A Canadian professor, for the sake of science, covered his entire body with Scythian tattoos from Siberian graves (3 photos)

A Toronto scientist has copied tattoos from a 2,500-year-old Scythian warrior mummy found in Siberia.

Dave Mazierski, an illustrator and biomedical specialist, set out to reproduce the ancient designs using modern tattooing techniques.

The scientist found the design in a 1970 book by anthropologist Sergei Ivanovich Rudenko, enlarged the images on a computer, and created a sketch based on them that precisely replicated the placement of the tattoos on the warrior's body.





His supervisor, Steve Gilbert, turned out to be not only a big paleontology fan but also a tattoo artist and gave Dave his first tattoo—a dragon on his right shoulder.



"Initially, I wasn't trying to turn myself into a frozen Scythian. I just thought these drawings were unique and beautiful." "But now that I've borrowed all of his known tattoos (I still hope that the forgotten archives of the Hermitage will turn up some drawings from his left hand... I'm betting he had a bird on his left thumb, too), I've become that man in a way," Mazierski told the curator of the Scythian culture exhibition at the British Museum.



According to the scholar, only a few people understand the origin of the designs; most mistakenly attribute them to other cultures, including the Celts, Vikings, and ancient Chinese.