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- [00:00]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe
- [00:33]
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- [01:35]
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- [02:45]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
hey guys. Welcome to the Ancients and a breaking news story. We are releasing this episode only hours after the embargo was lifted. On this research that we're covering today. Research about ancient ice mummies discovered high up in the Altai Mountains in Siberia. Looking at their tattoos, it's an amazing story. I'm so excited we got the scoop on it. My apologies to the subscribers of the Ancients who usually expect these episodes a day early. We couldn't do it today because of the embargo. So you're all going to be listening to this together, but it's worth the wait. Our guest is the senior author of this new research, Dr. Gino Casperi. Let's go. 2,500 years ago, an Iron Age Scythian people roamed the great steppe of Central Asia. They're known as the Pazarycs. Today, they're remembered for their love of gold, horses and animal style art, but also for their burials. Throughout the 20th century, archaeologists discovered a number of Pasaryc tombs on a plateau high up in the Altai Mountains in southern Siberia. Buried deep in the permafrost, frozen in time within, were the extraordinarily well preserved remains of the deceased, alongside a wealth of grave goods. Gold, horses, wood carvings, even the oldest surviving rug in the world. Today, these individuals are known as the Siberian ice mummies. And now, groundbreaking new research has revealed more about these people than and their ancient culture through the amazing art that adorned their bodies, their tattoos. This is a breaking news story and we have it right here on the Ancients with our guest, Dr. Gino Casperi. Gino, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- [05:05]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Thank you very much for having me.
- [05:07]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
Now, Siberian ice mummies. First off, what an extraordinary type of archaeology to study.
- [05:14]
Dr. Gino Caspari
It is truly, I think, extraordinary. And it was to me when I first came across it, really during my bachelor's degree, I had no idea these things existed. I was studying Mediterranean and Near Eastern archaeology where you have a bit of a dart of organic material. And so I still remember one late evening studying in the library. I came across this little corner down at the very bottom of a bookshelf that had the very limited Siberian section, but there is one book by Rudenko, Frozen Tombs of Siberia. And I opened this book and it just kind of. It looks like a fantasy book, like the type of artifacts that they have in these burials. It was just mind blowing to me. Sort of the. The idea you get from these frozen tombs high up in the mountains, how people lived at the time with all the organics preserved. That means carpets and it means felt items. It means wood Carvings and it also means well preserved human remains, including the skin. That was just another level of diving back into the past. And I think that's really what drew me towards the Steppes in the first place.
- [06:31]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
It is absolutely incredible. And it certainly feels, at least here in the west, that getting into Central Asian and Siberian archaeology, it certainly feels like a very niche field.
- [06:41]
Dr. Gino Caspari
It absolutely is. And it is very tricky in terms of jobs. There's no Central Asian Siberian archaeology departments. There are few people here and there that are obviously very interested in the topic, but they all kind of do something else first and then they look at the archaeology of the Steppes. So it is a niche field, but that also has its beautiful sides to it because it's something where really the, the basis for what we do in archaeology, the amount of data that's out there is still relatively limited, the density of researchers is limited, and therefore you got to address some of the really large questions that feel like you're really making a difference. So that's another benefit to working in areas that are not as much touched as maybe archaeology of ancient Rome. Right.
- [07:40]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
I mean, completely very different landscapes. And we'll delve into that. And you mentioned there, Gino, in passing, the Steppes. No such thing as a silly question. What do we mean by the Steppes and steppe archaeology?
- [07:51]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Yeah, so the Steppes are this ecotone that really reaches from Mongolia all the way to Ukraine and the northern Black Sea region. And this is a relatively arid grassland environment. And for a long time there's not so much happening in prehistory on the steppes. Of course, like we're slowly getting a grasp of that, but like the area really becomes viable once you have domesticated animals. That really becomes apparent in the first, late, late second, early first millennium B.C. with the widespread adoption of horses on the steppes. And that then immediately shows in interaction networks that are really far reaching, where ideas travel at an incredible speed from east to west, from west to east.
