4,600-year-old teen’s burial found inside a dirt mound. See the ‘extraordinary find’
Inside a relatively average-looking dirt mound in Slovakia sat an “extraordinary find:” a 4,600-year-old burial. The ancient grave marked a first for the country.
A joint team of Slovak and Polish archaeologists decided to excavate an earth mound in Hatalov, the Slovak Academy of Sciences said in an Aug. 30 news release. The excavation was part of an ongoing project focused on ancient cultures and mound structures.
The team surveyed the mound to confirm its human-made origin then started digging.
In the center of the mound, they found a “very well-preserved” skeleton surrounded by red dye. A photo shows the “extraordinary find.”
Archaeologists identified the site as a 4,600-year-old burial of an elite teenager from the Yamnaya culture.
The Yamnaya culture, also known as the pit-grave culture or the Yamna culture, is a poorly understood ancient people group who lived across modern-day eastern Europe between 3300 and 2600 B.C., the academy said. The Yamnaya were nomadic, lived under chieftains and relied on “animal husbandry, fishing and gathering.”
“Studies of DNA samples obtained from the bones of individuals of the (Yamnaya) culture indicate that this society caused a change in the genetic structure of the population in Europe,” Eva Horváthová, an expert with the academy’s Institute of Archaeology, said in the release.
The burial mound in Hatalov is “first indisputable evidence of the presence of these people” in Slovakia, the academy said.
Archaeologists described the first-of-its-kind grave as belonging to a “young male individual aged 16 to 18” who was part of the Yamnaya’s “oldest Indo-European population.”
“In addition to the discovered skeletal remains, we found a charred wooden structure around the grave and partly in its filling, the purpose of which was to cover the grave pit,” Horváthová said.
Archaeologists plan to continue analyzing the skeletal remains and other finds.
Hatalov is a village in eastern Slovakia and near the border with Ukraine and Hungary.
This story was originally published September 4, 2024 at 8:29 AM with the headline "4,600-year-old teen’s burial found inside a dirt mound. See the ‘extraordinary find’."
