2,000-year-old burial found in Russia near a human sacrifice and a cup to ward off magical threats

Archaeologists in southern Russia have unearthed the 2,000-year-old grave of an elite warrior who was buried with his weapons, horse — and a human sacrifice. The grave and sacrifices were found with other lavish goods, including two gold coins featuring Alexander the Great.

A team found the elite grave in Russia's Kuban region east of the Crimean Peninsula, in a necropolis of more than 150 ancient graves arranged around it. This central placement indicates the man had been a member of the social elite, according to the study, which was published in September in the journal Russian Archaeology .

The evidence of a human sacrifice comes from another burial assemblage beside the warrior's grave. This neighboring burial had the remains of three horses, two cattle, a pig, a dog and a fragment of a human pelvis that seems to have come from a sacrificed person, the researchers wrote.

The two gold coins — one found on the warrior's skeleton and one found nearby — indicate that the burial took place in the early first century B.C., while the location and style of the burial indicated the warrior had been a noble of the Indigenous Maeotian people. At that time, the Maeotians were allied with the neighboring Mithridatic Empire, a Hellenistic-Persian kingdom and the enemy of the expanding Roman Republic .

The researchers think the two gold coins were prestige items, rather than ordinary currency for commerce. "It is likely not money in the conventional sense, but rather a means of storing wealth, akin to a … cryptocurrency," study first author Mikhail Abramzon of the Institute of Archaeology at Russia's Academy of Sciences, told Live Science in an email.

The two gold coins are key to the discovery. One was found in a ritual shaft near the burial in the center of the necropolis; the researchers think it was placed there as an offering to the gods.

The second was found beneath the jaw of the skeleton of the ancient warrior, which indicates it had been placed in the dead man's mouth before the burial and is an example of "Charon's obol" — the traditional ancient Greek payment for the mythical ferryman of the dead.

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