- [08:45]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
It is such an extraordinary part of the ancient story of our world, whether it be, you know, the domestication of horses, or copper and tin deposits and these bronze roads, before the silk roads could talk through all of that. But we're going to explore these ice mummies today because it feels like this huge geographic area is full of these lots of different cultures, with one of them being the Pasaryc culture. Now, Gino, what was the Pasaryc culture?
- [09:12]
Dr. Gino Caspari
So really the entire first millennium BC is somewhat dominated by these Scythian type cultures. Now it's important to acknowledge that Scythian is not really used in an ethnic sense of the word. Strictly speaking, the Scythians are some tribes in the northern Black Sea region. And the term is derived from Herodotus, the ancient Greek historian. But over history of research, this term has come to be associated with a material culture mostly consisting of the so called Scythian animal style, which are these sometimes weirdly twisted animals, sometimes fantastic creatures, griffins that are often engaged in fighting scenes with deer and moose and other herbivores. Then we have weapons, we have bows and arrows, we have chickens which are basically warpix. Wow. And then the third thing is horse gear that is really widespread. Also like the internment of horses, the association of horses with burials is very, very frequent. Now there are regional variations of course, and the Puzaryg culture is one of these variations that we have that dates to the later part of the first millennium BC and is mostly situated in the territory of the Altai Mountains.
- [10:43]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
And whereabouts do you mean by the Altai Mountains? Which modern countries should we be thinking of with the Pasarycs?
- [10:48]
Dr. Gino Caspari
So the Altai Mountains are really at the intersection between Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China. There's this one spot where these four countries almost join together. There's a little stretch border that is just Chinese Russian border. But then it, there's sort of this southeastern part that stretches down into Mongolia. And then there is a whole arc of mountains, the Sayan Altai Mountains that goes into Tuva, southern Siberia. That's where I have been working on, on sort of older Scythian cultures previously. But this is like the rough distribution area of Poserik culture, Pasric animal style.
- [11:33]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
And do we know about the Pasarycs just through archaeology, or did they have contacts with either the Persians further west or the ancient dynasties of China further east?
- [11:44]
Dr. Gino Caspari
So there are of course connections that we can see through the association with artifacts that have been transported. So for example, some of the carpets seem to be Persian origins, some of the mirrors seem to be derived from China. So there are kind of tangible evidence connections there. But direct written sources about these people do not really exist. That is something that comes later with the Hyun. That's really something that we have like in the first second century B.C. but before that, for all intents and purposes, the step has to be concealed, considered prehistoric.
- [12:26]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
And the Xiongnu, they're almost seen as predecessors of the Huns or the Huns, aren't they in Mongolia? I know that's another story entirely. But that also helps put the Pasrichs in their place in the fact that we should be talking the early first millennium BC The Iron age of that time. Gino.
- [12:41]
Dr. Gino Caspari
The early Iron age up until the third second century B.C. yes.
- [12:46]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
And so do we know much if they're living in the area around the Altai Mountains, you know, at that crossroads of all those many different modern countries today? Do we get a sense of how the pazarycs lived? It seems quite a difficult environment. I'm presuming this is quite a high altitude place.
- [13:01]
Dr. Gino Caspari
It is. And of course, things like driving your animals up into the mountains during summertime and also then led to the construction of many a burial up on the high plateaus was an important part of their livelihoods. For the longest time, archaeologists have kind of focused on the tombs themselves because that's where you find the nice stuff. But through recent years, we've made a lot of progress in actually identifying seasonal settlement sites. Campsites, summer cancer camps and winter camps. There's specific environmental factors in place that you can tease out with geographic information systems. And so there's like south exposed slopes and protection from wind and relatively little snow cover so the animals can get through to the grass during winter. So there's ways to figure out where people actually lived. And so this whole nomadic narrative that has been promoted throughout much of the last century scholarship is coming a bit under revision. Let's say it's not full out attack, but we're slowly changing our image for people to be a bit less just randomly wandering around and carrying everything with them. But there is an intent and a purpose to their migration routes. And very often they're seasonal. So we have a fairly good understanding. But when you go there the first time, the environment is incredibly beautiful. And I'm from Switzerland. I'm very used to mountain environments. To me, this almost feels like home. But they are harsh environments to live in Very, very cold winters feels really like a marginal landscape. And then when you compare this to the artifacts that we find in the tombs, you immediately recognize that people were incredibly well adapted to this place. And they weren't merely scraping by. They were absolutely thriving in these environments. They were creating absolutely beautiful artifacts and things that you would really just not expect in such a place from a naive point of view.
