Posted on 12/12/2015 8:47:35 PM PST by SunkenCiv
A gruesome discovery in eastern France casts new light on violent conflicts that took lives -- and sometimes just limbs -- around 6,000 years ago.
Excavations of a 2-meter-deep circular pit in Bergheim revealed seven human skeletons plus a skull section from an infant strewn atop the remains of seven human arms, say anthropologist Fanny Chenal of Antea Archáologie in Habsheim, France, and her colleagues.
Two men, one woman and four children were killed, probably in a raid or other violent encounter, the researchers report in the December Antiquity. Their bodies were piled in a pit that already contained a collection of left arms hacked off by axes or other sharp implements. Scattered hand bones at the bottom of the pit suggest that hands from the severed limbs had been deliberately cut into pieces.
It's unclear who the arms belonged to. All the Bergheim skeletons have both their arms except for a man with skull damage caused by violent blows. His skeleton lacks a left arm, the researchers say. They have been unable to determine whether that arm ended up in the pit.
Chenal's group doesn't know whether attackers targeted victims' left arms for a particular reason. The arms could have been taken as war trophies, the team speculates.
Radiocarbon dating of two bones indicates that individuals in the Bergheim pit lived roughly 6,000 years ago. From 6,500 to 5,500 years ago, during what's known as the Neolithic period, one of the many ways of disposing of the dead in farming communities throughout Central and Western Europe was in circular pits.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
Seven former leftists are now right-wingers (if they survived).
Wasn't left-handedness one of the signs of witchcraft back then?
Obviously victims of climate change.
L
So gauche.
“’ve always felt that the story of human origins is more bizarre than scientists, historians, creationists, evolutionists and others imagine.”
And maybe more bizarre than we can imagine - to paraphrase jbs haldane.
Do they know who did it? Their descendants should pay reparations!/s
The left hand did not know what the right hand was doing.
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