An ancient “fridge” has been uncovered at the Roman legionary fortress of Novae, Bulgaria

An ancient “fridge” has been uncovered at the Roman legionary fortress of Novae, Bulgaria

An ancient “fridge” has been uncovered at the Roman legionary fortress of Novae, Bulgaria

Polish archaeologists, during excavations at the Roman legionnaires’ camp in Novae, discovered a container that could be described as an ancient “fridge” made of ceramic plates for storing food.

The legionary fortress of Novae is an archaeological site on the Danube in northern Bulgaria, near the town of Svishtov. It was founded in the middle of the first century AD.

The 1st Italian legion was based here for most of its existence and its presence is confirmed until the 30s of the 5th century AD. In the area of ​​the camp, which covers 17.99 ha, monumental buildings have been discovered, the most important of which is the headquarters building (principia), although the legionary hospital (valetudinarium) and baths (thermae legionis) are equally impressive.

Ancient fridge.

There was a civil settlement (canabae) on the west side of the camp, and a necropolis on the south and east side. In late antiquity, the fortifications of Novae were reinforced, and an additional area (the so-called annex) was attached to the camp from the east, covering an area of ​​approximately 8 ha.

At that time, both soldiers and civilians lived within the walls. Traces of the latest Roman activity date back to the end of the 6th century.

Researchers from Poland and Bulgaria have been excavating the fortress for several decades, with Professor Piotr Dyczek of the University of Warsaw currently in charge of the project.

During this season’s excavations, the team found a container made of ceramic plates recessed beneath the floor, which was used as a “fridge” by the fort’s inhabitants to store food. The container was discovered in a military barracks room.

Within the container, the team found pieces of ceramic vessels and small baked bone fragments, in addition to charcoal and a bowl which the team suggests, may have been a censor for driving away insects.

Professor Piotr Dyczek said that the discoveries of such “fridges” are rare.

The partially restored ruins of the Roman city and military camp of Novae were unveiled in 2014.

Another find this year is a collection of several dozen coins. Most come from strata covering the period from the incursion of the Goths in the Middle Ages. From the 3rd century to the beginning of the reign of Constantine the Great (early 4th century).

Archaeologists have also unearthed entire strings of walls and the remains of a Roman dwelling containing querns. Wells, weaving and fishing weights, reels, and vessel fragments were discovered.

1,000 years ago, a woman was buried in a canoe on her way to the ‘destination of souls’

1,000 years ago, a woman was buried in a canoe on her way to the ‘destination of souls’

1,000 years ago, a woman was buried in a canoe on her way to the 'destination of souls'
An illustration of a deceased young woman lying in a wampos (ceremonial canoe) with a pottery jug near her head.

Up to 1,000 years ago, mourners buried a young woman in a ceremonial canoe to represent her final journey into the land of the dead in what is now Patagonia, a new study finds. 

The discovery reaffirms ethnographic and historical accounts that canoe burials were practised throughout pre-Hispanic South America and refutes the idea that they may have been used only after the Spanish colonization, according to the authors of the study.

“We hope this investigation and its results will resolve this controversy,” said archaeologist Alberto Pérez, an associate professor of anthropology at the Temuco Catholic University in Chile and the lead author of the study, published Wednesday (Aug. 24) in the journal PLOS One.

Canoe burials are well attested and are still practised in some areas of South America, Pérez told Live Science. But because wood rots rapidly, the new finding is the first known evidence of the practice from the pre-Hispanic period. “The previous evidence was important and was based on ethnographic data, but the evidence was indirect,” he said.

The archaeological site in northwest Argentina was excavated between 2012 and 2015 before a well was built at the location, which is on private land.

The burial described in the study, at the Newen Antug archaeological site near Lake Lacár in western Argentina, indicates that mourners buried the woman on her back in a wooden structure crafted from a single tree trunk that had been hollowed out by the fire.

