One of the most stunning discoveries made in the entire Baltic region is an eight-thousand-year-old grave of a young man found on the Island of Donkalnis at Lake Biržulis, in Samogitia. The clothes of the deceased were decorated with teeth of elk, wild boar and aurochs; several teeth were even squeezed into his nostrils and ears, and placed on his eyes. Other graves from that period in Lithuania do not equal this one in the magnificence of grave contents, thus it is thought that the deceased was a highly prominent person in society and probably had the status of shaman. The fact that the grave has survived is amazing—lying at a depth of only half a metre, it has not been destroyed by modern agricultural equipment or other kinds of human activity. Besides Donkalnis, only three graves with similar grave contents are known in Europe!

The grave is lavishly sprinkled with ochre, and a symbolic stone construction shows that the funerary rituals were spectacular. The woman buried on the right side of the shaman is still a mystery for archaeologists. Her death was not accidental. Buried with her feet bent, perhaps even tied, the woman might have accompanied the shaman to the other world—against her free will. You can write your own interpretation of this double grave in the archaeologist’s diary hanging on the left.