The mountainous Altai region of Central Asia is one of the most remote locations on Earth, extending across swaths of southern Siberia in Russia, but also parts of Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan. This forbidding landscape of towering snow-capped peaks and rolling steppes was once home to the ancient Pazyryk people, a confederation of nomadic warriors whose culture dates to roughly 500 B.C.

Like other Eurasian nomads, the Pazyryk didn’t leave behind any written records, but archeologists have discovered some remarkably preserved Pazyryk tombs called kurgans that contain clues about their long-lost society and beliefs.

The most incredible find came in 1993, when archeologist Natalia Polosmak and her team excavated a Pazyryk tomb that had lain untouched under the permafrost for 2,500 years. Inside a handsome, larch-wood coffin was the reposing mummy of a 25-year-old Pazyryk woman.

Known as the “Siberian Ice Maiden” or the “Princess of Ukok,” the young woman’s skin was so well-preserved that the stunning tattoos on her shoulder and hand were still clearly visible. One depicted a magical creature with a griffin's beak, a deer’s head and majestic antlers tipped with flowers.

Thirty years after her discovery, the Ice Maiden and her gorgeously preserved tomb goods continue to fascinate historians hoping to understand more about Pazyryk culture, art and customs.

The Ice Maiden was found inside an underground chamber constructed from larch wood (a type of evergreen tree) and covered with a mound of rocks. When Polosmak and her team arrived at the Ukok plateau in 1993, some of the rocks had been moved, a sign that looters likely entered the chamber centuries ago.

The ancient thieves actually performed a valuable service, says Petya Andreeva, an art historian at Vassar College who specializes in the art and artifacts of Central Asia. Yes, they probably plundered the tomb for gold, but once there was a hole in the outside chamber, water was able to seep into the tomb and freeze into a giant block of ice that never melted.

“It was kind of a fortuitous circumstance,” says Andreeva, “because it formed an ice layer that preserved everything beneath. There are carpets in the tomb that look better than my carpets at home.”

Everything in the tomb was literally frozen in time, including the Ice Maiden’s tattoos. Andreeva says that tattooing was part of many ancient cultures, but no surviving examples are as detailed and sharply rendered as the Ice Maiden’s tattoos, because none were so well-preserved.

Most of the Ice Maiden’s tattoos—inked with soot and bone needles—were drawn in an ancient artistic motif that Andreeva calls “animal style.” Some of her tattoos depict fantastical beasts, like the griffin-deer, that were formed by fusing various “signature” animal parts together. Others show the transformation of a single animal from a goat to a leopard to a deer.

Andreeva says that similar zoomorphic motifs are found on ancient artifacts belonging to other nomadic cultures in Central Asia. Almost every object found inside the Ice Maiden’s tomb was decorated with hybrid creatures, including an impressive, three-foot headdress mounted with dangling griffins. Even the six horses buried alongside the Ice Maiden were apparently meant to “transform” in the afterlife—they were found wearing goat masks.

Zoomorphic imagery is usually attributed to the Pazyryk’s religious beliefs and shamanic practices, but Andreeva thinks there may also be psychological or even environmental explanations for the animal motifs.

“The transformation of one animal into another was certainly at the heart of their spiritual beliefs,” says Andreeva, author of Fantastic Fauna from China to Crimea. “But these people were nomadic, which meant that their lives were in a constant state of flux. So it’s possible that a psychology of mobility was actually transferred or reflected in that image system, which then made it into their afterlife beliefs.”

Paleoclimatologists also think that the Altai region underwent significant climate change during the Pazyryk period, which may have led to ecological as well as political instability.

“With the disproportionately high number of 'monsters' or zoomorphic beings in Pazyryk and other Central Asian art, it’s like they are trying to release their anxiety or reassert their control over the environment through these images,” Andreeva says.

The Ice Maiden was clearly a figure of importance, because Pazyryk women were seldom afforded such an opulent burial. When archaeologist Sergei Rudenko first excavated Pazyryk tombs in the 1920s, the only female mummies he found were concubines sacrificed to join their royal lovers in death.

The fact that the Ice Maiden is buried alone and accompanied by six horses means that she was a member of the tribe’s “elite core,” says Andreeva. Male Pazyryk chiefs and military generals were buried with as many as 50 horses, which were sacrificed for the honor.

By studying the Ice Maiden’s mummified remains, scientists believe that she was 5 foot 6, between 20 and 30 years old, and likely died from breast cancer. She was very thin at the end and was likely carried a long distance by her people to the burial site on the Ukok plateau. That’s another indicator to Andreeva of the Ice Maiden’s elite status.

The Ice Maiden was dressed in a beautiful silk blouse, and her tomb goods included colorful textiles made from cotton and linen, and rugs woven with Persian motifs. The silk came from trade with China and the rugs, if not from Persia itself, indicated that the Pazyryk nomads were a “worldly” people in contact with the great kingdoms of the day.

One popular theory is that the Ice Maiden was a shaman or spiritual leader, but Andreeva is skeptical. Shamanism is widely practiced today in Altai communities, but it’s unclear if those traditions and beliefs go back thousands of years to the time of the Pazyryk. Andreeva thinks even if the Ice Maiden was some kind of religious figure, her tomb tells a more complex story.

“For Pazyryk people who were being buried in this ceremonial formal manner, it was of the utmost importance to present two distinct images that were valued by the community,” says Andreeva. “The first image is that of the proper steppe warrior, which is communicated by the zoomorphic visual language. The second image is of somebody who is more worldly and cosmopolitan, and who has managed to make the community more connected to the outside world.”