People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 February 1897 — Old Russian Burial Mounds. [ARTICLE]

Old Russian Burial Mounds.

A French archaeologist, Baron de Bay, has been occupied for some months past in the neighborhood of Tomsk, Siberia, in excavating kurgans, the old turtle-back burying mounds found in many parts of Russia. Fifteen of these kurgans have been opened, and a curious and significant discovery made. Those mounds, which date back to before the Russian conquest of Siberia, contain quantities of beads, earrings, knives with artistically finished bone hafts, copper kettles, engraved rings and silver ornaments, bracelets, etc. The oldest of these belong to the thirteenth century. These kurgans, on the other hand, which date only from about three centuries ago (Tomsk was founded in 1604) contain comparatively little of anything, hardly any articles of metal, except a few of-the rudest forms of wire rings and earrings and for the most part arrow-heads, knives, buckles, etc., of bone, showing a much poorer stage of civilization. —London Standard.