The same burning technique has been used for thousands of years to make “dugout” canoes known as “wampos” in the local Mapuche culture, and evidence suggests that Indigenous people prepared the woman’s remains so that she could embark on a final canoe journey across mystical waters to her final abode in the “destination of souls,” Pérez said.

Pre-Hispanic burial

The woman’s grave is the earliest of three known pre-Hispanic burials at the Newen Antug site, which archaeologists excavated between 2012 and 2015, before a well was built at the location, which is on private land. The location is at the northern extreme of the region known as Patagonia, which consists of the temperate steppes, alpine regions, coasts and deserts of the southern part of South America.

Radiocarbon dating indicates the woman was buried more than 850 years ago and possibly up to 1,000 years ago, while her sex and age at death — between 17 and 25 years old — were estimated from her pelvic bones and the wear on her teeth, according to the study. (Evidence suggests the Mapuche have lived in the region since at least 600 B.C.)

A pottery jug decorated with white glaze and red geometric patterns, placed in the grave by her head, suggests a connection with the “red on white bichrome” tradition of pre-Hispanic ceramics on both sides of the Andes mountains, the researchers found. This is the earliest known example of this type of pottery being used as a grave gift, according to the study.

Canoes known as wampos in the Mapuche language were constructed by hollowing out a single tree trunk with fire, with thicker walls at the bow and stern.

Given its age and the humid climate, the burial canoe has rotted away, and only fragments of wood remain. But tests suggest that the fragments came from the same tree — a  Chilean cedar (Austrocedrus chilensis) — and that it had been hollowed out with fire.

Shells found in the grave show that her body was placed directly on a bed of Diplodon chilensis, a type of freshwater clam that was likely brought from the shores of Lake Lacár more than 1,000 feet (300 meters) away, the researchers wrote.

In addition, the position of the body — with the arms gathered above the torso, and the head and feet raised — indicates that the woman was buried inside a concave structure with thicker walls at the ends, which correspond to the bow and stern of a canoe, Pérez said.

Taken together, these aspects suggest the woman was interred in a traditional canoe burial representing the Mapuche belief that a soul must make a final boat journey before it arrives in the land of the dead. “The material evidence all goes in the same direction, and there is a whole battery of ethnographic and historical information that accounts for it,” Pérez told Live Science in an email.

Destination of souls

According to Mapuche belief, the destination of the deads’ souls was “Nomelafken” — a word in the Mapuche language that translates to the “other side of the sea” — and the newly dead would make a metaphorical boat journey for up to four years before they arrived at a mythical island called Külchemapu or Külchemaiwe, Pérez and his colleagues wrote in the study.

A historical report from the 1840s by the Chilean politician Salvador Sanfuentes remarked that local people “site the graves of their dead on the bank of a stream to allow the current to carry the soul to the land of souls” and that ceremonial canoes were buried as coffins to carry the dead on this journey, the researchers wrote.

The young woman was buried more than 800 years ago in a wampo, or ceremonial canoe, that researchers think symbolized a boat journey to the land of the dead.

The metaphor of the recently deceased making such a canoe journey to a final destination seems to have been prevalent throughout South America in pre-Hispanic times, and possibly for thousands of years, Pérez noted.

“We infer that this was a widespread practice on the continent, although it is little known to archaeology due to conservation problems,” such as the degradation of wood in humid climates, he said. “The antiquity of these practices is uncertain, but we know such navigation technologies were used there more than 3,500 years ago, so we can estimate that date as a potential time limit.”

The new study has great scientific importance for archaeological and anthropological research in the Patagonia region, said Nicolás Lira, an assistant professor of archaeology, ethnography and prehistory at the University of Chile who wasn’t involved in the research.

“The findings … are of exceptional preservation for the humid environment of the region, where rivers and lakes shape the landscape in an interconnected [river] system that facilitated and encouraged navigation,” Lira told Live Science in an email. 

Juan Skewes, an anthropologist at Alberto Hurtado University in Chile who wasn’t involved in the study, said the Newen Antug burial was “strong evidence” of a shared cultural tradition between the east and west “slopes” of the Andes. 

