These Early Iron Age tattoos from southern Siberia show the work of a master and apprentice

Amazing stuff! When will archaeologist discover the first ancient tattoo parlor? 😊

"... The Pazyryk were horse-riding nomads who roamed the steppes of Eurasia 2500 years ago. Their mummies, most of whom were first excavated in the 1940s, were elaborately tattooed with animal designs. To gain insight into how these ancient tattoo artists practiced their craft, researchers took multiple infrared photos of tattoos on a Pazyryk woman’s arms (seen in purple above) and stitched them together digitally to get high-resolution images. ...

they argue that one design, flowing expertly around the contours of the mummy’s right arm, appears more refined and detailed—including the stripes of two tigers and the spots of a leopard ... —than the others, suggesting it was applied by an experienced tattooer. Her left arm bears a simpler design, suggesting it was done by someone more novice. ..."

From the abstract:

"The tattoos of the Pazyryk ice mummies are of paramount importance for the archaeology of Iron Age Siberia and are often discussed from a broad stylistic and symbolic perspective. However, deeper investigations into this cultural practice were hindered by the inaccessibility of quality data.

Here, the authors use high-resolution, near-infrared data in conjunction with experimental evidence to re-examine the tools and techniques employed in Early Iron Age tattooing. The high-quality data allow for the previously unfeasible distinction of artist hands and enable us to put the individual back into the picture of a widespread but rarely preserved prehistoric practice."

These ancient tattoos show the work of a master and apprentice | Science | AAAS

High-resolution near-infrared data reveal Pazyryk tattooing methods

Figure 3. Left forearm tattoo

Figure 4. Right forearm tattoo

Figure 5. Tattoos placed on the hands; the bird, cross, and fish-like ornament are on the left hand, the floral ornament is on the right hand

Ancient DNA solves mystery of Hungarian, Estonian, Finnish language origins

Amazing stuff! Members of two major language families were moving in opposite directions influencing each other.

"Where did Europe’s distinct Uralic family of languages — which includes Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian — come from? New research puts their origins a lot farther east than many thought.

The analysis ... integrated genetic data on 180 newly sequenced Siberians with more than 1,000 existing samples covering many continents and about 11,000 years of human history. The results ... identify the prehistoric progenitors of two important language families, including Uralic, spoken today by more than 25 million people. ...

The study finds the ancestors of present-day Uralic speakers living about 4,500 years ago in northeastern Siberia, within an area now known as Yakutia. ...

Proto-Uralic speakers overlapped in time with the Yamnaya, the culture of horseback herders credited with transmitting Indo-European across Eurasia’s grasslands. A pair of recent papers ... zeroed in on the Yamnaya homeland, showing it was mostly likely within the current borders of Ukraine just over 5,000 years ago. 

“We can see these waves going back and forth — and interacting — as these two major language families expanded,”  ... “Just as we see Yakutia ancestry moving east to west, our genetic data show Indo-Europeans spreading west to east.” ...

Previous studies established that Finns, Estonians, and other Uralic-speaking populations today share an Eastern Eurasian genetic signature. Ancient DNA researchers ruled out the region’s best-known archaeological cultures from contributing to the Uralic expansion ..."

"... The team analyzed genomes from 180 ancient individuals from northern Eurasia, dated between 17,000 and 3,000 years ago. Their findings identify two ancestral populations that gave rise to these two language families: one from the Lena River Basin in eastern Siberia, which contributed significantly to nearly all modern Uralic-speaking populations, and another from the Baikal region in southern Siberia, associated with the genetic legacy of the Ket people.  ..."

From the abstract:

"The North Eurasian forest and forest-steppe zones have sustained millennia of sociocultural connections among northern peoples, but much of their history is poorly understood. In particular, the genomic formation of populations that speak Uralic and Yeniseian languages today is unknown.

Here, by generating genome-wide data for 180 ancient individuals spanning this region, we show that the Early-to-Mid-Holocene hunter-gatherers harboured a continuous gradient of ancestry from fully European-related in the Baltic, to fully East Asian-related in the Transbaikal.