- [15:18]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
So I'm guessing because we'll go on to the tombs now. But it's from the tombs you get more of a sense from the artifacts that have survived there. As we'll explore more of an understanding of how these groups of pazarycs, how they lived, I mean, the different strands of work in their societies. You Know, as they were going from place to place, as you say, not randomly, they knew where to go. So kind of that semi nomadic kind of vibe. The archaeology works hand in hand between the living and the dead. To understand more about the Pasaryt culture as a whole.
- [15:50]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Yeah, so it's important to look at all the remaining evidence, of course. But the tombs do provide a very, very rich story. And one of the reasons for that is because they are frozen. So a lot of these mounds have very deep chambers underneath them. They're often lined with a kind of log cabin construction underneath. That's also what makes scholars think that log cabins were actually a thing back in the day as housing. But log cabins notoriously do not really leave archaeological traces because you don't have post holes, walls. So given how professionally furnished and how well the carpentry work is on these things, it's easy to argue that they knew how to build a log cabin. Also, during the sort of minus 40, minus 50 degrees in winter, it's likely more comfortable in a proper log cabin than it would be in a yurt. Even though, you know, people endure pretty harsh winters in yurts. And they're fantastic constructions. But it seems like log cabins were a thing. Now, why were these tombs frozen? So on one side it's the deep chamber that often filled up with rainwater soon after it was constructed and then froze over. And sometimes, interestingly, looters had a hand in that, in that they made a hole for the entrance of rainwater and actually helped with the preservation of things for once. So what we have there is usually discontinuous permafrost. So it's not the entire area that is frozen, but it is really just sometimes an Iceland underneath the tomb that is only there because of the water that entered the tomb.
- [17:50]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
And if you were approaching, just, just to really give us a sense in our minds, Gino, the whole environment of these tombs, because you already mentioned how they're quite large constructions. But if you were approaching the site of one of these tombs today, what would you actually see from the surface? Are they recognizable?
- [18:08]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Yes, in most cases they are, although it does need a bit of training for the eye. But archaeologists see them fairly easily. Essentially on the surface, they can be quite unremarkable. Especially the smaller ones are, are just basically piles of rocks. Even the larger tombs at Pazaryk, they're substantial piles of rocks, but they're still piles of rocks. So you can really identify them very easily in high resolution satellite imagery. You can identify them through lidar. They're slightly elevated. So finding these tombs is actually not a very difficult task.
- [18:51]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
And also, do you normally find all of these tombs close together? Are there particular sites where you find a large concentration of pazaryc tombs high up in the Altai Mountains?
- [19:01]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Yes, so some of them actually many of them are kind of organized in north south oriented lines and we've been thinking them as kind of family burials where people return to this place and just bury the next person in line. That still needs to be more thoroughly proven by the use of ancient DNA that these people are actually related. I think in other areas we might have more ruler based elite cemeteries where people are not necessarily related, but this is still something that is ongoing research and needs to be more thoroughly established.
- [19:48]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
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- [21:55]
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- [24:12]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin Assassin's Creed we're stepping into Feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories. Listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. They're a new episode every week. And I've also got in my notes the word Kurgan or Korgan. Please forgive my pronunciation if it's wrong. But Gino, is this the word that we call these tombs?
- [25:18]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Yes. So kurgan is basically the word for burial mound.
- [25:22]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
And also you mentioned how they have these deep chambers underground that you know very cold environments and they fill with water soon after they're buried. Is it that that has allowed so much to survive from within these tombs, including the people themselves?
- [25:38]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Exactly. So it is really the Icelands on the some of the tombs that has allowed the organics to be incredibly well preserved. In some cases where this is not there, then we just have the skeletons, we have the metal items. We have occasionally some, well of course some of the animal bones. But of course having this frost preservation gives just a completely different look at these ancient societies.
- [26:05]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
And before we really explore the remains themselves and the grave goods, what does this reveal about how the Pazarycs buried their dead?
