Free Republic

A Sarmatian burial mound excavated this summer in Russia’s Southern Ural steppes has yielded a magnificent but unusual treasure. The artefacts contained within the mound are helping to shed light on a little-known period of the illiterate nomadic culture that flourished on the Eurasian steppe in the 1st millennium BC and interacted with the Persian Achaemenid and Greek civilizations. The archaeological study of this remarkable ancient tomb, or kurgan, was carried out by the expedition of the Institute of Archaeology (Russian Academy of Sciences), led by Professor Leonid T. Yablonsky.

Iranian archeological teams working at the reservoir area of the Khoda-Afarin Dam have recently discovered a burial site of a Kurgan warrior during their rescue excavations. A bull, a number of ancient weapons, dishes, and bronze artifacts have also been found in the warrior's grave, MNA quoted the Director of the Archaeological Research Center of Iran (ARCI) Mohammad Hassan Fazeli Nashli as telling the Persian service of CHN on Sunday. "According to the archaeologists, the warrior enjoyed a special status among his people," he added. The Kurgans were an Indo-European culture living in northern Europe, from Russia across Germany during...