Ancient stone slab hints at lunar calendar use, archaeologists say

KHAKASSIA, Russia (MNTV) — Archaeologists in Russia’s Khakassia region have uncovered a stone slab bearing a unique image that may point to early use of a lunar calendar by ancient Siberian cultures.

The slab was found at the Itkol II burial mound and dates to the late third millennium BC, according to the Center for Rescue Archaeology at the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

It depicts a stylized face with 18 segmented figures appearing to hang from it.

Seven of the figures are arranged around the eyes, nose and mouth, while 11 are placed on the headdress.

Researchers said their form matches “moon-shaped” stone pendants previously discovered in Okunev culture graves, believed to have been ritual elements of ceremonial dress.

“The number of ‘pendants’ and their arrangement in the composition correlate with key patterns of the lunar calendar,” researchers said, reinforcing the theory that ancient Siberians used symbolic imagery to track the phases of the moon.

The kurgan, dated to 2880–2630 BC, consists of a stone enclosure made of vertical slabs and contains nine burials.

While most of the graves were nearly empty, archaeologists recovered a rare bone arrowhead straightener — an unusual find for Okunev culture sites.

The Okunev culture was a Bronze Age pastoral society that inhabited the Minusinsk Basin along the middle Yenisei River, in what is now Khakassia, southern Krasnoyarsk Krai and Tuva.

First identified in 1928, the culture is best known for its distinctive stone burial mounds and ritual artifacts.