A rudimentary razor blade used by men 4,000 years ago has been unearthed on the site of an ancient settlement in Siberia.
     Vyacheslav Molodin, the deputy head of the Siberian Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, said experts were excited by the find in the Vengerovo region of Novosibirsk, the first such discovery there.
     Molodin said: "The site was long ago classified as belonging to the developed Bronze era but the bronze object was the first found there. It is a thin bronze plate, sharpened on all sides. [Razor] is a draft name for the object and we shouldn't understand that it was an instrument they only used for shaving. More likely it was a more universally-used tool."
     Razors were used by men in many Bronze Age cultures and, generally, they were made of bronze and were oval in shape but had sharp edges. In particular, they are often linked with members of an early Celtic culture called Hallstatt, in Stiermarken, Austria, that spanned Iron and Bronze Ages. Men used razors as status symbols, and many were personal to their owners. Some were elaborately decorated, and often buried with their owners. A number of oval blades with small finger holes have been found across Europe, believing to date from this period.
     One research paper published by the the UK's University of Exeter in 2008 argued that they were a status symbol for many males of the time.
     Meanwhile, other bronze items were discovered during a separate archaeological expedition, to the Krasnozersky district of Novosibirsk region - a popular site for archaeologists.
     Vladimir Sumin, head of the archaeology department of the Novosibirsk Region Cultural Heritage Centre, said: "We found a Scythian burial mound, of which there are only a few in the region. There we found bronze bells and parts of a harness from the early Scythian time."

Edited from The Siberian Times (14 November 2014), Mail Onine (17 November 2014)