Posted on 02/07/2007 6:55:35 PM PST by RDTF
ROME, Italy (AP) -- It could be humanity's oldest story of doomed love.
Archaeologists have unearthed two skeletons from the Neolithic period locked in a tender embrace and buried outside Mantua. The site is just 25 miles south of Verona, the romantic city where Shakespeare set the star-crossed tale of "Romeo and Juliet."
Buried between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, the prehistoric pair are believed to have been a man and a woman and are thought to have died young, as their teeth were found intact, said Elena Menotti, the archaeologist who led the dig. (Watch archaeologists uncover the embracing couple )
"As far as we know, it's unique," Menotti told The Associated Press by telephone from Milan. "Double burials from the Neolithic are unheard of, and these are even hugging."
The burial site was located Monday during construction work for a factory building in the outskirts of Mantua. Alongside the couple, archaeologists found flint tools, including arrowheads and a knife, Menotti said.
Experts will now study the artifacts and the skeletons to determine the burial site's age and how old the two were when they died, she said.
Although the Mantua pair strike a rare and touching pose, archaeologists have found prehistoric burials in which the dead hold hands or have other contact, said Luca Bondioli, an anthropologist at Rome's National Prehistoric and Ethnographic Museum.
The find has "more of an emotional than a scientific value." But it does highlight how the relationship people have with each other and with death has not changed much from the period in which humanity first settled in villages, learning to farm the land and tame animals, he said.
"The Neolithic is a very formative period for our society," he said. "It was when the roots of our religious sentiment were formed."
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Awww.... And right before Valentine's Day, too.
The world's first astronauts.
They're not wearing diapers.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/search?m=all;o=time;s=embrace
Too cool.
Don Imus, maybe?
I wonder what happened to them.
Looks like he just couldn't stop trying to talk some sense into her.
Look where that ended up.
Or,
After all these years...He's still pretending that he's actually listening to here talk about the new dress she wove today.
They must have been married, it looks like they are choking each other.
One has to wonder how the archaeologists determined that it was "a tender embrace".
LOL
Picked them both.
The knees?
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That's my new favorite way to die.
Maybe so. Or their smiling faces. Make no bones about it, we'll never know what their last words or feelings to each other were. (pun intended) bad chena!
Did they sit on this news until Valentines Day got closer?
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