The 2500-year Old “Altai Princess" and Her Amazing Tattoos

Faline · #1 ● 07-12-2013, 06:10 PM

The young woman, believed to be around 25-years old, was found wearing a long silk shirt, beautifully decorated boots and a horse hair wig. She was buried with two warrior men, “on the remote Ukok Plateau, now a UNESCO world cultural and natural heritage site, some 2,500 metres up in the Altai Mountains in a border region close to frontiers of Russia with Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan.
They are all believed to be Pazyryk people - a nomadic people described in the 5th century BC by the Greek historian Herodotus - and the colourful body artwork is seen as the best preserved and most elaborate ancient tattoos anywhere in the world."
Also buried around her were six horses, saddled and bridled, her spiritual escorts to the next world, and a symbol of her evident status, perhaps more likely a revered folk tale narrator, a healer or a holy woman than an ice princess.
There, too, 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.

Read more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Ice_Maiden