Speleoarcheologist Vladimir Yurin has unearthed a unique burial ground of ancient people in vicinities of the capital of South Ural.

      Recently he returned from another archaeological expedition to basalt caves near Balandino Settlement. Local school pupils helped him to look for and process the unique finds.

      While clearing a pathway in one of the caves the researcher found some fragments of ancient ceramics and a small 4 cm long bronze tweezers, which can be dated to the 4th -5th century BC.

      “Nobody has ever found such tweezers in the Chelyabinsk Region. I attentively studied archaeological literature and came to the conclusion that similar things were found in burial grounds of Udmurtia, and in one of the burial grounds in the northwestern part of Bashkiria. In the cave I also found fragments of iron twisted wire” - Vladimir Yurin explained.

      According to the archeologist’s assumptions, in this cave there was a tomb of a priest, or a shaman, a doctor, a jeweler, or some woman, who was a notable person’s wife, since common people were not buried in caves. The tweezers could as well belong to a Turkic male, who used these tweezers to pinch his beard.