The Altai Mountain region

Evidence for “Scythian” cultural presence in the Altai mountains (the region where present-day Russia, Mongolia, China, and Kazakhstan meet) is present primarily through a set of kurgan burials.

Forensic reconstruction of the king and queen from Arzhan-2 in their burial outfits (CC BY-SA 4.0 by Е.В. Веселовская & Р.М. Галеев)

Illustration of a horseman on a carpet from a Pazyryk burial, now in the Hermitage Museum. (Public domain)

Illustration of a reconstruction of the individual buried in Olon-Kurin-Gol 10. Image by Dimitri Pozdniakov, included as Fig.1 in Unterlander et al., “Ancestry and Demographics and Descendants of Iron Age Nomads of the Eurasian Steppe,” Nature Communications, vol. 8, 14615 (2017). doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms14615. (CC BY 4.0 by Dimitri Pozdniakov in the cited article)