27,000 Year-Old Grave of Two Babies Found (Austria)

Reuters/Yahoo News ^ | 9-24-2005

[blam]

Reuters - Fri Sep 23,11:08 AM ET A more than 27,000 year-old grave with the bodies of two babies is pictured near Krems in Lower Austria September 23, 2005.

Archaeologists of the Prehistoric Commission of the Austrian Academy of Scienses (OeAW) excavated the bodies which were covered with an omoplate of a mammoth. This is the oldest grave ever found in Austria. REUTERS/HO/OeAW Praehistorische Kommission

[Drammach]

Sometime about 120,000 years ago, our ancestors stopped leaving their dead laying where they dropped, and began burying them underground. Why do you suppose they started this practice? What was their "reasoning?"

Survival..

This is just a "logical" guess, not a scientific opinion from a well respected source..

If you bury your dead, scavengers can't get to them..
If scavengers can't get to them, they don't "learn" to acquire a taste for human flesh..
It does not become a recognized part of the scavenger menu..

Couple this with the dangerous nature of an armed human, or worse, an armed group of humans, and scavengers ( and predators ) begin to develop an "aversion" to humans, whether singly or in groups..

You don't want hyenas to develop a "taste" for you, or your family, or tribe.. ( except maybe Mukoo.. He's a jerk and steals your food sometimes..)
And sometimes Hyenas don't wait until you're dead.. A hungry Hyena will attack if you're alone, and weak, and seemingly defenseless..
Likewise with predators.. once they learn that humans are easy prey, human becomes the "snack de jour"...
Human is much easier to hunt than antelope.. It may not taste as good as pig, but pigs have tusks and can hurt you..

Choosing prey is a learned behaviour for both predator and scavenger..
Burial is a logical action encouraged by self-interest..

[To Hell With Poverty]

There are all kinds of ways to date a burial site, besides carbon dating. For example, if there are tools or other cultural artifacts nearby they can help to establish a timeframe for the burials. Also soil level samples contain elements, either mineral or organic, that can reveal things like volcanic eruptions or pollen from common plants of the era.

[shuckmaster]

I think 27,000 years before the present would mean they are anatomically modern human beings, not Neanderthals,

You're probably right. Modern humans were starting to move into Eastern Europe about 50,000 years ago and would have been in Austria by then. At 27,000 years ago, you are at the extreme tail end of the Neanderthals and by that time they were limited to extreme southwestern France.

[zoddent]

"somehow mankind crawled from Aussie land, skipped across indoneasia, polpulated China, then Eorope,

Perhaps you should look at Austria on a map before you make a bigger fool of yourself."

LMAO

first good laugh of my dad, needed it too :)

[Lazamataz]

If this is from 9/23/05, and they are still in the grave, how were they able to date it ?

Same way you date anything else. Get its attention, pay it a few nice compliments, make it laugh a little on occasion, then see what it's going Friday night.

[Gardener]

It even looks like they may have been conjoined at the head to me. If so, I would suspect that IF they were born alive it's highly likely that they were believed to be a bad/evil omen or some such.

Very interesting.

[shuckmaster]

Sometime about 120,000 years ago, our ancestors stopped leaving their dead laying where they dropped, and began burying them underground. Why do you suppose they started this practice? What was their "reasoning?"

From 120,000 to 60,000 years ago, our ancestors existed nearly 100% as beachcombers along the shores of east Africa and southern shores of Arabia and Asia. Perhaps they started the habit of burying the dead to keep from feeding the sand crabs?

[sandydipper]

Babies? Maybe little adults?

[muleskinner]

Don't believe everything you read on the internet. Esp. by folks who sound authoritarian, and claim the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid predate Egyptian history. There are construction marks and such.

[blam]

"Don't believe everything you read on the internet. Esp. by folks who sound authoritarian, and claim the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid predate Egyptian history. There are construction marks and such."

Is it okay to believe a professor of geology/geophysics?

Dr. Robert Schoch says the Sphinx is much older than previously dated.

[blam]

Discover Infants' Remains Mon Sep 26, 9:42 AM ET

VIENNA, Austria - Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of two newborns dating back 27,000 years while excavating a hillside in northern Austria, the scientist in charge of the project said Monday.

The find made last week near the Danube River city of Krems is important because the newborns were buried beneath mammoth bones and with a string of 31 beads — suggesting that the internment involved some sort of ritual, said Christine Neugebauer-Maresch, the project's leader at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

"They could be twins," she said. "They have the same (length) limbs and were buried together."

The burial — one of the oldest in the region — is also significant in that the children were not simply disposed of after their deaths, Neugebauer-Maresch said. The burial suggests "they were members of society," she said.

Archaeologists are combing the area to see if the infants' mother is nearby, as giving birth to twins in that era would have been extremely difficult and potentially fatal.

[Ciexyz]

Earliest evidence of Arnold's family tree.

(Not his direct line, of course, but of the genetic material of the extended group from which he descended.)

[Dustbunny]

Wow !!

[madison10]

27,000 years???

Don't think the carbon dating is working...

[SunkenCiv]

"Mammoth told me there'd be days like this."

[rimshot!]

[N. Theknow]

How fortunate that a calender from the Austrian National Bank from 25,000 B.C. was in the grave to date it.