Contemporaneous groups in Northeast Siberia were off-gradient and descended from a population that was the primary source for Native Americans, which then mixed with populations of Inland East Asia and the Amur River Basin to produce two populations whose expansion coincided with the collapse of pre-Bronze Age population structure.

Ancestry from the first population, Cis-Baikal Late Neolithic–Bronze Age (Cisbaikal_LNBA), is associated with Yeniseian-speaking groups and those that admixed with them, and 

ancestry from the second, Yakutia Late Neolithic–Bronze Age (Yakutia_LNBA), is associated with migrations of prehistoric Uralic speakers.

We show that Yakutia_LNBA first dispersed westwards from the Lena River Basin around 4,000 years ago into the Altai-Sayan region and into West Siberian communities associated with Seima-Turbino metallurgy—a suite of advanced bronze casting techniques that expanded explosively from the Altai.

The 16 Seima-Turbino period individuals were diverse in their ancestry, also harbouring DNA from Indo-Iranian-associated pastoralists and from a range of hunter-gatherer groups. Thus, both cultural transmission and migration were key to the Seima-Turbino phenomenon, which was involved in the initial spread of early Uralic-speaking communities."

Ancient DNA solves mystery of Hungarian, Finnish language origins — Harvard Gazette "Parent emerged over 4,000 years ago in Siberia, farther east than many thought, then rapidly spread west"

New DNA Evidence Reveals Origins of Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian Languages (original news release)

Ancient DNA reveals the prehistory of the Uralic and Yeniseian peoples

Map of all the sites that are sources of samples used in the study.

World’s oldest forts in Siberia upend idea that farming alone led to complex societies

Amazing stuff! And in Siberia of all places!

"People who lived in central Siberia thousands of years ago enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle despite the area’s cold winters. They fished abundant pike and salmonids from the Amnya River and hunted migrating elk and reindeer with bone and stonetipped spears. To preserve their rich stores of fish oil and meat, they created elaborately decorated pottery. And they built the world’s first known fortresses, perhaps to keep out aggressive neighbors.

With room inside for dozens of people and dwellings sunk almost 2 meters deep for warmth in Siberian winters, the fortresses were ringed by earthen walls several meters high and topped with wooden palisades. At some point, they were consumed by flame, a possible sign of early battles. And at least one set of structures was built startlingly early: 8000 years ago, 2000 years before the mighty walls of Uruk and Babylon in the Middle East and thousands of years before agriculture reached some parts of Europe and Asia ...
In recent years archaeologists had documented dozens of fortified settlements in central Siberia, an expanse of pine forest crisscrossed by rivers and pocked with permafrost and swamps, more than 2500 kilometers east of Moscow. ...

The Siberian findings add to others that challenge agriculture’s primacy in driving settlements and cultural complexity. In Anatolia, the monumental religious structures of Gobekli Tepe were built even earlier, at 9000 years B.C.E. But those people were beginning a transition to agriculture. In contrast, beginning about 10,000 years ago, hunter-gatherer societies in coastal areas around the world, including the Korean peninsula, the Japanese archipelago, and later Scandinavia, drew on marine resources to support large settlements. More recently, complex, hierarchical societies on the northwest coast of North America lived in large, permanent, and sometimes fortified settlements, all sustained by hunting, gathering, and fishing. ..."

From the abstract:

"Archaeological narratives have traditionally associated the rise of social and political ‘complexity’ with the emergence of agricultural societies. However, this framework neglects the innovations of the hunter-gatherer populations occupying the Siberian taiga 8000 years ago, including the construction of some of the oldest-known fortified sites in the world. Here, the authors present results from the fortified site of Amnya in western Siberia, reporting new radiocarbon dates as the basis for a re-evaluation of the chronology and settlement organisation. Assessed within the context of the changing social and environmental landscape of the taiga, Amnya and similar fortified sites can be understood as one facet of a broader adaptive strategy."

