Archaeologists in the Chelyabinsk region have investigated a complex of children's burials near Arkaim. The burials were made 3, 5 thousand years ago.
Experts carried out excavations near the Sintashta River in the Bredinsky District. They managed to find 10 grave pits, which contained the remains of children's skeletons and equipment, and two pits without bone remains. Each burial contained one, two or three ceramic vessels, dice and jewelry - beads with a bronze bracelet. The pits were covered with log decks, and some had earthen pavements. In ancient times, they were crypts. According to experts, the age of the buried children is from 0 to 5 years.
“Probably, children of this age in Sintashta society had a special status, were associated with special protective rituals. Probably,“special children”were not yet associated with initiation rites for initiation into the world of adult life. This indicates that in the Bronze Age children of different ages received the appropriate skills and education, - quotes the words of the archaeologist Tatyana Malyutina, the regional Ministry of Culture.
Meanwhile, many ceramic vessels that accompanied children of the Bronze Age to the afterlife contain unique symbols - pictograms.
"Particularly striking is the vessel, at the bottom of which there is an ornament in the form of two Roman units and a cross between them. This can even be taken for traces of the first writing, but, most likely, these are special ornamental signs or a schematic representation of, for example, a four-wheeled carriage," she said head of the museum department of the "Arkaim" reserve Maria Makurova.
It should be noted that the opening of children's burials in itself surprised specialists. The fact is that work on Sintashta has been carried out since the 1970s, then for a long time this complex was considered exhausted and stood abandoned. Research was resumed there in the 2000s.
