Everything but the faces (Image: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas)
Posted on 08/17/2012 5:42:09 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
An unusual cluster of Stone Age skulls with smashed-in faces has been found carefully separated from the rest of their skeletons. They appear to have been dug up several years after being buried with their bodies, separated, then reburied.
Collections of detached skulls have been dug up at many Stone Age sites in Europe and the Near East -- but the face-smashing is a new twist that adds further mystery to how these societies related to their dead...
No one knows why Neolithic societies buried clusters of skulls -- often near or underneath settlements. Some think it was a sign of ancestral veneration. "When people started living together [during the Neolithic period], they needed a social cement," says Ibañez. Venerating ancestors might have been a way of doing this. But the violence demonstrated towards the skulls in the latest cluster suggests a different story.
The 10,000-year-old skulls were found in Syria. Like those found in other caches, they have been cleanly separated from their spines, suggesting they were collected from dead bodies that had already begun to decompose. Patterns on the bone indicate that some had been decomposing for longer than others, making it likely that they were all gathered together for a specific purpose.
Most of the skulls belonged to adult males between 18 and 30 years old. One -- belonging to a child -- was left intact; one was smashed to pieces; the remaining nine lacked facial bones... His team believes the facial bones were smashed out with a stone and brute force. "There were no traces of cutting," he says...
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Everything but the faces (Image: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas)
Probably had it coming...
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks Renfield. |
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"I'm crushing your head. Crush, crush crush."
Cuts down on the zombies.
Just ask around, it's still done today - plenty.
The Vatican, the Paris crypts, Skull & Bones, etc.
Same reasons, too.
” but the face-smashing is a new twist “
The “Knock out” game has a lot of history?
There were muzzies back then? Who knew?
I know a couple of people who need to be dug up and have their faces smashed in.
Archaeologists of the future go through a hotel and surmise that we prayed to a toilet.
If they do not have a face, they cannot lie or accuse you in the other world.
Native American women claimed to have stuck an awl in the ears of Custer after his death so he would listen better in the next world, because he did not listen to the Indian in this life. Legend reported in Nathaniel Philbrick’s bio of Custer.
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but the "Knock Out" game IS history.
;’)
Must have had a zombie attack and found the only way to kill them was by smashing their faces. So to keep further zombies from rising from the grave, they had to dig up their skulls and smash their faces in.
Or at least that’s how I picture the screenplay to go.
My heart, my mother; my heart, my mother! My heart which brought me into being! Do not witness against me at the judgment. [ancient Egyptian prayer]
“but the “Knock Out” game IS history.”
Obviously
If this is a “one off” thing, then I don’t see why it had to be a culture that done it.
It could have been some weirdo with a bizarro cult. Lord knows we get enough of that sort of thing in this time too.
Someone like Jim Jones, or that Jap dude with the nerve gas, or Applegate and his suicide sneekers.
Nohing cultural about ONE SINGLE SITE with smashed skulls.
Maybe the bodies were under a building.
Fossils are taken out of an exploration site with a brush, typically.
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