A 2,400-year-old female warrior was buried in a “horse-riding position” as she traveled to the afterlife.
The burial site was discovered in the ancient settlement of Devitsa V in Russia’s Voronezh region, according to the Daily Mail.
Russian archaeologists said the horsewoman, aged between 20 and 35, had her tendons severed after death to allow her legs to be separated as if she were on a horse.
Two spears and a giant bronze mirror the size of a frying pan were buried near the warrior, and she wore a bracelet made of precious glᴀss beads around her wrist.
Two other objects, an incense burner and a black-painted one-handed cup, were also found at her feet.
Three other Amazon warriors were also found in what is being described as a “unique” find.
The remains of three other warriors were also found at the same site.
All four warrior women died and were buried at the same time, but scientists have yet to find out why.
One was a king aged between 45 and 50, who was buried wearing a Scythian ceremonial headdress with an amphora pendant. It was made of an alloy of gold, silver, copper and a small amount of iron. Next to the older woman’s head was an iron knife wrapped in a piece of cloth and an iron arrowhead.
In the burial pit, the remains of a younger warrior woman, aged around 12 or 13, were also found.
Valery Gulyaev, head of the Donskaya archaeological expedition that made the discovery, said: “This is the first time we have seen a burial of four Amazon warriors together and of different ages.
We were puzzled when we saw two women of mature age, a teenager and a relatively old woman by Scythian standards.”
Archaeologists ask: How could they all die at the same time? There were no signs of trauma on their bones? The two women whose bones were decomposed had signs of tuberculosis and brucellosis on their bones.
“But these diseases did not cause simultaneous deaths. So we cannot understand the reason for their deaths and why four women of different ages were buried at the same time,” Gulyaev said.
The graves were partially robbed between 100 and 200 years after the mound was formed, damaging two of them.
According to the researchers, many weapons in the burial pits suggest that the buried people were all legendary Amazon warriors.
Female warriors appeared in nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes in Eastern Europe during the Scythian period.