1,900-year-old double Scythian burial in Ukraine contains toxic red mineral
Ukrainian archaeologists have discovered red pieces of cinnabar – a mineral form of the highly toxic chemical mercury sulfide – in a 1,900-year-old double burial of two Scythian women, according to a recent study.
The dark red pigment, also called vermillion, has also been found in other prehistoric tombs in Europe and may have been sprinkled on the newly dead to give them a reddish “breath of life.”
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“We know that a crypt could function for up to 50 years in a row,” says the first author of the study Olena Dzneladzearchaeologist at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, told Live Science in an email. “We know for sure from excavations that Late Scythian crypts were opened and secondary and tertiary burials took place.”
THE Scythians were a diverse but culturally related group of nomads who lived in the Eurasian steppe stretching from Ukraine to China from around 800 BC to 300 AD. The double burial with cinnabar dates from the first to early second centuries AD, towards the end of the culture.
Traces of cinnabar were found in a single grave containing the remains of two women at Chervony Mayak, a late Scythian cemetery located in the south of the country on the banks of the Dnieper River. One of the women was between 35 and 45 years old when she died, and the remains of a younger woman, aged 18 to 20, were later buried in the same grave. The women were buried with several grave goods, including beads, pottery and metal objects.
The site was discovered in the 1970s, and red bumps have been found in some graves since 2011. But the study by Dzneladze and colleagues, published in 2025 in the journal Antiquityis the first to identify the pieces as cinnabar, and is the first time that cinnabar has been scientifically identified in a Late Scythian tomb.
Toxic pigment
Cinnabar is highly toxic to humans, although the authors of the new study say people who used it in first-century Ukraine may not have known this.
In some prehistoric societies, cinnabar was used in the same way as clay pigment. ocher (iron oxide) for body paints, cave paintings and rituals. But while ocher is not toxic, cinnabar causes mercury poisoning, especially when heated and its toxic gases inhaled. Mercury then builds up in the body and can cause tremors, breathing problems, or even death. prehistoric people who were frequently exposed to cinnabar have extremely high mercury levels.
At Chervony Mayak, cinnabar may also have had other uses, the researchers wrote, including as a cosmetic or to slow decomposition by resisting bacteria.
Traces of the mineral were found in only three of Chervony Mayak’s 177 tombs; Scythian burials elsewhere do not contain the red mineral. However, researchers believe it may have been overlooked in other late Scythian tombs.
“Often in archaeological field reports and publications we read a small description that a “red pigment”, “a piece of ocher” or a “blush” was found in the burial, [but] without clarification or analysis,” Dzneladze said. “It could be different substances.”
Cosmetic objective?
All three cinnabar-containing tombs at Chervony Mayak house women, suggesting the mineral may also have a cosmetic purpose. Dzneladze said that grave goods in male and female Scythian tombs were distinct, so “we can attribute it to the complex of female grave goods.”
“The use of cinnabar also for cosmetic purposes should not be excluded… Ocher and other mineral dyes have also been found in [Late Scythian] burials of women in pyxis [vessels]coffins and shells used to store and dilute cosmetics,” she said.
Kaare Lund Rasmussenprofessor emeritus at the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy at the University of Southern Denmark, was not involved in the study but conducted research use of cinnabar in medieval Europewhere it was thought to be an effective medical treatment for leprosy and syphilis.
He told Live Science in an email that cinnabar had been found in earlier prehistoric burials in Europe and so it made sense that the late Scythian culture also used it, perhaps as a pigment.
He added that dyes like cinnabar and ocher had been found in tombs from the Mesolithic period (Middle Stone Age) in Europe 15,000 years ago, after the period of intense ice that covered much of northern Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum.
“In Denmark, I remember a beautiful grave, a mother and her young child buried together, the child lying on the wing of a swan, covered in red ochre,” he said.
Dzneladze, O., Sikoza, D., Symonenko, O., Polit, B., Czech-Błońska, R., Miśta-Jakubowska, E. and Siuda, R. (2025). Mysterious red: cinnabar from the Chervony Mayak cemetery, Ukraine. Antiquity, 99 (406). https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2025.32
