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00:00Over 2,000 years ago, the steppes of Central Asia resounded to the gallop of notorious horsemen, the Scythians.
00:21They had neither towns nor palaces.
00:25The Scythians left only their tombs, tombally made of stones and frozen earth called Kurgans, in which they were laid to rest with their treasures.
00:34Barbarians who haunt the realm of legend or exceptional goldsmiths?
00:38Who were these fearsome warriors?
00:43What secret does the tomb of this mysterious prince, whose destiny scientists have come to unearth, still hold?
00:50How did he die?
00:53Who was he?
00:56What will these remains reveal about the fabulous saga of the Lords of the Steppes?
01:17Long before our time, bordering a world dominated by the Greeks, the Persians and the Chinese, stretched the Scythian kingdom, from the Danube to the Yellow River, between East and West.
01:30Today, to the East of Kazakhstan, at the foot of the icy Altai Mountains, researchers have set out to explore the traces of civilization.
01:45Here, in the valley of the Bortarma, at an altitude of 1,200 meters, the team has set up camp, living like the nomadic horsemen, whose heritage they've come to explore.
01:55Over 40 French, Italian and Kazakh researchers have been working here for the past two months.
02:11The two mission leaders, Henri-Paul Francfort, researcher at the CNRS, and Zainula Samashev of the Kazakh Institute of Archaeology, have been preparing this expedition for four years.
02:23Together, they visited every tomb in the valley on foot, before choosing the kurgan situated in the coldest spot.
02:30This site, known to archaeologists for over a century, has never been explored by scientists.
02:45While the workers continue to clear the edges of the kurgan, the scientists, beneath their tent, are preparing for the opening of the sarcophagus,
02:52and their much-awaited encounter with its occupant. Today is going to be decisive.
03:02Then, we don't know exactly when, the pillagers dug an opening into the kurgan.
03:09Henri-Paul Francfort's guess is that the frozen soil preserved the body of this one-time prince, and that grave robbers have spared him.
03:20Finding the remains of a prince is important. It's one of the goals of the expedition.
03:26Today, thanks to laboratory analysis of organic matter, we can determine what his clothes were made of, the kind of food he ate, and the rituals he practiced.
03:39Beneath the kurgan, with the stone tumulus removed, the earth, which has been thawing now for two months, is suitable for digging.
03:46But the heat of summer approaches. The body, if it's still there, will not tolerate temperatures above six degrees Celsius.
04:01The chamber bears signs of pillaging. One of the sides of the sarcophagus was torn open.
04:07The wooden lid covering the tomb is removed and wrapped in plastic. It is left whole so as not to damage the original structure. Nothing must be left behind.
04:24Nothing must be left behind.
04:33Repeated pillaging allowed water to seep in. The sarcophagus is filled with mud.
04:38Sensitive to heat and dampness? Has fragile biological evidence resisted the pillaging? An expert at excavating tombs, Eric, an anthropologist, is doubtful.
04:53It's hard to know, because the opening on the side could have been used to remove the body.
05:05So it's somewhat alarming. Given the scale of the pillaging, they perhaps wanted to pull the body out and rob it once it was outside.
05:16The immense kurgan, illustrated here using computer graphics, was 25 meters in diameter.
05:29It protected the burial chamber located six meters beneath the steppe.
05:33Scientists reconstruct the pillaging, step by step.
05:37The pillagers first dug out a tunnel through the stone tumulus, wide enough so that it would not cave in.
05:44Once they reached a burial chamber, undoubtedly after several days of digging, they cleared their way through the bodies of several sacrificed horses.
05:57Then used sledgehammers to tear down part of the wall and roof of the burial chamber.
06:02They were then able to sack the sepulcher and strip the corpse of its gold.
06:06Large kurgan were systematically pillaged. Thousands of priceless objects have consequently disappeared.
06:20The Scythian horsemen did not write.
06:22Their culture has been passed on to us by the Persians, the Chinese, and the Greeks.