- [26:13]
Dr. Gino Caspari
We do have fortunately some sources that we can occasionally use as at least an association. And these are foremost the writings of Herodotus where he elaborates on the Scythian burial practices and to some extent the meaning behind it in how far that directly reflects the kind of cultural values and traditions of up in the Altai Mountains or in Tuva. Remains to be discussed and is sometimes a bit of a stretch, but we have some instances where it's not a coincidence. I would say that we have the same things in Herodotus as we find archaeologically on the ground. One such thing is the inclusion of cannabis in some of the burials. So Heropsis describes the Scythians throwing cannabis parts on red hot stones in a tent and they then howled for joy. So the guys knew what was going on with that plant. And we actually do have what is often euphemistically referred to as incense burners. Well, clearly there weren't burning incense, but they were burning something else. So we have these things with the stones in them. We do have cannabis seeds in the burials and we do have little sticks that likely were used to construct some sort of tent to contain the smoke. The other thing that is super interesting is we have at one point Herodotus describing a post burial ritual where young men were sacrificed and horses were sacrificed and they were put up on sticks and put on the back of the horses. And thus you had this What I've called a spectral cavalcade. So dead riders surrounding the tomb of usually an elite person, a king or a prince or something like that. And just last year, we've published a paper in Antiquity as well that actually showed that what we have on the surface of one of the earliest Scythian tombs in the entire Eurasian steppe belt looks fairly familiar to this exact ritual practice, which was an absolutely fantastic finding.
- [28:41]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
That's an amazing example. Even though Herodotus, as you mentioned earlier, is writing about, you know, people who lived around the Black Sea region, so thousands, hundreds, if not thousands of kilometers to the west, to see similarities with these burials in the Altai Mountains is fascinating. And I guess, Gino, it's one of those amazing cases in archaeology where you get the archaeology and the literature combining to tell a remarkable tale about people who lived thousands of years ago.
- [29:06]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Absolutely. And it's also been changing our perception of how this culture spread, because originally, people had kind of naturally assumed the Eurocentric point of view. Right. That it spread from the northern Black Sea region into the steppes. But we know since the latter part of the last century that the earliest burial mounds where we actually have Scythian material culture are situated in Tuva. And that's where I've been excavating since 2017 and actually documenting one of the oldest Scythian burial mounds. And now we know that the flow of ideas regarding this Scythian material culture is actually east to west and not the other way around.
- [29:52]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
And Tuva. So that's the Tuva Republic, one of the southernmost regions of Russia today on the Altai Mountains area.
- [29:59]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Exactly, exactly. So it's just underneath the Sayan Mountains, close to the border of Mongolia.
- [30:04]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
Pretty sure I did have to do a quick Google search there just to confirm that I got it right.
- [30:08]
Dr. Gino Caspari
No problem.
- [30:09]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
But it is absolutely fascinating. I must also ask because mentioned earlier, we said ice mummies, but when someone says mummies, you might immediately think of mummification in ancient Egypt. So when we go into the burying themselves of these figures, do they prepare the bodies by taking out all of the organs first? Do we know much about that? I mean, how they're laid in these chambers?
- [30:32]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Right. So, of course, in most areas, without great organic preservation, we have a bit of a problem really understanding if there is mummification in the first place. And that's also something that we'll repeat later on when we talk about the tattoos, the Puzaric mummies. So generally we have to distinguish between natural and artificial mummies, and sometimes there's A certain overlap, because in the case of the Pasuraic mummies, we do have some degree of preparation of the bodies. So some of the larger muscles were occasionally taken out, some of the intestines were taken out. There were plants put into the body cavities, possibly to counteract the awful smell in the still relatively warm Siberian summers. And amazingly, also through the state of the flowers inside of these plant remains that we have as kind of stuffing for the bodies, we can pinpoint the exact month when the person was buried.
- [31:38]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
So interesting.
- [31:39]
Dr. Gino Caspari
So that's a little interesting chronological detail that you don't have in most other places, because some of these flowers have a very short flowering period high up in the mountains. And so we know exactly when they were put into the soil with these burials.
- [31:54]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
Also, in the Pasary culture, did the goods that they were buried with, did they differ depending on whether it's a woman being buried or a man?
