[HN Gopher] 2,500-year-old Siberian 'ice mummy' had intricate ta...
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2,500-year-old Siberian 'ice mummy' had intricate tattoos, imaging
reveals
Author : dxs
Score : 166 points
Date : 2025-07-31 13:29 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| wileydragonfly wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| It gives us a frame of reference about where we came from
| sigwinch wrote:
| Another possibility is: if someone today recreates these
| tattoos, it potentially re-establishes her importance.
| neomantra wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I'd love it if scientists would study my body 2500 after my
| death.
| romaaeterna wrote:
| > ...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 wrote:
| Knowledge?
|
| 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 wrote:
| Value 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 wrote:
| Those 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 wrote:
| It's great art, but I don't see any perspective.
| topspin wrote:
| I'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.
| chmod775 wrote:
| You'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 wrote:
| So like Corporate Memphis for the medieval age.
| williamdclt wrote:
| In exactly nothing except the use of flatness, yes
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| I was taught in school that Perspective was invented in the
| Renaissance, and before that all art was flat. This is
| obviously not true to anyone who's studied greecian art
| beyond a pop-culture level, but that's the level most people
| have.
|
| It does seem to have waxed and waned; going in and out of
| popularity to the point of being a lost art multiple times.
| Wikipedia doesn't go so far as to divide it into eras, but
| given the time gaps, it's possible that there were multiple
| "inventions" of perspective in the sense of formalized
| techniques and pedagogy.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_(graphical)
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Not really. Just a slightly different art style than what
| you're used to.
| raylad wrote:
| The designs are beautiful but there's no evidence at all of
| perspective which is a specific technique using a vanishing
| point.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Clearly art has regressed even further. If you look at Pablo
| Picasso's works from the 20th century you can see there is even
| less understanding of perspective and form. If you look at
| others like Kandinsky you'll see modern has actually lost all
| sense of objectivity and merely reduced to shapes and colors.
|
| (I'm being sarcastic and yes, the two artists were chosen for
| also for the joke some of you may be thinking of).
|
| Not all art styles throughout history valued realism.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| > Not all art styles throughout history valued realism.
|
| While there is true, it's also heavily misleading wrt europes
| history.
|
| The techniques really were lost in the dark ages, because the
| church killed everyone that was talented and didn't join
| their ranks, effectively wiping out a lot of knowledge (by
| design)
|
| And a lot of medieval European art was clearly aimed at
| realism, they just weren't very good at it because they
| didn't know the basics.
| milesrout wrote:
| This is incredibly ignorant. The Church didn't kill anyone
| for being good at art, and in fact did more for the
| development of fine art than any other institution in human
| history.
| lazide wrote:
| So if someone was a good pagan artist, the church was
| cool with that?
| tomcam wrote:
| > the church killed everyone that was talented and didn't
| join their ranks, effectively wiping out a lot of knowledge
| (by design)
|
| Citation very much needed
| giardini wrote:
| Probably died of hepatitis!
| xandrius wrote:
| A flame is enough to sterilise, so I wouldn't be so sure.
| samirillian wrote:
| I should call her
| lupusreal wrote:
| That 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
| alephnerd wrote:
| Pazyryk 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/syenah/m@r@go saeno or a
| Huma/Homaio/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 wrote:
| My 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| > 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/
|
| [1] - https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tattooed-blue-
| skinned...
|
| [2] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hephthalites
|
| [3] - https://www.instagram.com/sheenkhalaiartproject/?hl=en
| anjel wrote:
| [1] https://archive.is/owdub
| andy99 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| It seems like pretty standard experimental archaeology from
| the description.
| cma wrote:
| How do you feel about Newton poking a bodkin into his eye to
| see the distortions?
| hmmokidk wrote:
| Why? He is that interested he is willing to permanently get
| his skin. This is the right person for the job.
| wavefunction wrote:
| the taxonomy of the subjects at the specific chronology is
| provocative, a leopard and a tiger interest me though I suppose
| many might over-look that, but what do I care for their lacking
| interest
| koevet wrote:
| Some 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.
| userbinator wrote:
| It's good to see that these weren't "AI-enhanced" (hallucinated)
| images, although I'm curious what postprocessing they used.
| Theodores wrote:
| The 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.
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(page generated 2025-08-03 23:00 UTC)