06:28The writings of Greek historian Herodotus, who lived in the fourth century BC, have been the principal source for today's historians.
06:35It is a piecemeal view, which is undoubtedly a poor account of the reality of the Scythian peoples.
06:40In particular, that of the Sakas, a tribe from the East, to which the Altai prince belonged.
06:46The Scythians, or the Sakas, and other related peoples, represented the archetype of the foreigner, of the outsider, those who did not live like us.
07:03They did not own a dwelling or land. They possessed livestock and did not farm the land.
07:08Their mores were seen as being extremely barbaric.
07:18The Altai expedition is out to establish facts, not legends.
07:22Will its findings shed new light on the incomplete puzzle of the Scythian culture?
07:28Under Eric's supervision, excavation of the sarcophagus has begun.
07:38This is bark, and this is wood. We can tell from the sound of the brush.
07:49It's either hair or horse mane. It's not easy to tell the difference because of the degree of decay.
07:59The amount of physical evidence of flesh and bone increases.
08:05It's an amalgam of cloth, felt, and hair.
08:22The layers of material used to wrap the body were opened, torn away, and then pushed back.
08:28That's why it's stuck to the bottom.
08:36That day, a cloudless sky was suddenly overcast with rain and wind.
08:43June weather in the Altai Mountains is fickle.
08:46Of course, it's not the first storm in 2,500 years.
08:56But this one is falling upon a frozen tomb that is now exposed to the elements.
09:00What ice has preserved for 20 centuries, heat and water can quickly destroy.
09:12If the temperature rises, the horse remains will decompose, generating an odor of putrefaction.
09:18Hidden under a layer of birch bark, the animals' bodies lie piled, deformed and intertwined in funereal communion.
09:31Jorge, a restorer, can hardly believe his eyes, extremely rare objects, vestiges of Saka art, miraculously preserved in the frozen earth of the Altai Mountains.
09:46It looks like there's something in the mouth.
09:54In two pieces, it's very fragile. It's like a sponge.
10:01That should fit.
10:06That's it.
10:11Some objects still bear the gold leaf which originally covered them.
10:14It's a series of pendants around the horse's skull, small gilded cats.
10:34You can see clearly the horse's skin, a horse with beige hair.
10:38This part of the tomb has apparently not been pillaged.
10:43The pieces are intact, in place, on the bodies.
10:46A true stroke of luck.
10:48When the team realizes the magnitude of its discovery, night has almost fallen.
10:52Night has almost fallen.
10:55I don't know if it's part of the object, but...
10:58The objects, which adorn the horse's harness when they were sacrificed, begin to reveal the scene that unfolded here 2,000 years ago.
11:05The dig will go on late into the night.
11:09The pieces are fragile and require lengthy and meticulous handling.
11:14That's perfect.
11:15The slow pace of archaeology must be reconciled with the imperatives of biology.
11:31Researchers spend their time at camp in the tomb or outdoors like the nomads of the bygone age.
11:48They awaken to the sound of the horses, which each morning cross the steppe to bring the workers to the site.
12:03Every day, in their quest for truth, researchers blend into the beauty of the landscape.
12:08Seven in the morning, and the June sun is already high.
12:18Each object must be carefully recorded before being studied later in the laboratory.
12:23Drawings are made of the objects found on the previous day.
12:28The quality of subsequent analysis will depend on the quality of the work done at the site.
12:33The work carried out at the site has already revealed the exceptional talent of Saka craftsmen.
12:41Far from the sound and fury of their legendary barbarity.
12:48The clean pieces begin to reveal an extremely refined and complex universe peopled with strange figures.
12:57Once the pieces of the harness have been pieced together, what will they tell us?
13:03The harness is crucial to understanding these societies, how they function and their structure.
13:13The Scythians, the Saka's, were horse breeders, outstanding horsemen.
13:22Altai harnesses were extremely ornate.
13:29The saddles were carefully gilded, as were garlands of pendants, bridles, crops.
13:36And later, in the lab, by analyzing how the objects were arranged, we hope to reconstruct what we're already beginning to see.
