Discovery of a unique copper cudgel at Kutuluk, in a group of burial mounds near the central Russian city of Samara... Pavel Kuznetsov of the Institute of History and Archaeology of Povolzhye made the discovery while excavating Kurgan 4 at Kutuluk. The kurgan, about 69 feet in diameter, has been radiocarbon dated to 2500-2300 B.C. Its main burial held the skeleton of a man, estimated to have been 35 to 40 years old and about five feet, eight inches tall. Resting on the skeleton's bent left elbow was a 25-inch-long copper object. Its blade is diamond-shaped in cross-section, with sharp edges, but the end is not pointed. Traces indicate that the five-inch-long handle was wrapped, probably with a quarter-inch-wide leather strap. Kuznetsov knew of no similar objects from Bronze Age Eurasian steppe cultures, but found a striking parallel in the Rig-Veda, an ancient Indian collection of hymns to the gods compiled ca. 1500-1200 B.C. in the Punjab region of India and Pakistan. It mentions repeatedly the vajra the weapon of Indra, one of the most important deities: Oh, Indra, getting your support Let us take cudgels, Like...vajra, And will gain a victory over all the rivals According to the Rig-Veda, the vajra was four sided and had a cow-skin strap. It was called "golden vajra" and "glistening vajra." The Kutuluk artifact is the only object ever found corresponding to the vajra, a metal weapon used to deliver heavy blows. Even the leather wrapping of the handle is similar. It is likely, Kuznetsov concludes, that the Kutuluk artifact was a ritual weapon like the legendary vajra
This is so fun! It only proves that indo europeans migrated from Somewhere in Kaukasus westwards and southeastwards! That weaponry is mentioned\found fits perfectly with the fact that arian languages in india are closely related to european languages.
Hmm. Will have to do some checking (not entirely up to speed on the waves of migrations in that area of the world, but did study some aspects of the Kurgans whilst covering the death and burial aspects of my degree), but I'm thinking the dates are a touch too recent for something like this to be taken as proof of migration. The usual staples of the migration from the Near East argument are generally linked to major shifts in subsistence or culture (ie the start of the Neolithic) several thousand years before that find. For that club to be acceptable proof of the migration, you'd want the material culture in a lot of the kurgan burials contemporary to that one to be very similar in terms of artefacts to the areas the migration came from, thus showing a new influx bringing these artefacts with them. Either that or you'd want a chronological line of these cudgels running from a point in time where you can prove that such a migration occured, to the time of that find. However, since neither are found, and the cudgel, thus far, is the only one of it's kind found there I would suggest that it represents the one of the following - 1) As the artefact was found in the primary burial of a kurgan, and a reasonable sized one at that, we can consider this a higher status individual. (Will have to check on dates since kurgans were used for a long period of time, but pretty certain this falls into the date range where the kurgan builders were a fairly egalitarian [in archaeological terms] people, which whatever status was earned being reflected in the burial, with predominantly only high status adults being accorded primary burials with kurgans raised over them.) Since it is a higher status individual, there's the possibility that what we're looking at here is a status item that's been traded/exchanged several times and made its way to the area/deceased through the usual high status exchange mechanisms, much like the skull of the barbary ape found in a later period the Irish Navan complex. That quite neatly explains the fact that no others have been found and is reasonable enough given the dates. 2) The excavator fell prone to a rather common archaeological mis-step. Just because you can only find a parallel for a particular artefact in one place a long ways away, it doesn't necessarily follow that the artefact you're holding is linked to that parallel. There's always the possibility for indiginous creation, especially when dealing with relatively simple objects. A high status person saying 'I'd like to have something like this made so I can club trout to death with something shiny...' Personally I think the first option is much more likely if, and it's a big if, the object in question is a vajra. I'd be very interested in seeing some use-wear analysis of the cudgel to see if it was ever put to use and for what. And then to see if there is any contemporary evidence at all for similar items in non-metallic material in the Kurgans. I'll admit that's unlikely though, since there's no preservation of wood in the kurgan burials, and they're not the kind of sites I'd expect to find waterlogged very frequently.
scaythe, Good points, what do you know about the "Viking" mummies of China? http://www.meshrep.com/PicOfDay/mummies/mummies.htm Makes you wonder what we're going to find in Asia/Central Asia when we really start looking.
