There is a final thing to say about the Ice Maiden, and it is both the most obvious and the most profound: she exists, in the form in which we know her, because of ice.

The ice that formed in the burial chamber of her kurgan — the result of the water infiltration through the robber’s shaft above her tomb — was the single most important factor in her preservation.

Without that ice, her skin and soft tissues would have deteriorated within weeks or months of her burial.

The tattoos would have vanished with the skin that bore them.

The body in the coffin would have become a skeleton indistinguishable, in most respects, from any other ancient skeleton.