Posted on 11/15/2006 7:07:09 PM PST by blam
Stone Age babies buried with love
By Roger Highfield
Last Updated: 1:28am GMT 16/11/2006
The image of Stone Age man as a heartless brute will have to be revised after the discovery of an ancient grave where babies had been carefully buried and ritually decorated.
Although childhood mortality may well have been high more than 20 millennia ago, the use of red ochre, as well as the grave gifts — a chain of ivory beads — shows that babies were even then considered full members of society.
The burials in Krems-Wachtberg in Lower Austria are the first findings of such young individuals from the Upper Palaeolithic period.
An Austrian team analysed the graves of three infants who died 27,000 years ago. According to their report today in the journal Nature, two of the babies, who were found together and estimated to have died shortly after birth, were probably twins.
A third, buried 3ft away, was thought to have died after less than three months.
The well-preserved burials were recovered as "blocks" and analysed by laser and computer imaging.
Dr Christine Neugebauer-Maresch, of the Prehistoric Commission of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and colleagues believe that the skeletons found together, embedded in red ochre, are twins because their thigh bones are of equal size, indicating they were the same age at death.
Their bodies were covered with a mammoth shoulder bone, supported by part of a tusk. One of the babies was decorated with more than 30 ivory beads.
A fingerprint found in clay has also preserved a trace of those who buried the babies.
GGG Ping.
Apparently, modern society could learn much from cavemen.
Touching, but very sad. Can you imagine burying your little twins? Or your new baby?
And I, at least, am not surprised to learn that those people loved their babies.
What, did they think Stone Age parents ate them with mango salsa?
"The image of Stone Age man as a heartless brute will have to be revised after the discovery of an ancient grave where babies had been carefully buried and ritually decorated."
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And..."the image of Modern Man as a civilized descendent will have to be revised after the discovery of 44 million aborted babies which had been carefully hidden and brutally dismembered."
Ah, how far we have progressed.
Whose "image" is that, you snobbish wankers?
Low tech = "heartless brute" ... can we get just to the edge of racism without going over? I'm sure we can, if we try ...
I agree.
It just breaks my heart to read about a new-born found dead. Discarded like so much trash. How someone could do that is absolutely beyond me.
At least in the caveman day, they had a chance to be born.
"27,000 years ago."
Shirley they jest. ~Everyone~ knows the age of the earth is only 6,000 years.
Although childhood mortality may well have been high
heh i guess we have that beat
Agendas have flopped out on your thread as if someone had sounded the trumpet to unzip.
very touching
They were a lot more human than some people walking around today.
Have you ever seen the tools cavemen made? They carved rocks into a multi-purpose french army like tool, they were not stupid.
I've had this conversation with a friend of mine, (neither of us have any engineering, scientific, electrical skills, etc.)
We're stranded on an island, how long before we invent electicity, TV! etc., answer, about a thousand years (never).
What would our house look like? A hut? How long to brandish an axe to make wood, how are we going to make nails, etc.
Leave me without modern technology and I would probably be just as smart as a caveman.
I did have a picture of a French Army knife, but I can't find it. It included a folding white flag.
Stop calling me Shirley!
LOL!
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