World’s oldest forts upend idea that farming alone led to complex societies | Science | AAAS

The world's oldest-known promontory fort: Amnya and the acceleration of hunter-gatherer diversity in Siberia 8000 years ago (open access)

Figure 2. Top: aerial view of the Amnya river and promontory

Figure 1. Regions with enclosed/fortified sites of hunter-gatherers and farmers (hatched) and early pottery traditions (green and orange shades) in north-west Eurasia, seventh to sixth millennium cal BC

Google Bard failed and is biased when prompted about Siberia

Today, I challenged Google Bard with this prompt "history of surface air temperatures in siberia"

Clearly Google Bard is totally biased by the Global Warming hoax and Climate Change religion.

Google Bard failed e.g.:

1. To say anything about the measuring stations in Siberia (How many are there, since when in operation, location, urban vs. rural, etc.)
2. Influence of the heat island effect
3. How reliable have these temperature measurements been during the Soviet Union era and beyond

I got three draft responses back. Here is one of them (all three were very similar):
"The history of surface air temperatures in Siberia is one of long-term warming, with the region warming at a rate faster than the global average. This warming is particularly pronounced in the Arctic regions of Siberia, where temperatures have increased by as much as 4 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial era.

The following are some key milestones in the history of surface air temperatures in Siberia:
* **19th century:** Siberia was still largely unexplored in the 19th century, so there are few reliable temperature records from this period. However, some historical records suggest that winters in Siberia were colder in the 19th century than they are today.
* **20th century:** Siberia began to warm significantly in the 20th century. This warming was particularly pronounced in the second half of the century, when temperatures increased by an average of 0.5 degrees Celsius per decade.
* **21st century:** The rate of warming in Siberia has accelerated in the 21st century. In 2020, Siberia experienced record-breaking heat, with temperatures in some areas more than 6 degrees Celsius above average.

The warming of Siberia is having a number of negative impacts on the region, including:
* **Thawing permafrost:** Permafrost is a layer of ground that is permanently frozen. As Siberia warms, the permafrost is thawing, which is releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and destabilizing infrastructure.
* **Wildfires:** Siberia is prone to wildfires, but the frequency and intensity of wildfires has increased in recent years due to the warming climate. Wildfires release smoke and ash into the atmosphere, which can reduce air quality and contribute to climate change.
* **Changes in vegetation:** The warming climate is causing changes in vegetation in Siberia, with some areas becoming more forested and others becoming more arid. These changes are disrupting ecosystems and impacting wildlife.

The warming of Siberia is a serious concern for both the region and the world. Siberia is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and its warming is contributing to climate change. Climate change is already having a significant impact on Siberia, and these impacts are expected to worsen in the future.

Please note that the information above is based on the best available scientific evidence. However, the climate is a complex system, and there is still some uncertainty about how it will change in the future."

Akkordarbeit in sibirischer Kälte

Sehr empfehlenswert! Arbeiten bei minus 40 Grad Celsius! Schiffe von Meter dicken Eis befreien ...

Ancient Siberian cave hosted Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans—possibly at the same time

Amazing stuff! What else we may discover in the vast wilderness of Siberia? Basically, Siberia is largely terra incognita as far as scientific research is concerned thanks e.g. to the former Soviet Union. 

"A decade ago, anthropologists shocked the world when they discovered a fossil pinkie bone from a then-unknown group of extinct humans in Siberia’s Denisova Cave. The group was named “Denisovans” in its honor. Now, an extensive analysis of DNA in the cave’s soils reveals it also hosted modern humans—who arrived early enough that they may have once lived there alongside Denisovans and Neanderthals. ...
Humans—including Neanderthals and Denisovans—are known to have occupied Denisova Cave for at least 300,000 years. ... The cave also contains sophisticated stone tools and jewelry at higher, later levels. ...
Researchers have been studying DNA isolated from soils for more than 40 years, including sequencing DNA from permafrost, but only in the past 4 years has anyone found DNA from extinct humans in ancient soils. ..."

Ancient Siberian cave hosted Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans—possibly at the same time | Science | AAAS