In Russia, the intricate patterns of 2,500-year-old tattoos – some from the body of a permafrost-preserved Siberian ‘princess’ – have been discovered.
Mythological creatures are included in the remarkable body art and experts believe the elaborate drawings were a sign of age and status for the ancient nomadic Pazyryk people, mentioned by the Greek historian Herodotus in the 5th century BC.
But Natalia Polosmak, a scientist who found the remains of the ‘Princess Ukok’ ice-clad high in the Altai Mountains, is also struck about how little has changed in more than two millennia.
‘I think we have not moved far from Pazyryks in how the tattoos are made,’ she told the Siberian Times ( SiberianTimes.com ).
‘It is still about a craving to make yourself as beautiful as possible.’ ‘For example, about the British.
‘A lot of them go on holiday to Greece, and when I’ve been there I heard how Greeks were smiling and saying that a British man’s age can be easily understood by the number of tattoos on his body.
‘I’m talking the working class now. ‘And I noticed it, too. ‘The older a person, the more tattoos are on his body.’
Dr Polosmak added: ‘We can say that most likely there was – and is – one place on the body for everyone to start putting the tattoos on, and it was a left shoulder.
‘I can assume so because all the mummies we found with just one tattoo had it on their left shoulders.
‘And nowadays this is the same place where people try to put the tattoos on, thousands of years on.‘I think its linked to the body composition – as the left shoulder is the place where it is noticeable most, where it looks the most beautiful.
‘Nothing changes with years, the body stays the same, and the person making a tattoo now is getting closer to his ancestors than he or she may realise.’
The tattoo patterns are from the ancient ‘princess’ who died at around the age of 25 – and from two warriors found on an ancient permafrost burial site at Ukok Plateau some 2,500 metres above sea level close to Russia’s frontiers with modern day Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan.
The reconstruction of the tattoos in the images shown here were released to coincide with the moving of the remains of the princess, dug out of the ice 19 year ago, to a permanent glass sarcophagus in the National Museum in Gorno-Altaisk, capital of the Altai Republic.
Eventually she will be displayed to tourists.
Buried around her were six horses, saddled and bridled, her spiritual escorts to the next world, and a symbol of her evident status, though experts are divided on whether she was a royal or a revered folk tale narrator, a healer or a holy woman.
Next to hear body was a meal of sheep and horse meat and ornaments made from felt, wood, bronze and gold. And a small container of cannabis, say some accounts, along with a stone plate on which were the burned seeds of coriander.