Meanwhile, historical and ethnographic records suggest such canoe burials represented a symbolic relationship between the Mapuche people and bodies of water, but that relationship wasn’t their only consideration, Skewes said. For example, “trees are part of almost every aspect of the Mapuche’s daily life, Skewes said. “Aside from having associations with mortuary practices, they are linked to childbirth and to the memories of the dead.” That might mean that the construction of a burial wampo from a single tree could have had an extra meaning, in addition to the canoe’s symbolic function during the final voyage of the dead, he said.

See the striking facial reconstruction of a Paleolithic woman who lived 31,000 years ago

See the striking facial reconstruction of a Paleolithic woman who lived 31,000 years ago

See the striking facial reconstruction of a Paleolithic woman who lived 31,000 years ago
A digital approximation of what the Stone Age woman may have looked like.

In 1881, archaeologists unearthed the skull of a human buried inside a cave in Mladeč, a village in what is now the Czech Republic. At the time, researchers dated the skull to about 31,000 years ago and classified the individual as male.

But they were wrong about the Stone Age person’s sex, a new study finds.

Now, more than 140 years later, researchers have corrected that error, revealing that the so-called Mladeč 1 skull belonged to a 17-year-old female who lived during the Aurignacian, part of the Upper Paleolithic period (roughly 43,000 to 26,000 years ago).

The team published its findings as part of a new online book called “The Forensic Facial Approach to the Skull Mladeč 1(opens in new tab)” that details how the scientists reclassified the sex of “one of the oldest Homo sapiens found in Europe.”

“When the skull was analyzed individually, the features pointed to a male,” Cicero Moraes, a Brazilian graphics expert and one of the book’s co-authors, told Live Science in an email. “But when later studies compared the skull with others found at the site, the evidence pointed to a female.”

Using information collected from the 19th-century archaeological dig, as well as forensic facial reconstructions performed by researchers in the 1930s that were limited due to a lack of technology, Moraes and co-authors Jiří Šindelář, a surveyor with a local surveying company GEO-CZ, and Karel Drbal, deputy director of the Cave Administration of the Czech Republic, used CT (computer tomography) scans to create a digitized approximation of the skull. Because the mandible (lower jaw) was missing, Moraes looked to existing data of modern-day human jaws to help fill in the blanks of what this individual might have looked like.

“We had to reconstruct the skull and for that, we used statistical data of average and projections extracted from about 200 CT scans of modern humans and from archaeological excavations belonging to different population groups, including Europeans, Africans and Asians,” Moraes said. “[This] allowed us to project missing regions of the human face.”

Once they had a complete digital image of the skull, Moraes used “a series of soft-tissue thickness markers that were spread across it,” he said. “These markers, roughly speaking, tell the boundaries of the skin in some regions of the face.

Although these markers come from statistical data extracted from living individuals, they do not cover the entire face and do not inform the size of the nose, mouth and eyes, for example.”

Researchers used a projection of lines corresponding to boundaries of soft tissue and bone structures to create facial approximation.

To help complement the data, researchers “imported CT scans of live subjects and deformed the bones and soft tissue from the CT scan to match the face being approximated,” he said. “In the case of the Mladeč 1 fossil, we deformed two CT scans, one of a man and one of a woman, and the two converged to a very similar result.”

For the book, Moraes created two digital approximations of what the individual might have looked like. But he erred on the side of caution when it came to the person’s facial expression. 

“We chose to generate the neutral face by tradition, as we are used to presenting works to specialists,” he said. “The trend will now be to present two approaches to the works, one more scientific and simple in greyscale, with eyes closed and without hair, and the other more subjective…where we generate a coloured face with fur and hair.”

While it’s not very common for archaeologists to reclassify the sex of human remains, it does happen. Moraes pointed to one such example, a skeleton discovered in Brazil known as the “Zuzu(opens in new tab)” fossil.

“That case was different; initially it was thought to be a woman, but later studies revealed [it] was actually a male,” he said.

