Ancient Mass Grave Reveals a Violent History Where Victims were Tortured

First Posted: Aug 19, 2015 05:47 PM EDT

Violent conflicts in Neolithic Europe are nothing new. However, now researchers have found that these conflicts were far more brutal than previously believed. They've uncovered a 7,000-year-old mass grave that reveals that the victims were murdered and deliberately mutilated.

During the Neolithic period, which occurred between 5600 and 4900 BC, Europeans were only first beginning to farm. For years, researchers have wondered what role war and conflict played during this time period. In fact, it's been particularly unclear whether social tensions were responsible for the termination of this era.

Now, researchers have analyzed the human remains from the mass grave of Schoneck-Kilianstadten (Germany), which was a massacre site that was first found in 2006. The findings reveal that the prehistoric attackers used unprecedented violence on the at least 26 adults and children.

Besides various bone injuries caused by arrows, the victims had massive damage to the head, face and teeth. Some were inflicted on the victims shortly before or after their death. In addition, the attackers systematically broke their victims' legs. This, in particular, points toward torture and deliberate mutilation. Only few female remains were found, which hints that women were not actively involved in the fighting.

The findings reveal not only that these massacres occurred, but that they probably weren't isolated occurrences. The Neolithic massacre sites examined so far are located at some distance from one another, which hints that they were relatively common at this point in time. The point of these occurrences was probably to annihilate entire communities.

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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TagsHuman, Humans, prehistoric humans, human ancestor, Fossil, Skeleton, Grave