Archaeologists in Kazakhstan discovered a burial mound of a girl from the Bronze Age, surrounded by various funerary objects.
She was "buried on her left side, bent," Rinat Zhumataev, an archaeologist who led the excavation and heads the department of archaeology, ethnology and museology at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, told Live Science in a letter. "There were small wire earrings in both ears and a necklace around the neck."
The burial mound contains numerous burial objects, including over a hundred animal bones that may have been used for ceremonial purposes, as well as a carved figure of a frog on a bronze disk.
Although researchers know little about the girl's identity, the wealth of artifacts in her grave reveal hints about her role within her society during the Bronze Age, which spanned Central Asia from 3200 BC. to 1000 BC, according to Oxford Academic.
But one more burial object caught the attention of archaeologists: a bronze disk with the image of a frog in the middle. This find was discovered for the first time in Kazakhstan.
"The frog is associated with the image of a woman during childbirth and the cult of water... but this artifact requires additional study to determine its true meaning," Zhumataev believes.
Source livescience
