Four-thousand-years-old male skeleton unearthed in Tajikistan

DUSHANBE. March 28. KAZINFORM. A unique archeological find has been made in the foothills near the old Tajik village of Tudakavsh, the Kulyab Region, in the country?s southeast. According to Tajik mass media, a group of local residents found a well-preserved ancient male skeleton while doing earth-moving work.

Experts say the skeleton is at least four thousand years old. The man was about two meters tall. On a finger bone there was a ring of unusual shape. The rector of the Kulyab University, Karimdjon Kodiri and his students ? future archaeologists ? went to see the site where the skeleton was found. After preliminary excavation they discovered several clay jars next to the remains. Judging by the skeleton?s facedown posture the specialists that the ancient man was not buried, but died in battle, the specialists said. The chief of the archeology department at the Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences, Yusuf Yakubov, has told Itar-Tass he does not rule out that the human remains and the artifacts found next to it most probably date back to the Bronze Age some 2,500 years B.C. ?In the Kulyab Region, where we have long conducted archaeological excavation quote a few Bronze Age artifacts and monuments have been found, including burial grounds and settlements,? the scholar said. ?Some skeletons were found, too, but such a well-preserved one is probably the first time ever to my recollection.? Yakubov said an expedition would be dispatched to the village of Tudakavsh to study the site where the skeleton was found in greater detail. Tajikistan boasts a great variety of archeological monuments of world renown, such as the Pendzhikent settlement, Takhti-Sangin, and the Buddhist monastery Adjina-Tepa, with a 14-meter-tall clay statue of Buddha, called Buddha in Nirvana; Kazinform has learnt from Itar-Tass.