- [32:03]
Dr. Gino Caspari
That is still a bit an ongoing discussion. I think the feminist scholarship has one or two words to say on how traditionally some of the biological sex has been assigned to people buried. Very often in kind of older Soviet scholarship, if it has a knife, it's a man. If it has a mirror, it's a woman. That's not quite as clear cut. We definitely do have instances where we have women buried with weapons. That kind of plays into the Amazon theme. We also have tied back to Herodotus that, you know, usually is dated a bit to a later date and more to a more Western region. But we do have similar phenomena in the Altai Mountains and the types of
- [32:54]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
goods that they are buried with you mentioned earlier, which seems absolutely extraordinary, these carpets. So can you kind of explore what are some of the main types of artifacts that you usually find alongside the mummies themselves?
- [33:07]
Dr. Gino Caspari
So, of course, first and foremost, and most famously for the Pazerex sites, we have a really finely knotted carpet that sees. Seems to be of Persian origin, where you have these deer bordering the entire thing that have surprisingly accurate anatomical depiction of livers and lung and heart, things that maybe a hunter would aim at. And then we also have felt carpets that seem to be more of local production, really, with people up on horses and fantastic moustaches. And then we also have some imported textiles, we have some silk. So it's a really kind of rich accumulation of different materials. But one of maybe my most famous artifacts in all of archaeology, these little felt swans. And they look like little plush figurines that we would have no idea whatsoever that they would have ever existed if not for These preservation conditions.
- [34:18]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
I've just got a couple of images on the screen now, including that moustache man on this horse with the spotted cape kind of flowing in the wind behind them. I mean, I can't believe that these are more than 2,000 years old. And just to think that's just a symbol of the amazing preservation that you have in these tombs. And I guess also a symbol of like the richness of these Pasaryc burials as well. Do you know, what an amazing culture to work on and to know that you have items like that, you know, you don't just have the mummies which we're about to get to. You also have these amazing insights into their culture with things like these carpets and I'm guessing other amazingly well preserved objects too.
- [34:55]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Yeah, I mean, in terms of late prehistoric archaeology, this is one of the most fantastic contexts you could ever work on in terms of the richness of information that you're getting.
- [35:07]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
And so otherwise do we have food, surviving textiles, gold, horses, is that what we're thinking?
- [35:13]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Yes. Also wood carvings is an important one to mention. So we have little tables that if you're moving around a lot, you can take the legs off. So they're all very transportable. They will master wood carvers as well. So really beautiful griffins that sometimes are eating a deer head or something like that. So it's. Yeah, it's quite a sight.
- [35:37]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
And Gino, the last thing I've got before we go on to the mummies themselves is kind of going back to women and men at these burials time and time again. If you're looking at Siberia and the Pazarycs and the Iron Age time, you get the name Siberian ice maiden come up as the most famous example. But I'm guessing that particular example, as you've highlighted already, she's just one of many mummies found. Many mummies now studied in that area of the world.
- [36:04]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Well, it is kind of the most famous infamous one that's out there. There are not that many mummies. Like, it is still a relatively rare kind of find. And of course climate change is making the permafrost border move upwards and it is destroying a lot in the process that we don't even know exists. Right. So there might be tombs that have been frozen 50, 60, 70 years ago and that have in the meantime kind of silently decayed, including all the fantastic items that were preserved in them still. Like the Ukok Plateau, kind of the highest part of the Altai Mountains is still relatively safe, but it might be affecting the lower areas I just wanted
- [36:54]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
to mention that name there because it feels like that particular discovery, the Siberian Ice Maiden, is worthy of a podcast in its own right. So we won't talk any more about that particular discovery, but I'm just glad to have mentioned it. So let's go on to these mummies themselves. Getting towards your research now, Gino. I mean, what can we therefore see on these incredible mummies that have survived?
- [37:16]
Dr. Gino Caspari
So something that came clear already in the 1940s when the first ice mummies were excavated by Rudenko, is that some of them indeed had tattoos. And they were mostly visible on the preserved scene. Skin of a chieftain that is still visible in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg today. It's being displayed and you can go and look at it. But a lot of the other mummies, when they came up, they were kind of dark. The skin was oxidized, and therefore it was not possible to see any of the tattoos. It's only possible with near infrared light. And that's something, a method that has come up in the past 20 years or so that we can actually reveal some of the tattoos on the other mummies.
