In a series of “victory” celebrations over six,000 years ago in northeastern France, a group of defenders cut off the left arms of conquered enemies and buried them in a hole, archaeologists discovered.
This discovery gives us a glimpse into the era when wars were rampant in the region and invaders were forced into northeastern France from the regions around Paris.
“The lower legs were like that [fractured] To prevent the victim from fleeing, the whole body shows dull force trauma, indicating that it is more so. Some skeletons have several marks indicating that their bodies were placed in the structure of public exposure after being tortured and killed. Live science via email.
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In a paper published on Wednesday (August 20) in Journal Science Advance, researchers analyzed the remains of 82 people buried in pits in northeastern France between 4300 and 4150 BC. The uncut body was buried in different holes.
To investigate whether burial treatment reflects people’s origins, researchers analyzed the chemical characteristics of teeth and bones. The mutilated people probably came from outside the area around Paris. The chemical signature also suggests that the group of people ate foods from different regions, suggesting that they are in a lot of movement, the researchers wrote in the study.
However, chemical analysis showed that the uncut person was local. This could mean they died protecting their territory, researchers suggested.
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Some of the invaders are likely captured by defenders, and their left arms or hands were severed as “trophies” in one of the earliest documented cases of prehistoric European martial arts victory celebrations, researchers wrote.
“They believe they were brutalized in the context of victory rituals and celebrations of victory following one or more battles,” Fernandez Crespe said. As the burial pits are in the middle of the settlement, this “stable suggestion that this act was a public theatre of violence aimed at dehumanizing the enemy of previous prisoners of war in the entire community.”
Time of conflict
There is other evidence of widespread conflict in the region around 4500-4000 BC
Detlef Gronenborn, an archaeology professor at the German Archaeology Centre who was not part of the research team, told Live Science via email that the period of question was a period of considerable anxiety across Europe, and was related to a period of high-climate volatile conditions, all times of crisis. [culminating] Gronenborn suggests that about 4,100 “BC break in the occupation of the site is “highly sudden maneuverable due to the general increase in war.” [warfare] These migrations led to the emergence of this. ”
Linda Fiviger, a bone string scholar at the University of Edinburgh who was not part of the research team, told Live Science via email: “It is an exciting, well-performed, and carefully interpreted finding that gives important insight into the various violence practices of Neolithic violence.”
Chemical analysis “allowed us to achieve something as important as distinguishing prisoners from attackers in the prehistoric context of interpersonal violence up to the Neolithic period,” Miguel Angel Moreno Ibagnez told part of science that is not part of the judicial team at the University of Edinburgh, a provost of the University of Edinburgh, a provost of the bones.
This was a period of war when local people lived in fortified settlements, and skeletons frequently revealed evidence of violence. More pottery from the Paris region appears, and archaeologists believe that people from the Paris region are invading what is now northeastern France.
“Injuries caused in Neolithic battles usually target the head and other body parts very often,” said Fernandez Crespo, but these pits in France reveal “unprecedented.”[ed] The intensity of violence against the body can only be understood in the context of torture, mutilation and dehumanization of the victim. “These brutal attacks could have been carried out as acts of revenge, researchers noted in the study.
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