Archeologists have unearthed a suit of armor made almost completely out of animal bones near the city of Omsk in Siberia.
The armor is believed to be between 3,500 and 3,900 years old and to have been worn by an elite warrior, according to The Huffington Post. Boris Konikov, the curator of the excavation, said the discovery is important because of the high value the armor had in its time.
"It was more precious than life, because it saved life," Konikov said. "Secondly, it was found in a settlement, and this has never happened before."
Konikov's team found the armor near the Irtysh River at a sanatorium site where a five star hotel is set to be built, io9 reported.
While artifacts from the Krotov culture are usually found in this area, the bone armor mostly resembles artifacts created in the Samus-Seyminskaya culture.
The archaeologists believe the armor came from this culture, which originated close to the Altai Mountains, but would later move to the Omsk area, The Huffington Post reported.
The plates of the armor consist of small fragments of bone that were joined together. The archeologists believe the armor might have been a gift, a spoil of war, or an item of exchange, and that there was a good chance that it was buried at a place of worship, io9 reported.
Yury Gerasimov, research fellow of the Omsk branch of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, believes the armor was used by a "hero" or warrior who had special fighting skills, and that it would have "given good protection from weapons that were used at the time - bone and stone arrowheads, bronze knives, spears tipped with bronze, and bronze axes."
"Such armor needs constant care," Gerasimov added. "At the moment we can only fantasize - who dug it into the ground and for what purpose. Was it some ritual or sacrifice? We do not know yet."
Scientists are currently studying the armor to figure out what kind(s) of animals the bones came from.