13:54A theme for each horse.
13:56The sarcophagus has yet to reveal anything except this large plank fallen from the roof of the burial chamber, proof of violent pillaging.
14:10Eric still hopes to find a body in this mass of dried mud.
14:15He hopes to free the remains of the Saka prints from the shadows, and then give them over for scientific investigation.
14:21I'm on the left shoulder bone.
14:31So, there is a Saka in this tomb, pushed back in and hidden by the pillagers.
14:42The team must alter nothing of these fragile bones miraculously left in their original place.
15:06They must remain calm and collected, before this dizzying discovery.
15:09Gradually, an entire skeleton emerges from the depths of the earth.
15:27A skeleton entirely stripped of its gold, but still priceless to scientists.
15:35Here we can see this headrest, which may have been originally covered with fabric.
15:53The head has slid off the headrest.
15:55Either from the pillagers or during decomposition, we can see that the head slid off.
16:00What did it look like?
16:03A few hairs, which may have been a mustache.
16:07Here we can see the remains of braids, a rather complex hairstyle.
16:15Right, we'll take away the plastic up there.
16:20So, who was this Altai Prince? How famous was he?
16:33His wanderings must have taken him far from the valley where he was buried.
16:39In the princely necropolis of the Bortama, there are at least fifteen tombs.
16:49With his herd of decorated horses, the prince was laid to rest in the largest kurgan, proof of his importance.
16:55The kurgan reveals that a large number of horses were sacrificed.
17:03Researchers have counted thirteen animals, all richly harnessed.
17:07These pendants, just unearthed, indicate the presence of a saddle.
17:12Do you see? A sort of circle in the eye.
17:16Researchers had reason to believe that these step-dwellers were far superior riders than their sedentary contemporaries.
17:25These artifacts reveal the origins of equestrian art.
17:28It's probably one of the oldest saddles ever found anywhere in the world, with hoops and a pommel and padding and embroidery.
17:46If one goes by written sources, saddles didn't appear until two thousand years ago, in other words, much later.
17:54At the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans, saddles didn't exist.
17:58They rode bareback or on a simple blanket.
18:01These improvements in saddle comfort are due to the peoples of the steppe.
18:10Every evening, Kazakh workers leave the Bortama camp to return to their nearby village.
18:24Will they tell their children what they learned today about their nomadic ancestors?
18:35Domesticated for the first time on these vast prairies, about a thousand years B.C.,
18:40the horse has always played a central role in the life of the steppes.
18:42The Scythians learned to master this fiery animal.
18:48In turn, horses changed their lives, driving them on to explore new and distant territories.
18:55The horse also made them fearsome warriors.
18:58They were an inspiration to the Chinese cavalry.
19:01The Persian and Greek armies recruited them.
19:02If we span the history of nomadism, the horse stands out as man's greatest conquest.
19:12The horse is represented in carvings.
19:20Some of the carvings are of strange creatures, ridden as if they were horses,
19:24but bearing large ibex-like horns.
19:35This horn, carved in wood and decorated with gold leaf,
19:39has given a new dimension to the horned animals carved in the rocks.
19:43It was fixed onto the skull of one of the horses found in the prince's tomb.
19:47Could it be the vestige of a society that worshiped nature rather than gods, unlike the ancient Greeks?
19:57We are probably dealing with rites and the notion of passing into another world.
20:07The land of the dead, the supernatural world of the beyond,
20:11via the intermediary of an animal, but it had to be a wild animal.
20:17The best way of mounting a wild animal without having to domesticate an ibex or an elk,
20:23is to render a horse wild through ritual.
20:26A mythic, a horse.
20:40Digging on site to extract the artifacts used to adorn the horses is out of the question.
20:45They could be damaged by the heat.
20:47Scientists have developed a new method,
20:50a technique called excavation in frozen blocks.
20:5240 or so blocks must be cut out to extract the remains of the 13 harnessed horses,
21:04identified, catalogued and carefully wrapped.
