2023 Author: Bryan Walter | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 22:24
Pazyryk horseman. Detail of a carpet made in the 4th-5th centuries BC
Representatives of the Pazyryk culture who lived in an agricultural settlement turned out to be travelers. They migrated fairly long distances and were not born where they were buried, according to the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. At the same time, men who lived in the 5th – 6th centuries BC spent their entire lives in one place, but later their mobility increased. Representatives of the Pazyryk and Kara-Kobin cultures traveled over short distances. It is possible that long-distance migrations were associated with a worsening climate in the arid regions of the region.
The Pazyryk culture existed on the territory of Russia (in the center and in the south of the Altai Mountains), Kazakhstan and Mongolia in the III-VII centuries BC. The Pazyryks belonged to the Scythian tribes, depending on their place of residence, they led a nomadic or sedentary lifestyle. The people who lived on the mountain plateaus were engaged in nomadic herding, and the people who lived to the north were farmers. The Pazyryk people buried their dead in wooden log cabins, sometimes they poured burial mounds. At the end of the 3rd - beginning of the 2nd century BC, part of the Pazyryk people from Altai were driven out by the Huns who came from the east.
The territory occupied by the Pazyryk people bordered on the area of the Bystryan culture that existed in the II-VI centuries BC in the northern foothills of Altai. At the same time and in one place with the Pazyryk culture, the Kara-Kobin culture existed. Presumably, both of them originated from the Karakol culture that existed in the mountainous Altai in the second millennium BC.
Until now, the mobility of representatives of the Pazyryk culture has not been studied. At the same time, it would be interesting to find out whether the sedentary Pazyryk people lived in one place all their lives or not, and how the nomads moved.
Researchers from Poland, Russia, the Czech Republic and Sweden under the leadership of Dalia A. Pokutta from Stockholm University took up the study of these issues. They investigated the ratio of strontium isotopes (87Sr / 86Sr) in the tooth enamel of the Pazyryk people. Strontium compounds accumulate in tooth enamel during childhood while it is forming. By analyzing the isotopic signature of strontium in the teeth of an adult, one can understand where he was born and spent the first years of his life.
The authors investigated the isotope ratios in the remains of eight people who lived in a settlement located in the northwest of the modern Altai Republic. In the cemetery next to it, both the Pazyryk burial mounds and the burials associated with the Kara-Kobin and Bystryan cultures have been preserved. Scientists examined the remains of five Pazyryk people (one man and four women) who lived in the 3rd-5th centuries BC; two men, representatives of the Kara-Kobin and Bystryanskaya cultures, who lived in the 5th century BC, and a man who lived in the early Scythian era (at the end of the 6th century BC).
Left: burial place of a representative of Bystryanskaya culture. Right: burial place of the Pazyryk people.
It turned out that women and men had different travel patterns. All the women who were attributed to the Pazyryk culture on the basis of funerary implements turned out to be newcomers. They were brought from afar and probably passed several intermediate points before reaching their final destination. They may have belonged to groups of nomads who traveled in family groups in carts.
The mobility of men turned out to be lower, they traveled short distances. A person who lived in the early Scythian era and a representative of the Kara-Kobin culture spent their entire lives in one place. Two later men made short seasonal trips, apparently between pastures and wintering grounds.
The mobility of the Pazyryk people and people of neighboring cultures could be due to climate changes - for example, a decrease in precipitation in the arid regions of Central Asia. As studies have shown, a more humid climate in the Taklamakan Desert in northwestern China was observed at the end of the Scythian period (late III – early II centuries). At this time, according to the Chinese chronicles, part of the region was uninhabited, and archaeologists found the ruins of abandoned settlements of that period.
Not only burial mounds, but also well-preserved mummies remained from the Pazyryk culture. Several years ago, the Hermitage staff made a CT scan of two of them buried in the same grave. It turned out that the mummies belonged to a man-leader who was 55-60 years old at the time of his death, and a woman who lived to be 45-50 years old.
