Season 08 Episode 18: The Hardest Hue to Hold

Unexplained

iHeartPodcasts

Science, Society & Culture, History

4.4 • 9.4K Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the early 2000s, a story emerged online about a mysterious sarcophagus unearthed by miners in a remote Siberian village back in 1969. Inside, so they say, was the eerily preserved body of a woman, later dubbed the Tisul Princess—a discovery swiftly seized by Soviet authorities and buried in secrecy.

Decades later, another astonishing find—the Ice Maiden of the Altai Mountains—raised even more questions about ancient civilizations, lost histories, and the blurred line between legend and reality...

Written by Diane Hope and produced by Richard MacLean Smith

Find us at youtube.com/@unexplainedpod, tiktok.com/@unexplainedpodcast, twitter @unexplainedpod, facebook.com/unexplainedpodcast or www.unexplainedpodcast.com for more info. Thank you for listening.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, it's Richard McLean Smith here, not the imposter you've been listening to on the podcasts, the real one.
0:09.1	Join me for Unexplained TV at YouTube.com forward slash unexplained pod.
0:15.8	Music Early in the noughties, a strange story cropped up in Russian online forums,
0:32.6	originating from a remote region of Siberia during the time of the Soviet Union.
0:38.8	The tale begins one September day in 1969,
0:43.2	near the village of Arzavchik in the Tiesel district of Kimmervo,
0:48.0	a region of southwestern Siberia.
0:51.2	It is a place of wild splendor,
0:53.9	birch forests and bears, but our story takes place deep underground,
1:00.1	70 metres to be precise. Local miners are hard at work, hammering away at the coal seam. It glistens
1:08.4	darkly under their headlamps. This stay is just like any other down in the
1:13.8	dank grime as the soot-covered miners swing their pickaxes heartily. Until that is, one miner takes an
1:21.9	especially heavy swing at the coal face, only for it to suddenly crumble away right in front of him.
1:29.7	When the air finally clears of dust, the men direct their torches to the face to find it has
1:36.3	been replaced by a small hollow, about five metres deep, and in the middle of it lies what
1:43.4	appears for all the world to be a sarcophagus.
1:47.9	It has a strange, unearthly appearance, long and narrow, and seemingly made of marble.
1:54.5	It is covered in intricate carvings.
1:58.0	The stunned men tentatively examine the peculiar object.
2:01.6	They wonder if they should try to open it, but decide in the end to first inform their superiors about it.
2:08.6	In its office above ground, head of the local geology team, Alexander Masaligan,
2:15.6	orders the men to bring the sepulchral artifact to the surface for closer inspection.
	...

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