- [38:10]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
And of the tattoos that were visible from the beginning, what types of designs did they show?
- [38:18]
Dr. Gino Caspari
So the tattoos of the ice mummies very much mirror the general art style of the wood carvings. And so it is a kind of consistent stylistic entourage that people were being in. And so, yeah, it's really nice to see that. So we do have animal fighting scenes again. We do have these animals with twisted hind legs. We do have kind of griffin designs, ungulates with raptor heads and the like.
- [38:52]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
And is it normally the case on the mummies that have been discovered? Do they all have tattoos on them and do they all have quite a few on them as well?
- [38:59]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Yes. So the interesting thing is that early on, this was kind of treated as, okay, this might be a sign of elite status, but really, ultimately, all the Pezarik mummies that we found so far do have tattoos. And that is, you know, sometimes they're not so well preserved. Sometimes there's only, like, small pieces of human skin that remain. But we were able to show that basically any Pessary mummy that's survived so far does have tattoos. And so it seems to have been this really widespread practice.
- [39:37]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
Well, let's really delve into this research then, Gino. So what was the aim of this research at the beginning? What were you thinking in your head as you went into this project?
- [39:47]
Dr. Gino Caspari
So, first of all, the tattoos have been really important in kind of defining the art Style of the psyric culture and what we've been working with for the last decades basically are these relatively limited, almost frugal black and white depictions. And they do not really offer the kind of richness that you have with the data that we can create create nowadays. And so going back in, redocumenting some of the mummies with near infrared photography really, for the first time, gave us a possibility to look at these tattoos in detail and figure out how they were actually made.
- [40:35]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
And did you, for this project, did you then decide with this new technology to focus just on one particular mummy and kind of put all that research, all that technology to bear on one particular. I don't want to use the word specimen, but I guess you can use the word specimen here.
- [40:51]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Individual.
- [40:53]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
Individual. There we go. Thank you. That's better. That's a better word.
- [40:55]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Yes. So they're not particularly easy to get access to. That's why we first tried out these methods with one individual with actually great success. So we figured out how these tattoos were made, and we figured out a whole bunch of more little details we didn't know we would discover before.
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- [43:10]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
And so talk me through this particular mummy and your work on this particular mummy with this, you know, really high resolution digital infrared photography. What did it reveal about the nature of the tattoos on that particular mummy and then how it related to larger pasary culture?
- [43:28]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Yeah, so first of all, it was not entirely clear whether these tattoos were actually made through little puncture wounds or they were made through incisions or even subdermal tattooings. For this we have to understand what kind of like the general framework of pre electric tattooing is. So the most widespread method is through puncture tattooing. And so this is mostly hand poking. That's the most prevalent one, where you have essentially a needle and some ink and you are piercing the skin with that needle. We have a variation of that that's mostly prevalent in the Pacific realm, which is called hand tapping, where you have a tool at an angle where you hit on top of it. Then we have incision tattoos where you use usually some sort of obsidian blade or a metal blade and you make very fine cuts into the skin and then you take the ink and rub it into these wounds. And then the third version is something that is mostly practiced in the Arctic, which is subdermal tattooing, which honestly doesn't really sound particularly convenient to me or. But that's where you actually have a thread. You pinch the skin, you put the pigment into the thread, and you put the needle through the pinched skin and through like pulling the thread or the sinew through the skin. The pigment then remains in the skin. And so for the Pasaryc mummies, it was first and foremost a debate whether it was hand poking or subdermal tattooing. And what we figured out was that it was very clearly hand poking. And we also saw that we actually have a variety of different tools that were used because for some of the tattoos on the forearms, we have a very consistent line thickness. And that is usually something that you generate through a multi point tool. So a couple of needles very close together. You do not get that if you're purely hand poking with a single needle, then we have some of the finer details that seem to have been created with a single point tool.
