyacheslav Molodin.
The people of Odino culture were cattle breeders, tending to sheep and horses. They were hunters and anglers, too.
It’s not the first time unusual artifacts have been found in Siberia. Perhaps one of the most famous artifacts found in this region is the remarkable Shighir idol that has seven faces and is the world’s oldest wooden statue.
The head of the wooden Shigir sculpture (1-6) and anthropomorphic face on fragment (7-10). Credit: E.F. Tamplon; Antiquity 2018
Pulled from a peat bog in the Ural Mountains, Russia back in 1890, the Shigir Idol is believed to be twice as old as Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. Estimated to be about 11,600 years old the purpose of the artifact remains undetermined. Scientists still do not know whether it depicts demons or evil spirits.
Statues like the Shighir idol and the mysterious clay figurine with a tattooed face and bone mask are challenging to study but once we learn more about them we can better understand the ancient beliefs of people in Siberia.
