Humans were sacrificed across Europe in stone age, study finds evidence

Humans were sacrificed across Europe in stone age, study finds evidence

Archaeologists have discovered that ritualised human sacrifice was common across Europe during the Neolithic period. Recent findings revealed evidence of women being buried alive, strangled, and bound as part of these rituals.

The discovery was made by archaeologists after analysing skeletons of women found in a tomb in France’s Rhone Valley. According to a report by the journal Science Advances, two skeletons of the two females were found with their necks tied to their legs behind their backs so that they effectively strangled themselves.

Women were ritually brutalised sometime between 4000 and 3500 BCE in a practice which was called incaprettamento.

Science Advances analysed the tomb that was situated in Saint-Paul-Trois-Chateaux near Avignon, in southern France, and was discovered more than 20 years ago.Â

“The specific arrangement (of the bodies)–stacked atop each other and entwined with fragments of grindstones — implies a more forceful and deliberate placement, strongly suggesting that their demise likely occurred within the burial context,” the team wrote.

According to the team of archaeologists, “This cultural phenomenon could have diversified in Central Europe and structured itself at different rates for almost two millennia before culminating in the late Middle Neolithic.”

Speaking about the discovery, senior author Eric Crubczy, a biological anthropologist at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, told Live Science, “You have the alignment, you have the silo, you have the broken stones — so it seems that it was a rite related to agriculture.”

Notably, Crubczy’s team has analysed several such tombs across Europe and found evidence of 20 probable cases of sacrificial killing using incaprettamento at 14 Neolithic (New Stone Age) sites dating to between 5400 and 3500 BC.

His team also found papers describing Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) rock art in the Addaura Cave in Sicily, made between 14000 and 11000 BC that seems to depict two human figures bound in the incaprettamento manner.