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2,500-year-old Siberian 'ice mummy' had intricate tattoos, imaging reveals
- wileydragonfly 1y agoI question what we’re learning of such value from a 2,500 year old corpse that warrants leaving this person outside of the ground.
- greggsy 1y agoIt gives us a frame of reference about where we came from
- sigwinch 1y agoAnother possibility is: if someone today recreates these tattoos, it potentially re-establishes her importance.
- neomantra 1y agoI was amazed by this artistry and my immediate thought was “I need to honor that by 3D printing that!” Grab photo, convert to SVG, load into 3D modeling program, clean up curves to have good surfaces, extrude color-coded heights, map colors to heights in slicer, print.
- meindnoch 1y agoI'd love it if scientists would study my body 2500 after my death.
- romaaeterna 1y ago> ...this person... In the Phaedo, just before Socrates' death, Crito asks him how he would like to be interred. Socrates objects to Crito's confusion between Socrates the person -- the soul that will shortly be departing -- and whatever will be left over as the corpse.
- lukan 1y agoKnowledge? A dead person is dead and doesn't care anymore. The morbid taboo of not studying dead bodies lead to a looong stagnation in medicine. Now in terms of practical gains not on the same level, true, but same principle to me.
- inglor_cz 1y agoValue is subjective. You may not value learning about the past - which includes knowledge of diseases, art etc. I certainly do. Scientific discoveries aside, I can see this sort of art coming back. This kind of tattooos is hauntingly attractive, a postcard from another world.
- topspin 1y agoThose drawings show better expression of perspective, motion and proportion than what one sees in medieval drawing. And this is on skin, around limbs, as opposed to parchment. Genuine art.
- ginko 1y agoIt's great art, but I don't see any perspective.
- topspin 1y agoI'm not an artist, so perhaps perspective is the wrong term. Depth could be what I have in mind. In the first drawing, on the left, there are parts of the two cat's both above and below parts of the stag. The tail on the cat on the right is elegantly draped over the cats legs. The few deviations from realistic proportions are deliberate: the exaggerated antlers, for example, are done to fill space. You could engrave that scene into the receiver of a hunting rifle today and it would be admired.
- NL807 1y agoIn addition to what the other commenter said, the art depicted on the article is flattened, whereas the original piece was wrapping around the woman's forearm. Perhaps the art is visually grounded on a curved surface.
- chmod775 1y agoYou're probably thinking about some of the more stylized, iconographic medieval art. That was on purpose, not necessarily for lack of skill. There's plenty of modern art styles around today as well that are flat and look nothing like reality. Besides those "strange" depictions of animals and humans, there is also plenty of medieval art that is still regarded as highly beautiful today (admittedly especially once we're leaning towards the Renaissance).
- tokai 1y agoSo like Corporate Memphis for the medieval age.
- giardini 1y agoProbably died of hepatitis!
- xandrius 1y agoA flame is enough to sterilise, so I wouldn't be so sure.
- samirillian 1y ago[flagged]
- lupusreal 1y agoThat griffin has wings. Seems like a significant finding. > In Greek and Roman texts, griffins and Arimaspians were associated with gold deposits of Central Asia. The earliest classical writings were derived from Aristeas (7th cent. BC) and preserved by Herodotus and Aeschylus (mid 5th century BC), but the physical descriptions are not very explicit. Even though they are sharp-beaked, their being likened to "unbarking hounds of Zeus" has led to the speculation they were seen as wingless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffin
- alephnerd 1y agoPazyryk is thousands of miles from the Hellenic or Roman world - it's right by Mongolia and Xinjiang. And those interred in Pazyryk were Saka. It's most likely a simurgh/śyenaḥ/mərəγō saēnō or a Huma/Homāio/Humay, which was a very common in Indo-Iranian culture While Central Asia is now Turkic speaking, before the Mongol and Turkic invasions, it was historically Indo-European, as was seen with the Sogdian, Bactrian, and Khwarezmian. The Greco-Roman myth of the griffin itself appears to have it's origins in the Indo-Iranian motif. That said, the Pazyryk burials were from an era when the Indo-European migration was still occurring, so cultural and linguistics overlaps were still significant.
- VTimofeenko 1y agoMy grandfather worked on Soviet radio beacons in the far north of Siberia. He used to tell stories about the face tattoos being a very important religious and status symbols. Supposedly only the most beautiful women were allowed to have them. Altai is pretty far from the north; it's interesting to see how this tradition spread through the region.
- romanhn 1y agoI think tattoos on mummies have been known for a while, though these do look very artistic. The thing that surprised me the most, oddly, is this throwaway sentence: The team worked with researcher Daniel Riday who reproduces ancient tattoo designs on his body using historical methods. Now that's dedication to research!
