Ritualized human sacrifices were common in Europe during the Stone Age, according to a team of researchers who recently tried to estimate the number of ritual victims on the continent.
They first studied bones unearthed at the Château de Saint-Paul de Troyes, a Neolithic burial site in France’s Rhône Valley. Two of the remains belonged to women, and the team determined they were forced into positions that caused suffocation. At least one of the women may have been buried alive. The team then looked at the frequency of similar burials across Europe to determine whether the women’s apparent murders were ritualized. Further investigation revealed that by the time the Rhône victims died 6,000 to 5,500 years ago, choking a person’s breath had become a 2,000-year-old ritualized form of killing.
“A major challenge in archeology, particularly in prehistoric periods where written records are lacking, is to distinguish ritual sacrifice from other forms of ritualized violence,” the study authors wrote. Their study was publish Today’s Science Advances.
Several indicators are simple: evidence that the deceased was violently killed, their remains were placed in unusual locations, or the demographics of the deceased were irregular. Many swamp corpses –Well-preserved human remains found in ancient swampusually in Northern Europe –Showing signs of sacrificial rituals.
The silo housing the skeletons in the Castle of Saint-Paul-Troyes faces the solstice, leading the team to hypothesize that the site was worshiped for agricultural purposes, apparently through human sacrifice.
“detailed arrangement [of the bodies]- stacked on top of each other and entwined with grindstone fragments – suggests a more forceful and considered placement, strongly suggesting that their death may have occurred in a burial environment,” the team wrote.
They documented murderous ligation and strangulation incidents across Europe. This form of ritualized violence often involved tying the victim’s ankles and throat together; the victim’s positioning led them to commit suicide. In addition to the archaeological context, Mesolithic stone carvings from the Adora Cave in Italy also depict this form of human sacrifice.
The team studied 20 individuals at 14 other locations, from modern-day Spain to the Czech Republic, as far north as Germany and as far south as Sicily. The sites range in age from 5400 BC to 3534 BC. Four of the apparent sacrifice victims were children, three of them at the same site in Spain, Bobila Madurell Sud.
“This cultural phenomenon may have diversified in central Europe and structured itself at varying rates over nearly two millennia before reaching its peak in the late Middle Neolithic,” the team concluded.
Although this sacrificial method was most popular during the Stone Age, the sacrificial practice continued for thousands of years. In 2019, a British water company More than two dozen were found The 3,000-year-old skeletons show signs of human sacrifice: some had their hands bound, their feet chopped off, or even beheaded.
As for the community of the Château de Saint-Paul de Troyes: I would say I hope their harvest is fruitful, but they may think the sacrifice is valid.
more: 137 child sacrifice rituals discovered at 15th-century archaeological site in Peru