Russia (bbabo.net), - A Polish archaeological mission working in Serbia has discovered two ancient burial mounds. The burials contain the remains of people who, presumably, arrived in these places about 5,000 years ago from the territory of modern Russia.
According to Nauka w Polsce, the remains of "newcomers from the eastern borders of Europe" were discovered in northern Serbia. The discovery was made by Polish archaeologists. They unearthed two large mounds with a diameter of 40 meters and a height of 3-4 meters. The facilities are located in the Shaikashki area in the autonomous region of Vojvodina.
The burial mounds are located in the lower reaches of the Tisza River. In each of them, two spacious, wooden burial chambers were found. The analysis showed that these ancient burials were built in two stages. The first of these occurred around 3000-2900 BC. It was at the turn of these millennia that the first dead were buried in the barrows. The second burial here was arranged approximately 100-200 years after the first. Scientists note that the second burial chambers were larger than the previous ones.
“The graves we discovered were not spectacularly arranged, but the red color [in which some large bones of adult males were painted] attracted attention,” says Dr. Piotr Wlodarczak from the Institute of Archeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, who was one of the leaders of the excavations. associated with the use of ocher, which was sprinkled on the bodies of the dead."
According to him, in those days it was a "sacred color", which was widely used during funeral rites. The identification of the remains led to a sensational conclusion: the people buried in the mounds came to these places about 5,000 years ago from the southern steppes of modern Russia.
The researchers found that the growth of these men exceeded 1.8 meters. And the average height of men who lived in this part of Europe at the turn of the third and fourth millennia BC was about 1.6 meters. Already this fact indicates that the deceased were from a remote region.
In addition, archaeologists pay attention to the use of ocher in burials. For local residents, this practice was not typical. On the contrary, rituals with the use of ocher and the placement of individual burials in large burial mounds are traditionally associated by scientists with the communities that inhabited the Eastern European steppe regions.
Finally, the question of the origin of mysterious people was clarified by genetic analysis. Studies of the remains carried out in the laboratory showed that the deceased either themselves came from the eastern regions, or were direct descendants of the "aliens". The isotopic analysis also showed that the diet of these people was dominated by meat, which is typical for the diet of the steppes, who were actively engaged in livestock breeding.
As Dr. Wlodarchak explained, the discovery confirms the existing hypothesis that it was at the turn of the third and fourth millennia BC that a nomadic community came to Europe from the southern steppes of Russia and Ukraine, traces of which are described by archaeologists as the Yamnaya culture. It is believed that this resettlement significantly changed the cultural situation in Europe itself.
"Proto-state centers of the Bronze Age began to emerge and the elites were divided, as evidenced, for example, by large mounds in which individuals were buried," explained Dr. Wlodarchak, adding that these people may have been leaders of their communities. Some tombs, he says, were rich in weapons, jewelry, and painted pottery.
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