- alephnerd 1y ago> tattoos on mummies On that note, I'd recommend the title scene in the Iranian movie Qeysar [0] from 1969. A number of the same motifs from 2.5k years ago are still around in Indo-Iranian culture. Some of the older generations of Pakhtun Hindus still tattoo in that style [1], as a number of the central tribes of the Pakhtun community were Saka [2]. A granddaughter from the community has been working on documenting the culture for a couple years now [3] On a separate note, highly recommend watching New Age Iranian Cinema (1965-1980ish). It's good stuff. [0] - https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/qeysar/ https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/qeysar/ [1] - https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tattooed-blue-skinned-hindu-pushtuns-look-back-at-their-roots/article22645932.ece https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tattooed-blue-skinned... [2] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hephthalites https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hephthalites [3] - https://www.instagram.com/sheenkhalaiartproject/?hl=en https://www.instagram.com/sheenkhalaiartproject/?hl=en
- anjel 1y ago[1] https://archive.is/owdub https://archive.is/owdub
- andy99 1y ago> Now that's dedication to research! Sounds like a gimmick. Doesn't mean he isn't a legit researcher, doesn't mean he is, but personally it feels more like something you'd see on history channel than actual scientific research; the whole thing seemed less credible after I read that.
- MangoToupe 1y agoIt seems like pretty standard experimental archaeology from the description.
- koevet 1y agoSome years ago I stumbled across pictures of Pazyryk mummies and I felt a stong emotional connection with the style of the drawings, especially the magical animals. I decided to get the animals tattooed on my arms and I Will continue with the upper body and the legs.
- necovek 1y agoYour upper body/legs or animals'?
- userbinator 1y agoIt's good to see that these weren't "AI-enhanced" (hallucinated) images, although I'm curious what postprocessing they used.
- Theodores 1y agoThe internet has played a major role in making tattoos as popular as they currently are, first with Usenet lists, then the web and now with Instagram. The other game changer has been the availability of the single use needles and plastics so it is no longer the same kit getting cleaned in an autoclave. Tattooing is now a viable career option, with options in every town. Not so long ago only big cities or ports would have tattoo studios, in the parts of town that you would find brothels. You would be risking getting AIDS or hepatitis if going under the needle. Whether you consider this degenerate or high sophistication is a matter of opinion, however, as a society, we can afford such occupations, which requires some level of wealth. Until recent times you would need seven families working the land to afford one family not working the land, with bakers, potters, blacksmiths, clergy, landlords and what not being carried by those working the land. If you have tattooed mummies, that is an indication that their society could carry people that could specialise in things such as tattooing but also other things, whether that being clergy, education or just being rentier class. In tattoo parlance, a job stopper is a tattoo on the hands, neck or face. Getting such tattoos means that you are excluding yourself from working in some professions and trades. This works at the higher status level, for example, pop stars, but also at the lower class, the person with no intention of working. On the individual level, tattoos say a lot about childhood trauma, and, at a society level, much about society. In conclusion, societies from antiquity that have a culture of tattooing are far from primitive. They had people that didn't have to slave away working the land to live short, brutal lives.
- apwell23 1y agoi just heard a podcast about it last week on 'the ancients' https://open.spotify.com/episode/3h431IBsszlEVcfUThij6B?si=9c16b0bd17544d4f https://open.spotify.com/episode/3h431IBsszlEVcfUThij6B?si=9...
- treis 1y agoHow do they know these were tattoos and not drawn on the skin after death?
- VTimofeenko 1y agoInb4: not an expert but I do have some ink. Tattoos are basically ink being delivered in the lower layers of skin by poking. They look vastly different depending on the healing process. I'd imagine the scientists can distinguish between pre and post mortem punctures pretty well. The amount of ink remaining in the tattoo would probably also be very different.
- ethan_smith 1y agoTattoos are identified by microscopic examination showing ink particles embedded within dermal tissue layers, while post-mortem markings would only appear on the surface.
- dclowd9901 1y ago> decorations that a modern tattooist would find challenging to produce Cool article but this is utter nonsense. A good modern tattoo artists is _incredible_ at their craft. Not just technically but artistically.
- iamacyborg 1y agoYeah, they’re very clearly not familiar with what a good tattoo artist can do. If anything, over the last couple decades the quality of the average tattoo has hugely matured.
- casenmgreen 1y ago2,500 years ago is about 500 BC. This is quite recent. It was about that time the Peloponnesian War occurred, which Thucydides and Xenophon documented. OTOH, I think Siberian peoples then were not advanced. However, here we're talking tattoo and art, which you can imagine being developed more easily, rather than more concrete stuff, such as commerce raiding, building and maintaining hundred of triremes and training the oarsmen and generals to fight them in massed combat, and developing Athens into a city of 250,000 people.
- jcmontx 1y agoReminds me of the Scythian mummy tattoo. A very nice deer with flowers
- kragen 1y agoThe paper is open access; it's unforgivable that the BBC didn't link it: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/highresolution-nearinfrared-data-reveal-pazyryk-tattooing-methods/74D1A37DF0F0920F3BFCA82EA19DDF5B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/hi...