Posted on 07/28/2015 9:40:40 AM PDT by BenLurkin
The bodies of juveniles, young adults and middle-age adults were packed together in the house...before it burnt down. Anthropologists who studied the remains say a "prehistoric disaster," possibly an epidemic of some sort, killed these people.
The site, whose modern-day name is "Hamin Mangha," dates back to a time before writing was used in the area, when people lived in relatively small settlements, growing crops and hunting for food. The village contains the remains of pottery, grinding instruments, arrows and spearheads, providing information on their way of life
...
An anthropological team at Jilin University in China is studying the prehistoric remains, trying to determine what happened to these people. The team has published a second study, in Chinese, in the Jilin University Journal – Social Sciences edition, on their finds.
The Jilin team found that the people in that house died as the result of a "prehistoric disaster" that resulted in dead bodies being stuffed into the house.
The dead came in faster than they could be buried. "The human bone accumulation in F40 was formed because ancient humans put remains into the house successively and stacked centrally," wrote team leaders Ya Wei Zhou and Hong Zhu in the study.
The team found that about half of the individuals were between 19 and 35 years of age. No remains of older adults were found.
The ages of the victims at Hamin Mangha are similar to those found in another prehistoric mass burial, which was previously unearthed in modern-day Miaozigou in northeast China, the researchers noted.
"This similarity may indicate that the cause of the Hamin Mangha site was similar to that of the Miaozigou sites. That is, they both possibly relate to an outbreak of an acute infectious disease," wrote Zhou and Zhu.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Well, I guess Hannibal Lecter or even Jack the Ripper weren’t all that new in their own time.
I learn a lot here, myself, and after a few years here will never look at a photo or video quite the same. Now, I'm always checking shadows, focus, and for things that don't appear right, and with a little examination, there is often more than just a picture there.
Thank you, FRiend, for your kindness! :-)
19-35 YO mass corpses sounds like a severe outbreak of socialists somewhere nearby.
I hear you. If it was an epidemic there’d be a lot more children than adults.
“I hear you. If it was an epidemic there’d be a lot more children than adults.”
Unless it was like the Spanish Flu.
Within the context of human society, it seems more likely to me that a stronger force raided the village for slaves, and left behind the corpses of adult and near-adult males.
Still just guessing, though.
My take on the body heap...
The youngsters developed an early form of rap music and the oldsters decided to get ahead of the cultural rot with a bit of old school eliminationism.
I suspect if they had found injuries they would have mentioned it. The fact that it was “juveniles, young adults, and middle aged” people suggests something to me. As they do not report elderly people, I suspect that it was a major epidemic of something. The elderly had probably already been subject to an earlier epidemic of that germ, and so had immunity when it came around again after many decades. Perhaps they will be able to analyze some parts that were not totally destroyed by the fire to find the disease source.
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