The Pazyryk culture (ca. 5th century BC) refers to an archaeological culture identified by excavated artefacts and mummified humans in the Siberian permafrost. The mummies are buried in long barrows (or "kurgans") similar to the tomb mounds of westertn Scythian culture in modern Ukraine. Archaeologists associate the sites with the widespread Scythian culture of the steppe, an association that is resisted by the modern Mongol inhabitants of the region near Pazyryk in the Altai, where the first remains were found.
Suprisingly, some of the vessels excavated from the tombs are similar to ones still in use today by indigenous groups.
Altaic peoples still profess the Old Belife and relies heavely on their local shaman's intellectual and spiritual knowledge, there is a belife that the disturbed sanctity are causing increased suicides, sickness and earth-quakes in the region and hence the corps must be brought back to their origins to stop the chaos.
Pazyryk is a local name for a valley in the Altai Mountains lying in Siberian Russia south of the modern city of Novosibirsk, near the borders with China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.
The Pazyrykculture has since been connected with the Scythians, a one of the earliest known Altaic people described by the ancient Greeks, whose very similar tombs are found across the steppes.
There is also the possibility that the current inhabitants of the Altai region are descendants of the Pazyrykculture, a continuity that would accord with current ethnic politics: DNA is now being used to study the Pazyryk mummies.
Pazyryk is a local name for a part of the Altai Mountains lying in Russia, near the borders with China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.
The Pazyrykculture has been connected with the Scythians described by the ancient Greeks, whose very similar tombs are found elsewhere.
There is also the possibility that the current inhabitants of the Altai region are descendants of the Pazyrykculture: their unwillingness to see their presumed ancestors disturbed has closed the site to archaeologists for the time being.
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