- [46:00]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
Wow. Okay, so you learned the nitty gritty of how they made the tattoos for this particular person. But could you also tell whether all the tattoos were added at the same time to this individual, or whether they keep coming back to add more and more to their body. What do we know about that?
- [46:18]
Dr. Gino Caspari
So what was really fantastic is to work with an actual tattooer who uses these pre electric methods day in, day out, and who really understands sort of placement on the body. And what we were able to figure out jointly with Danny Riddey was that there were actually multi session tattoos. So one of the forehand tattoos, where you have some felines fighting with some herbivores, you had first the lower part and then you had a kind of blank spot that was then filled in. So the two are separate. And so that hints at a multi session tattoo. What we also were able to identify through the high resolution infrared photography that my colleague Michael Wabdolin has mostly worked on, is that there are specific instances where they take off the tool, they get new ink and they start again. And that leads to like a slight shift in the line that you could really not see on the previous documentation of these tattoos. But it's just a fascinating little detail. And when you really look at these things very meticulously, that you see the whole work process unfolding, that's amazing.
- [47:40]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
So to repeat what you just said, thanks to the new technology, you can really now delve into the quality of these particular artistic designs created by someone thousands of years ago for these pasrics that have endured on the skin of these mummies today. What an amazing line of research.
- [48:02]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Absolutely. I mean, this is just. This was a surprise to me and it really gets you so close to the research subject. I mean, harking back to me being in the library, you know, more than 10 years ago and looking at these pictures now, doing this research myself was. Was a special treat for me for sure.
- [48:21]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
And so what did these discoveries, what do you think they revealed about the importance of tattooing and, you know, under this kind of skin pricking, tattooing method, how important it was to this ancient culture, to the Pasarycs.
- [48:37]
Dr. Gino Caspari
It was extremely important, of course, and it was done by professionals. So there is a very clear learning curve. Also, like on the same body, we do have tattoos that are of a different artistic and sort of methodological quality. So we see that, for example, this tattoo with the hunting felines, they are depicted in a very complicated pattern. They are front facing, which is something that is rather unusual in pasaryg arts and kind of denotes a break with convention. So this is a rather advanced tattoo, whereas the other four armed tattoo, where we have a griffin hunting a herdable, is really conforming more to the general style of Pasuraic art. So we are able to distinguish basically different artists hands or at least also different stages in the development of a single artist. Of course, that's all speculation whether that was one person or someone else. But what is clear is there were learning curves to ancient tattooers in Pasaryc society and they would increase their skills. And it was definitely something that needed a lot of practice to get to a point where you could create these tattoos.
- [50:04]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
So we must think then that in these ancient Pasaric societies there were people who were, I guess, the equivalent today of professional tattooists. You know, who people would go to to get these art styles beautifully depicted on parts of their body.
- [50:17]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Yeah, I don't know it can go as far as that. We have a division of labor that allows for purely people just making a living, so to speak, with creating tattoos. But it was certainly specialists that were really well trained and had a lot of practice in creating these tattoos.
- [50:40]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
And do we have any more of a sense now about the meaning of these tattoos in Pasur culture, why they decided to have them on their body? Was it a marker of their identity or their beliefs? Any ideas around that?
- [50:57]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Well, of course it was a part of their identity. I think this far we can go with the interpretive approach, but given it is a prehistoric culture, I think a lot of the meaning will remain hidden or at least will never really approach the sort of richness and nuance of the meaning that these images originally had. Often they are kind of interpreted as apotropaic images. So meaning that fending off evil. But I mean, that is a very kind of general interpretation that we do have occasionally in other cultures as well. In how far that actually is true or not. It's really all speculation and will remain at that stage because we will not find written sources that explain us exactly what these images meant. That being said, I think really diving into the details of how these things were created does add a lot of nuance and richness to the image already that we don't necessarily need to go as far as and say, like, okay, this is what they meant.
- [52:10]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
Do you know, it is such fascinating research. Is there anything else about this new research that you'd like to highlight before we start wrapping up the episode?
- [52:20]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Well, of course, something I would like to do is now go back in and document the restricted mummies. You've just done one mummies, right? There's also a whole bunch of of tattooed mummies in Xinjiang, where I've originally done my Research not necessarily belonging to the Pazuric culture, but occasionally to a similar timeframe. And so they have not been studied. And we're currently working on getting access to some of these. So that might be the next step that we're all looking forward to, if access is permitted.