In another case, a Viking buried with weapons in Sweden was originally thought to be male but was later revealed to be female, Live Science previously reported.

In addition to the skull, other items found at the Stone Age burial site during the original dig included stone artifacts, bone tips and several teeth. However, little else is known about the young woman who was buried there.

Peruvian workers unearth centuries-old tombs while laying pipelines

Peruvian workers unearth centuries-old tombs while laying pipelines

Energy company workers in Peru discovered a dozen centuries-old tombs from pre-Inca cultures during the construction of a gas pipeline, according to the project’s archaeologists, in the latest find from the South American country’s rich ancient past.

The oldest burials date back eight centuries and likely belong to Peru’s Huaura culture, while others probably pertain to the Chancay culture from around 600 years ago, said archaeologist Cecilia Camargo.

She said that beyond the skulls and other bones found in the dry sandy soil in Peru’s Carabayllo district, about 50 miles (80 km) north of Lima, some of the tombs also included pottery as well as small clay figurines, possibly representing goddesses.

The remains of both adults and children were found inside burial bundles, explained archaeologist Roberto Quispe.

Both Camargo and Quispe work for local gas distribution company Calidda, which employs its own archaeologists due to the frequency of ancient discoveries whenever a project involves digging.

While best known for the picturesque mountain-top Inca royal retreat of Machu Picchu, which draws millions of tourists every year, Peru was home to various pre-Hispanic cultures that thrived in the centuries before the Inca empire rose to power, mainly along the country’s central coast and in the Andes.

In the latest discovery which was made earlier this week, along with a large number of bones, clumps of what appear to be human hair could also be seen peaking out from the dirt.

“These people were buried with very interesting offerings,” added Camargo, noting that the goddess figurines may have been meant to accompany the deceased along their journey to the afterworld.

Polish archaeologists discover ‘unusual’ 8,000-year-old building in Turkey

Polish archaeologists discover ‘unusual’ 8,000-year-old building in Turkey

Polish archaeologists working in Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia (Turkey) have discovered a large mudbrick building, in which the inhabitants of one of the oldest settlements in the world met. It was built near the end of the settlement’s existence, over 8,000 years ago.

Çatalhöyük, an archaeological site in central Turkey, was inhabited without interruption for almost 1,200 years – between 7,100 and 5,950 BCE.

It is estimated that during its peak period, the densely built settlement with an area of several dozen hectares had approx. 2,000. residents. From a bird’s eye view, it looked like a honeycomb, and the entrances of houses were on their flat roofs.

The interior of the unusual building – visible two pilasters with pedicles.

This year, Polish archaeologists under the supervision of Professor Arkadiusz Marciniak from the Faculty of Archaeology of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań examined an unusual structure from the end of the settlement located on the eastern edge of the settlement, a few hundred meters from its central part.

The archaeologists noticed the entire surface of the structure was built-up. The buildings consist of 12 platforms – elevations covered with clay, nine of which are located along all the walls of the building.

Professor Marciniak said: “The building was clearly larger than the typical residential structures from that period. It was built on a square plan, and its area was about 30 sq m. Its interior was also unusual.

“There are probably human burials under most of them, but we will get the answer to this question during excavations planned for next year.”

The edge of the eastern platform is decorated with two pilasters (flat architectural elements used to give the appearance of supporting columns). On both sides of each pilaster there were pedicles (attachment point for antlers). There was a semi-column on each of the four walls, one of them decorated with a relief.

A large part of the western wall was covered with a painting, mainly in red. A large furnace was located by the southern wall.

One of the entrances to the building.

In the central part of the building, archaeologists noticed the remains of the hearth. Two holes in the walls led into its interior.

According to Professor Marciniak, the building did not have a residential function, although earlier residents of the settlement buried the dead under their houses. A large number of mysterious platforms, their decorations and unusual layout of the structure indicate that the building was used by the entire community living in the settlement.

Marciniak said: “We know that the building was used when Çatalhöyük was no longer a mega-settlement with thousands of residents. The residents dispersed. They would return to visit the place where their ancestors had lived. Some had the honour of being buried there.”