21:07They'll be put in a refrigerated truck so that temperatures remain constant.
21:11All of the objects found in the tomb must be preserved in the state in which they were found.
21:16Thanks to the freezing, the archaeologists will have the time to carry out the necessary analysis,
21:21to answer this tomb's many riddles.
21:27Henri Paul, there are two, two cadavers.
21:31What part of the second one can you see?
21:33I don't know.
21:35We must make sure that there are two.
21:38See which sex they are.
21:40And if they were buried at the same time.
21:43I don't think we'll see very much of the second.
21:44But the confirmation is already quite extraordinary.
21:48Here we have a leg, a kneecap here, another one here, and there another foot.
22:07One hand there above the face, another hand there, and another hand over here.
22:21One corpse there, and another here.
22:25That seems most likely.
22:28We're feeling our way through, but the scenario seems more complex than at first.
22:42We're feeling our way through.
22:46Researchers are familiar with double burials.
22:49But what does this one mean?
22:51Two people in the same tomb.
22:56By observing the relative disposition of the two skeletons and the layers of earth separating them,
23:03Eric manages to establish a chronology of events.
23:07The second body was buried after the pillaging.
23:10The severely damaged skeleton is unlikely to be complete.
23:14Yet examination of the pelvis reveals it to be a woman.
23:20Another Altai Kurgan, discovered in 1980, also contained a woman.
23:25Tattooed like the Scythium chiefs described by Herodotus.
23:28It seems to prove that the status of woman was much higher than that of sedentary princesses cloistered in their palaces.
23:37Warrior? Priestess? Queen?
23:41Who was this mysterious intruder come to join the prince in eternal sleep?
23:45The prince, on the other hand, is well preserved and will be studied in the lab.
23:52For the researchers, all of the artifacts have been collected.
23:58In the refrigerated convoy, they will take the fragile cargo on one last voyage, far from the Altai Mountains.
24:06The second phase of the mission is analysis of the horse's remains as well as those of the prince and his mysterious guest.
24:12The cold and mist have taken over the landscape, evoking a fabulous imaginary world of griffins and horned horses.
24:30A world that inspired the Greeks.
24:36Ulysses seeking the gates of hell, or Jason in search of the golden fleece guarded by dragons.
24:43Two thousand years later, on a wide silent step, a Naltai prince is going to guide scientists, helping them to reconstruct the world as he knew it.
24:54Part of the investigation will be carried out in the suburbs of Amaata, the capital of Kazakhstan.
25:12Here, in the laboratories of the National Institute of Archeology, it is large enough to accommodate the entire team.
25:21It has been specially equipped to receive and study the artifacts and remains brought back from the Altai last summer.
25:30Sebastian is an archaeozoologist. For a week now, he's been trying to untangle the remains of the animals among the blocks cut out of the tomb.
25:48That came from there. The vertebrae are out of line. This block, for instance, contains the pieces of several horses. Each one must be identified before anything can be removed.
26:08What's unusual about this one is that the forehead comes here. In fact, their foreheads are together.
26:22From this puzzle of flesh and bone, Kazakh and French scientists hope to reconstruct the chamber the horses were found in.
26:28The time has come to examine the animals themselves, especially their teeth, which will provide information concerning the health of the horses at the time they died.
26:47Having extracted all of the bones, cleaned and classified them one by one, the researchers can now compare morphological features.
27:02Patiently, Sebastian gathers clues as to the horses' appearance before their sacrifice.
27:23Little by little, he pieces together the animals.
27:32Overall, we know we're dealing with animals measuring one meter thirty-five, one meter forty, very close to what we find today on the northern steppes of Kazakhstan.
27:43All the animals are male, stallions.
27:47Other clues tell us that what we have here are old animals.
27:54Analysis of tooth wear clearly shows that the animals were between sixteen and twenty years old.
28:00And that's very important, because combined with the sex and size of the animal, it gives us a good idea of the criteria used to choose the animals to be slaughtered.
