The Ice Maiden’s preservation is, at the most fundamental level, a demonstration of a scientific principle: that specific physical conditions can arrest or dramatically slow the chemical processes that normally destroy organic materials.

Decomposition — the breakdown of organic matter by bacteria, fungi, and chemical oxidation — requires specific conditions: moisture, oxygen, warmth, and the microorganisms that catalyze the breakdown reactions.

Remove any of these conditions, and decomposition slows dramatically.

Remove all of them — as permafrost does — and decomposition essentially stops.

The permafrost of the Altai and similar environments is, in a literal sense, a time capsule: an environment that preserves materials in the state they entered it.

The Ice Maiden entered her permafrost burial approximately 2,400 to 2,500 years ago, and she remained in the state of preservation produced by the embalming and the cold for the entirety of that period.