He added that although the building could have been a religious one, “I would attribute a greater role to social integration. The hearth in the middle suggests that people gathered around it. We do not yet know how many – and what type of burials are in this building.”

A typical residential building from this period was smaller and had places for storing food and making tools. The entrance led through the hole in the roof.

This is the first such building discovered in this settlement, although during previous research archaeologists did find buildings that differed from standard houses from the older phases of the settlement, interpreted as temples, among other things.

Marciniak continued: “Until now, Çatalhöyük was the only large Neolithic settlement in the Middle East, where such a building was not known.”

In his opinion, the discovery contradicts the existing vision of the egalitarian population inhabiting the settlement at the end of its existence.

He said: “The discovery confirms significant social changes that took place at the end of the settlement’s existence. They led to the formation local communities that had unequal access to the goods and objects of prestige.”

Çatalhöyük is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world. It became famous thanks to the characteristic mudbrick buildings. Their walls adjoined each other directly, and the entrances were on the roof level. The interiors of some houses were richly decorated with paintings. In 2012, Çatalhöyük was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Basilica cistern, which is said to have the sarcophagus of Medusa or the Mysterious Snake Woman, was restored

The Basilica cistern, which is said to have the sarcophagus of Medusa or the Mysterious Snake Woman, was restored

The Basilica cistern, which is said to have the sarcophagus of Medusa or the Mysterious Snake Woman, was restored

The Basilica Cistern, one of the magnificent ancient structures of Istanbul, was restored. Besides being the greatest work of the Roman period, the cistern is the focus of interesting narrations.

The two Medusa heads, used as supports under the two columns at the northwest end of the cistern, are considered the reason why the cistern is mentioned in strange rumours, except that it is a great work of the Roman period.

The Basilica Cistern is located southwest of Hagia Sophia. This large subterranean water reservoir was built for Justinianus I, the Byzantium Emperor (527-565), and is known as the “Yerebatan Cistern” among the public due to the buried marble columns. It is also known as Basilica Cistern since there used to be a basilica at the location of the cistern.

In 2017, Istanbul Municipality started restoration work on the Basilica Cistern. Istanbul Municipality President Ekrem İmamoğlu announced on his Twitter account that the restoration work, which lasted for 4 years, has ended and the visits to the Basilica Cistern will begin at the weekend.

The entrance and exit sections of the Basilica Cistern, which have not undergone extensive restoration work for 1,500 years, were arranged.

Due to the large number of people who wanted to visit the cistern and the narrowness of the entrance area, the visitors were forming long queues at the gate. The restoration covered the entrance area with glass eaves and a waiting area was made. Necessary plan changes were made in the exit section of the cistern, and a suitable and useful area was created for the building.

The Basilica Cistern is located in a rectangular area 140 meters long and 70 meters wide. The building, which has a water storage capacity of approximately 100,000 tons in an area of 9,800 m2, is accessible by a 52-step stone staircase.

There are 336 columns, each 9 meters high, inside the cistern. The columns are 4.80 meters long, forming 12 rows of 28 columns each.

The majority of the columns, most of which are understood to have been compiled from ancient structures and sculpted of various kinds of marble, are composed of a single part and one of them is composed of two parts. The head of these columns bears different features in parts. 98 of them reflect the Corinthian style and part of them reflect the Dorian style.

The restoration work of the Basilica Cistern took 4 years.

The two Medusa heads, used as supports under the two columns at the northwest end of the cistern, are considered the reason why the cistern is mentioned in strange rumours, except that it is a great work of the Roman period.

The fact that the structure from which the Medusa heads were taken is not known is a very remarkable detail. The researchers often consider that it has been brought for being used as support to the column at the time of construction of the cistern.  However, this has not prevented myths about the heads of Medusa.

During the research on the Medusa heads in the Basilica cistern, some documents mentioned in Kara Kaplı, a diary kept by Sultan Abdülhamit II, were found. These documents in Kara Kaplı have carried the Medusa narrative to a very different dimension.