- [53:02]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
Those mummies in Xinjiang, are those the Tarim mummies? The ones, you know, a couple of them have this kind of clad on that some say is almost like tartan. Yes.
- [53:10]
Dr. Gino Caspari
So there's a whole range of mummies, and they date to different time periods, they're from different material cultures. So it's just generally through the very dry circumstances in the Toram Basin, we have this incredible organic preservation. So there's basically ice and desert that allows for organic preservation and that allows for studying tattoos in the end. And there's a bunch of them, not just the ones from Xiaohe that you're referring to, which are not confirmed to have tattoos yet.
- [53:46]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
Right.
- [53:46]
Dr. Gino Caspari
But it might also be something that maybe comes to light with using near infrared.
- [53:52]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
Well, Gino, do you also hope that this research, it shines more light on Central Asian Siberian archaeology here in the west, where, as we mentioned right at the start, there is naturally a tendency towards the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. But new research like this and the amazing techniques available to people like yourself should garner a lot more fascination with Central Asia and the people like the Pasrics who lived there thousands of years ago.
- [54:20]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Honestly, I think Central Asia is incredibly important, not just as this sort of in between space between ancient Rome and ancient China that it's sometimes treated as, but the steppe itself is a major hub of innovation and idea transfer and transfer of languages and genes, and very, very important to understand, to also draw parallels to later historical developments. Unfortunately, I think the geopolitics of the place are not particularly rosy at the moment, and so I don't foresee an intensification of research in the coming years. It's become very, very difficult to collaborate with researchers, especially from Russia, of course. But of course there are other countries in Central Asia that are quite easily accessible. There's a lot of exciting research coming out of Mongolia at the moment, and I have since pivoted to Azerbaijan, which is not exactly Central Asia, but through this route, through the Caucasus. It's also kind of tied to Steppe archaeology, at least the stuff that I'm pursuing, which might be something for our next podcast, I think.
- [55:37]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
So, Gino, I think we've done all our questions for today. Last but certainly not least, your new paper is now out. All about your Work on these tattoos. Where can people find it?
- [55:47]
Dr. Gino Caspari
The new paper is out in Antiquity and you can just type the title into Google. It's called New High Resolution Near Infrared Data Reveal Pasuraic Tattooing Methods and it should come up for you. Otherwise you can also follow me on Instagram Ginocasvari if you want to keep updated with my research. I usually post links to all my published papers there as well and occasionally give little interviews or have colleagues on. And we probably have an upcoming interview with my co author and we'll go more into depth of ancient tattooing methods.
- [56:29]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
Yes Gina, I noticed you've got quite a sizable Instagram following, so that's a great way that people can can follow your work. And of course we will put a link to the article in the description of this episode which is which also I believe Gino has all the. It's got lots of the images from your research as well. So people can see the tattoos that we've been talking about today.
- [56:48]
Dr. Gino Caspari
Absolutely, yes. Danny has made some fantastic illustrations starting off with a very detailed just the facts type of illustration and then step by step going into more an artistically rendered version of them where you can really see what the initial intention behind the tattoo was.
- [57:08]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
Well Gino, extraordinary research. We're so happy to have got the scoop and it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.
- [57:15]
Dr. Gino Caspari
It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.
- [57:21]
Host (possibly Tom Holland or a History Hit presenter)
Well, there you go. There was Dr. Gino Caspari talking you through this extraordinary new research into the Siberian ice mummies through the tattoos that have survived on their bodies and in particular for this research on one particular individual. And it's really exciting to see what more research will be done on these figures in the future. I hope you enjoyed the episode. It was such a privilege on the Ancients to have the scoop on this story that has just been released. The paper has just been published which all of you can go and read and see the pictures and so much more. If you fancy, we'll put a link to the paper in the description description in the show notes below. Thank you for listening to this special episode of the Ancients. Please follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us and you'll be doing us a huge favor if you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating too. Well, we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe@historyhit.com subscribe. That's all from me. See you in the next episode.
- [58:39]
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