28:10The analysis of the skeletons also reveals that these horses were mounted all their lives.
28:22The Sakas chose to sacrifice animals which had become useless to the group, even in honor of a prince.
28:29A scientific observation which confirms the importance of horses in the steppe economy.
28:35So, at the moment of the funeral ceremony, they were slaughtered with a blow to the head, using a well-known tool, a kind of pick, which fractures the bone and kills the animal on the spot.
28:56What specialists are just beginning to discover, the petroglyphs of Kazakhstan have been recounting for thousands of years.
29:09In the laboratory, the time has come at last to analyze the princely remains.
29:23Numerous Kazakh scientists have come to have the privilege of observing, studying and taking samples.
29:37For them, this figure is more than just an object of study.
29:41He is their ancestor, the cornerstone of their identity.
29:45Asaka, a contemporary of the Golden Man.
29:56The Golden Man is a national figure of Kazakhstan.
29:59For this young nation, he is a hero of antiquity.
30:04This warrior wore a fabulous costume composed of hundreds of objects sculpted in gold.
30:09The themes represented the rich art of the steppes.
30:18He was discovered in 1971 near Alma-Ata, now the Kazakh capital, far from the princely Ata Mountains.
30:28By comparing artifacts taken from different locations on the steppe, scientists hope to map the spread of the Scythian civilization.
30:43What a strange image, a civilization observed through its dead.
30:52What will the autopsy reveal about the life of the Saka and their burial rites?
30:56Like forensic scientists working on a murder victim, researchers are attempting to make a subject who died over 2,000 years ago speak.
31:21Here's an incision.
31:39The base of the larynx, so one could presume that it was open from the base of the larynx.
31:44it's open there and there it's fractured as if they had leaned on the sternum at the same time
31:53like this so what we have is evidence of an opening for embalming yes because the opening
32:03is complete it can't be a blow it's hard to imagine a blow going that deep if the person
32:10was alive he would step back it will take researchers several days to understand the
32:19details of the ritual there are marks on all the bones made while the flesh was being removed
32:37these marks show that the thorax as well as the abdomen were opened all the organs and most of
32:46the muscles were removed with a very thin knife other marks on the bones of the hand showed that
32:55the skin was removed and perhaps sewn back on we found three pieces of fine string on either side
33:05of the spinal column removal of the flesh has already been observed on other altai mummies
33:20it was a way of preserving the body in his histories herodotus tells how the remains of a scythian
33:27king were transported for several months from one tribe to another before being buried
33:47block number nine of the horse pit
33:50an amalgam of animal remains and pieces of artifacts that are buried in the flesh
33:57the extraction of the pieces requires flawless skill the slightest over exertion of pressure
34:07and the pieces of wood can disintegrate
34:09the initial location of each piece that was used to adorn the horses is carefully recorded before being removed
34:28the same procedure is used for the pieces of gold leaf used over the artifacts
34:40the extraction operations on block nine alone lasted an entire day
34:55these unearthed representations of animals are beginning to shed light on ancient sakha beliefs
35:15the sakha used real animals mythological figures and imaginary creatures like this head of a horned lion
35:25in its representation of nature
35:28sakha animal art abounds with scenes of predatory behavior bearing witness to the violence of their environment
35:37the small grimacing sphinx seems to reflect a universe full of terrifying and violent spirits
35:43ancient sakha art also expresses a will to stylize the world using perfect forms
35:56the figures that are represented are no doubt part of sakha mythology which is now lost to us
36:01tp
36:18after four days of close questioning the dismembered skeleton of the altiprince
36:20After four days of close questioning, the dismembered skeleton of the Yaltai prince is about to give
36:32up another secret. Eric has managed to reconstruct the skull. What is most interesting is the
36:45cause of death. It was due to a blow with what a forensic scientist would call a blunt object.
36:58The blow was so violent that it caused these deformations in the skull. We can see how the
37:05shock wave traveled. This is a very fine incision around the lesion, and it's where someone tried
37:12to cut into the bone, an operation called a trepanation. What's amazing is that we have
37:17these very fine traces, and here, something much cruder, which shows that the operation
37:25was surely halted following the death of the subject.