In 1456, a delegation of Italian origin income from Venice to meet with Fatih Sultan Mehmet. They demand to meet with the Sultan, but the Sultan assigns the grand vizier to meet with the delegation. The delegation tells the vizier about the treasure in the Basilica Cistern, but they say that they can only tell the Sultan the location of the treasure.

Medusa heads, Basilica Cistern

The subject attracts Sultan’s attention and he agrees to meet with a member of the delegation. The chosen representative tells the Sultan that the treasure in the Basilica Cistern is not a material thing, but a corpse. The committee, which offered a lot in return for this corpse and the sarcophagus (coffin) in which it was found, could not get what it wanted. According to what is mentioned in Kara Kaplı, this delegation is a member of a paganist sect.

After Fatih Sultan Mehmet, Abdulhamit Han took a close interest in the Medusa sarcophagus. When a delegation was sent to Abdülhamit Han to discuss this issue several times, the Sultan’s interest in Medusa increased and he asked for research on this subject. Abdülhamit Han, who decided to take out the sarcophagus in line with the information learned from the research and the delegations, and the people he assigned in this regard, find the sarcophagus in one of the corridors of the Basilica Cistern.

Inside the sarcophagus is the deteriorated mummy of a terrifying creature. The head of this creature resembles a human head, but with its entire body curves, it resembles a giant snake. This sarcophagus is taken under protection by the order of the Sultan. It is decided that the sarcophagus, which is wanted to be hidden from the public first, will be brought to light later on the condition that its cover is not removed.

The news of the sarcophagus of Medusa was published in Resimli Gazeta.

One day, a child entered one of the corridors and saw the corpse inside and said to the people of Istanbul, “I saw Şahmeran!” event is heard. This sarcophagus weighing tons is brought to light with great difficulty and taken to the courtyard of Fatih Mosque and shown to the public for a short time.

By order of Abdülhamit Han, the photograph of the corpse was taken and published in the newspapers of that period. Today, there is no trace of the newspapers in which the photographs of this sarcophagus were published.

Although it is known that many foreigners are after the Medusa sarcophagus, it is also said that the delegations that came to the Sultan held rituals around this sarcophagus for years. It is a matter of curiosity whether these delegations have anything to do with the confiscation of the newspapers and the cover-up of the event.

The news is titled “Our Sultan has found Medusa”.

The legend of Şahmeran: The legend tells about the great love of Şahmeran, a half-snake half-human woman, with Tahmasp. He mentions that Şahmeran is hidden in a cave, that he knows the secret of the world and that the one who eats his flesh will be healed. Those who seek Şahmeran for the health of the sick sultan find him thanks to Tahmasp and at the end of the legend, the vizier kills Şahmeran. Although it is not known what happened to Şahmeran’s body after he died, Tahmasp may have hidden Şahmeran’s body in a sarcophagus.

Perhaps we will never find out if Şahmeran and Medusa are the same women. However, these legends, which have been going on for centuries, will continue to circulate centuries later.

The impressive Statue of young Hercules was unearthed in Philippi, Northern Greece

The impressive Statue of young Hercules was unearthed in Philippi, Northern Greece

The impressive Statue of young Hercules was unearthed in Philippi, Northern Greece

A larger-than-life youthful Hercules statue dating to the 2nd century A.D. have been found in the ancient city of Philippi in northern Greece. The Statue of Hercules, unearthed by archaeologists from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, may have adorned a public fountain.

The statue depicts a youthful Hercules, the Roman equivalent of the Greek Heracles. The statue of Hercules dates to the 2nd century A.D. and is in unusually good condition despite suffering some damage.

The club and the right arm are fragmented, and the right leg below the thigh is missing, but the head is intact, as are the torso and the tell-tale skin of the Nemean Lion.

On top of his abundant mane of curls is a wreath of vine leaves tied around his head by a band that dangles down his neck and shoulders.

Alongside the statue, a richly decorated structure, potentially a fountain, was also found.

