The Siberian Shamanka: What we Know About Pre-historic Shamanism, PART ONE.

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Ice Maiden

I am the young girl:

warm-skinned,

beating-wild heart,

galloping with my tribe

across bleak plains,

calling to the wind.

I am the young woman:

dressed in silk tussah,

red-piped;

tasselled girdle;

boots, knee-high.

I am the story teller:

gold-leaf camels parade

my three foot crown;

prancing deer with

curling antlers

race across my skin.

I am ancient bones:

six dead horses

guard my grave-gate;

spices and mutton

nurture my silence.

I am the young girl:

I am treasure:

twenty-five centuries of

frozen sleep

and now they come to wake me;

warm water seeps through my ice mask,

but I do not smile

as the blue sky greets me.  © Theolyn Cortens 2000

What is a shaman? How far back into history can we trace shamanic work? The answers are startling, intriguing and convincing. They show a firm line from this century leading right back to the Mesolithic. 

But first we go back two thousand, five hundred years, and journey to Siberia.

The Siberian Shamanka (Shaman) showing tattoos

It was the summer of 1993. This was archeologist Natalia Polosmak's fourth season working with her team on the Altai Mountains, where the permafrost is a guardian of ancient secrets.

Diggers reported they had discovered a block of ice in which lay the mummified body of a 25-year-old woman.

Natalia found that this Siberian Ice Maiden was of Scythian descent––a tribe that roamed the steppes throughout the Bronze Age. The grandeur of the burial could only mean she was a princess. She was housed in a small cabin, and its wood has allowed her burial to be dated, indicating that the Ice Maiden was buried in the spring, at some point during the 5th century BCE. The Ice Maiden had intricate designs adorning her skin and lay surrounded by her six horses. Autopsy also revealed that the this young woman had suffered from breast cancer, and was using  cannabis to relieve her pain. 

Reconstruction of the tomb chamber of the Siberian Ice Maiden. Top, above, her costume reconstruction. Both can be seen in the Anokhin Museum.

Her costume was well preserved. Her blouse was wild silk, her full skirt was brilliant dyed. She wore a long cloak of marten fur, knee-high boots and a choker of wooden camels. Her headdress was particularly spectacular, and it seems to consist of her own elongated hair. Alongside her was a polished mirror (used for centuries as a divinatory tool) and the herb coriander, as seeds in a stone dish. 

the deer tattoo
.

It is her tattoos that lead archeologists to believe she was a shaman. She was marked with a deer motif on one of her shoulders, and on her wrist and thumb. 

The Sythians were a fascinating nomadic tribe which, by the time of the ancient Greeks, had settled on the Black Sea. To gain a colourful and beautifully realised picture of that time, try reading Naomi Mitchison's The Corn King and the Spring Queen (1931, available from Amazon), a fabulous story of these ancient peoples.

But the Ice Maiden is by no means the oldest representation of shamanism discovered by archeologists. Shamanic activity and shaman costumes and tools  have been found around the world and indeed, in the United Kingdom. The  power to transcend spirit worlds, and to return with healing and knowledge can be traced into the distant past. In fact, as far back as the Mesolithic Period, around ten thousand years before our times.

I'll be returning to this subject in PART TWO of "What we Know About Pre-historic Shamanism". Watch this space!