37:35The type of cruel and painful death that is depicted in Scythian art.
37:42A world in which life was filled with constant danger, warring tribes, internal quarreling,
37:50human sacrifice. The Scythians chose to depict their daily lives in sculpted gold, perhaps
37:59to make it more precious and extravagant.
38:05Herodotus tells how the body of the enemy was decapitated, scalped, and transformed into
38:10a trophy. How the Scythians fraternized by drinking wine mixed with both bloods.
38:15The symmetry used for the harness of one of the old stallions sacrificed in the Altai is
38:35almost complete. Only a few more details need adjusting.
38:46At last, we can imagine the entire animal covered in its ornaments.
38:52Here, we have the horse Ibex with its horns, and all of the artifacts that were part of its harness.
38:57A garland of pendants, an elaborate bit, all decorated using a single theme.
39:07In fact, the entire cortege bore symbols of the untamed world.
39:12Horse cat, horse elk, horse ram, horse griffon.
39:16All the real or mythical animals of the Saka universe escorted the deceased on his ultimate voyage to the beyond.
39:33Scientific observation has widened our knowledge of the beliefs of the Scythians.
39:36The material gathered last summer in the Altai is now part of a vast reservoir of images still largely unexplored.
39:58So we've got a head turned to the right and left, symmetrical.
40:06By deciphering the style of the objects, Henri-Paul Francfort is beginning to confirm the existence of links between these artifacts and more ancient ones found thousands of kilometers away.
40:18This first pendant shows a kind of dragon bearing a serpent's tail, and also at the rear of the skull, the beginnings of a curling horn,
40:34typical motifs of Middle Eastern art which could only have been brought to the Altai plains at the time of the Acumenes by the Persians.
40:41In Altai art we also find felines whose style is more Chinese.
40:50The strict symmetry and the spiral inside the ear.
40:57They are quite close to certain bronzes of the warrior kingdoms of central China, who we know had contact with the Scythians of the Altai.
41:08Bordering China and Persia, the Altai takes us back to a world and movement filled with exchanges with the so-called civilized peoples of that time.
41:20These discoveries are perhaps only part of the art of a much vaster empire, of a flourishing artistic community, whose traces we can follow from Mongolia to the Danube, from the Black Sea to Siberia.
41:33St. Petersburg.
41:34For over two centuries, here at the Hermitage Museum on the banks of the Neva, the vast puzzle of the Scythian peoples and the art of the steppes has been coming together.
41:49Henri-Paul Francfort has come to compare his discoveries with the treasures housed in the Hermitage.
41:58In particular, artifacts from other frozen kurgans located in the northern Altai, in the Pesiric Valley.
42:05Sacrificed horses, mummies preserved in the ice, and once more, pastiche horns whose ornamentation bears a clear resemblance to the horns found in the tomb of the prince.
42:18Here, too, we can see the same contrasts.
42:22Here the French researcher finds traces of the same civilization with similar rites and beliefs.
42:27The upper part, and there are a few traces on the other side.
42:33Perfectly preserved artifacts from the Pesiric Valley include treasures such as this fabulous felt tapestry with a representation of a goddess facing her champion as he makes his offering.
42:47Or this saddle pad, which shows the bright colors of a world filled with predators.
43:11Hidden away in the museum attic are other pieces discovered in the Pesiric Valley.
43:17Alan and this is located in the museum in the museum.
43:20What is this?
43:21What is this?
43:22A very strange place.
43:23It is.
43:24I have a couple of things here.
43:25How many kinds of people have been here to come back to the museum?
43:26Let's take a look.
43:27I have a lot of things.
43:28I have no idea.
43:29I have no idea.
43:30I have no idea.
43:31I have no idea.
43:32Yes.
43:33He has no idea.
43:34Because of what they did in the museum.
43:35I have no idea, as of which one of the people have come out here.