A lion’s pelt hangs from the statue’s left arm, attesting to its identity as the ancient hero Hercules.

According to the research team, based on the excavation findings, the statue adorned a much later building from the 8th or 9th century.

According to contemporary sources, Classical and Roman-era statues were used to decorate buildings and public spaces until the Late Byzantine period.

The discovery at Philippi confirms that pre-Christian statues were used to decorate public spaces in important Byzantine empire cities.

According to the announcement from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, excavations were carried out in Philippi by the Aristotle University team, which included Professor Natalia Poulos, the excavation’s director, and collaborators Assistant Professor Anastasios Tantsis and Emeritus Professor Aristotle Menzos.

The excavation involved a total of twenty-four AUTH students. Aristotle University and the AUTH Research Committee funded the study.

The archaeologists believe the statue adorned a public fountain.

The excavation is set to continue next year.

The ancient city of Philippi was first built in 360 BC. It was founded as  Crenides by colonists from the island of Thassos. The town was conquered by Philip II, King of Macedon, and refounded as Philippi in 356 BC. It rose to prominence as a result of its proximity to gold mines and strategic location on the royal route through Macedonia.

Little remains of the Greek city today. It is famed as the site of the final battle between the armies of Caesar’s partisans Octavian and Mark Antony and those of his assassins Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus in 42 B.C.

Philippi prospered under the Roman Empire, continuing through the fall of the Western Empire and, centuries later, the fall of the Byzantine Empire. It was abandoned only after the Ottoman conquest of the 14th century.

Archaeologists unearth the remains of three dozen headless people at a stone age settlement in Vráble, Slovakia

Archaeologists unearth the remains of three dozen headless people at a stone age settlement in Vráble, Slovakia

Archaeologists unearth the remains of three dozen headless people at a stone age settlement in Vráble, Slovakia

Archaeologists have unearthed a mass grave containing the remains of about three dozen headless bodies of people at a settlement dated 5250-4950 BC in Vráble, western Slovakia.

The team of Slovak-German archaeologists investigating one of the largest Central European Stone Age settlements at Vráble thinks these people may have been killed in cult ceremonies.

The skeletons were found inside a defensive ditch of one of the largest Neolithic settlements in Central Europe.

Three settlement areas cover more than 120 acres in the Neolithic settlement. Over the last seven years, excavations and geophysical surveys have revealed more than 300 long houses in the settlement, albeit built at different stages of occupation.

Archaeologists estimate that 50-70 houses were in use at any given time.

One of the three settlement areas was fortified with at least one defensive ditch and a palisade during the final phase of occupation.

The settlement has six entrances through the defensive perimeters. Individual graves have been discovered in and around the ditch during previous excavations.

This year, skeletal remains of at least 35 people were discovered in a lengthy ditch close to one of the settlement’s entrances. The bodies seem to have been thrown in randomly. They were discovered with their arms and legs extended, lying on their sides, backs, and stomachs.

The grave contained the remains of men, women, and children, many of whom were adolescents and young adults when they passed away. Peri-mortem fractures do exist. The skull of one child and one mandible were the only bones from heads found in the grave.

Experts will also look for any genetic links between them, and whether the heads were forcibly removed or separation occurred only after the decomposition of the body.

“Only then will we be able to answer several questions about the social categorization of the [site’s] inhabitants, probably also about the emerging social inequality in the conditions of early agricultural societies, and perhaps even reconstruct the functioning or the causes of the demise of this vast settlement,” the director of the archaeological institute Matej Ruttkay said.

The researchers said some of their other findings about the settlement have been exceptional.

“In the final stage of operation, one of the areas was fortified with a moat with six entrances to the settlement, which was doubled by a palisade. This was absolutely exceptional in Central Europe at that time,” explains Ivan Cheben, head of archaeological research at SAV.

“We also confirmed the presence of more than 300 longhouses through a detailed geophysical survey. It is possible that 50 to 70 houses could have been used at the same time in the individual stages of the settlement’s functioning.”

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