A 2,200-year-old gold bear escaped looters in Kazakhstan
· BehindLines newsroom
Archaeologists have unearthed a gold bear figurine about 2,200 years old in a burial mound at the Karagaily site in Almaty, Kazakhstan, according to Live Science and HeritageDaily. Looters had visited the tomb in antiquity but did not empty it completely.
A bear standing on its hind legs
According to Live Science, which draws on a translated statement from the Kazakh government, the bear stands upright on its hind legs and holds a pot-shaped container between its front paws. Perforations at the base suggest it could be sewn onto fabric: the object would have decorated a headdress, both sources specify. HeritageDaily notes that it is a small piece of cast gold. The mound, dated preliminarily to the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, is linked to the Saka period, named after a nomadic people of the Eurasian steppe, Live Science explains; HeritageDaily speaks of the Saka cultures of Central Asia.
An unusual burial
The mound is about 2.5 metres high and 25 to 26 metres wide, according to HeritageDaily. Excavators found an unusually large number of human bones, fragments of Saka pottery and a looters' pit about three metres deep. Specialists suspect four adults and three children, but anthropological analysis still has to confirm it, according to both sources. Marat Nurpeisov, a senior researcher at the Almaty Museums Association, stresses that such collective graves are rare in Kazakhstan: a mound of this size usually held one or two people.
What the researchers say
Lyazzat Sagyndykova, who heads the association that led the dig, says this sculpted figurine is unique to Kazakhstan and that no comparable find had been made there. In her view, it allows cultural parallels to be drawn over the whole of Eurasia, between the Altai and the lands around the Black Sea. Live Science adds that other gold animal ornaments have already been found in the region, including a small leopard at Kok-Kainar.
Why it matters
The tomb had been looted in antiquity, but the excavators still found the figurine, human bones and pottery there, according to both sources. Work at Karagaily continues, and further analyses, involving anthropologists, are planned to establish the exact number of people buried there. Once the studies are finished, some of the objects will be displayed at the Almaty museum, according to Live Science; HeritageDaily says the most important ones, including the bear, are expected to join the museum's permanent collection and be shown to the public eventually.