This Bronze Age Siberian Skull Held A Fascinating Secret
Sunday, June 22, 2014 - 05:50
in Paleontology & Archaeology
In a marked cemetery northwest of Lake Baikal, a skeleton was found, buried ceremoniously with a nephrite disk and four arrowheads, one of which was broken and found in the eye socket. An arrow in the eye? That's no accident.After radiocarbon dating and analysis, it was determined the individual was a 35-40 year-old male from the early Bronze Age, between 2406 and 1981 B.C.Unlike most hunter-gatherer societies of the Bronze Age, the people of the Baikal region of modern Siberia (Russia) respected their dead with formal graves. This particular specimen was so unique that bioarchaeologist Angela Lieverse traveled across the world just to bring it back to the Canadian Light Source synchrotron for examination. read more