43:37We have a couple of different Now that each other people was made.
43:38How many kinds of people have come out here?
43:40How many kinds of women without taking off theirå˜s?
43:41Yes.
43:42Yes.
43:43Yes, I have no idea.
43:44The pieces in St. Petersburg were placed on stallions in the same way as those of the Altai, and the styles are similar.
44:06It indeed confirms our hunts that there was an artistic community that flourished throughout the Altai.
44:12Here we're dealing with older kurgans, royal ones this time, whereas ours was a prince.
44:22Yet in both cases the artists were highly skilled and used comparable materials.
44:34The Hermitage Museum has been collecting vestiges of Setien civilization for two centuries.
44:40Tsar Peter I, a knowledgeable collector, ordered the Russian people to help save this treasure.
44:47Thanks to the work of archaeologists, little by little, this fabulous collection of solid gold objects that escaped pillage has come together.
44:55These artifacts bear witness to the cultural and artistic links of these scattered tribes.
45:00The same representation of armaments, clothing, and of life filled with combat.
45:12The same themes of mythical animals, such as the horned lion, or the griffon.
45:19The same ways of hammering, chiseling, filigering, and encrusting precious metal.
45:33These pieces, rarely removed from their cases, are solid gold belt buckles, discovered in the royal kurgans of Siberia.
45:51For Henri-Paul Francfort, they are proof that the regions share the same style of art.
46:00Predators are represented on the Siberian belt buckle, on the sort found on the banks of the Black Sea, and on the sculpted wooden piece found in the tomb of the Sakha Prince.
46:12Three variations of the same style and themes.
46:21The discoveries made by French archaeologists have now found their place in the immense puzzle of Scythian culture,
46:31thus confirming the striking unity of a nomadic art which binds Europe and Asia into a single vast artistic community.
46:42Back in France, thousands of kilometers from the Altai, samples taken from the prince's remains show that he died in 294 BC.
46:56In Eric's anthropology lab, Altai research is part of an important program that studies the origin and history of illnesses.
47:03Analyses reveal the presence of parasites, echinostomes, typical of hot and humid countries.
47:13They show that Scythian nomads covered huge distances, hundreds, even thousands of kilometers.
47:20Meanwhile, these same parasites were found in the remains of the mysterious woman found buried by the prince's side.
47:26Were the two individuals related?
47:28We carried out DNA analysis, which showed a genetic correlation between the subjects.
47:39We observed that there was a 50% correlation, which is the type of correlation that exists between a mother and son, or a father and daughter.
47:47When taken into account the age of the two subjects, 30 to 40 years old for one, 60 to 70 for the other, and the time between the two burials,
48:02which we determined during the dig as being between 15 and 25 years, the most likely hypothesis is that the son was buried first,
48:18and that 15 to 30 years later, his mother, who was by that time elderly, was buried in the same tomb.
48:31The burial ceremony will take place here, around the Skirgan, built in honor of the prince.
48:52Perhaps there will be a moment of violent and euphoric trance, during which the warriors will become intoxicated by the vapors of cannabis seeds, flung on hot stones.
49:07The ceremony will perhaps last several weeks. During that time, animals will be sacrificed. Here, 13 horses harnessed in gold and laid out in two layers, one on top of the other, their heads turned towards the east.
49:28The prince is wearing his jewelry, his weapons, and other offerings are placed in the tomb. They will eventually be stolen by pillagers.
49:41The burial will perhaps be commemorated with human sacrifice for years to come.
49:56A series of discoveries that awakens the past, and raises new questions. In an endless quest for truth, in the great saga of humanity.
50:11In an endless quest for truth, in the great saga of humanity.
50:14In an endless quest for truth, in the great saga of humanity.
50:18In an endless quest for truth, in the great saga of humanity.
50:21In an endless quest for the trip, in the great saga of humanity.
50:26The sassum.
50:28Theodcast.
50:30Theodcast.
50:32Theodcast.
50:34Theodcast.
50:37Theodcast.
50:39Theodcast.
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