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In Croatia, a Neolithic mass grave housed the victims of an incredible carnage

2021-03-22T06:13:37.925Z


ARCHEOLOGY - The mass grave, dating from the Copper Age, is added to a growing list of sites that were the scene of prehistoric massacres. Their understanding still escapes specialists.


It was neither an epidemic nor a natural accident.

The origin of the Neolithic human remains discovered near the village of Potočani, in present-day Croatia, almost never was elucidated, so difficult was it to understand this large mass grave in which lay dozens of bodies layered pell-mell.

However, a genetic analysis has just shed new light on the event behind this prehistoric mass grave: it would actually be a massacre.

The dead ?

At least 41 individuals.

As many men as women - including ten children - aged 50 to 2 years at the time of their death.

All were victims of extremely brutal carnage.

Read also: Discovery of a massacre scene in prehistoric Alsace

Identified in 2007, the Potočani mass grave and its occupants could be dated at carbon 14 to around 4200 BC.

AD that is to say in the middle of the Neolithic, which is the time of the invention of agriculture and the first settlements.

In the case of Potočani, archaeologists were able to clarify, with the help of ceramic remains, that the remains belonged to the so-called Lasinja culture, which developed in the Chalcolithic -

"the copper age"

, from the late Neolithic - between the northern Balkans and southern central Europe.

It had been proposed, at the time, to see in this mass grave the tomb of a large family who might have been - for one reason or another - the object of a targeted community vindication, as was the case at the Koszyce site in Poland.

A track now completely ruled out by a new scientific study.

Signed by researchers from the Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb and Harvard and Vienna universities, it has just shown that 70% of the individuals buried in fact had no family link between them.

Who were the victims?

Neolithic wilting

"The Potočani massacre did not target a kinship group

,

"

observed anthropologists and archaeologists who signed the study published on March 10.

By cross-checking the genetic analysis with the anthropological data of the group of bones, the researchers also noted a

"sexual indifference"

among the victims, a sign that

"the massacre is not the result of fights between males, typical of battles, nor the result of an act of retaliation against individuals of a specific sex. ”

One thing is certain: they all experienced a violent death.

"For the most part, one hit was enough

," said Mario Novak, lead author of the study.

Two or three individuals have up to four wounds on their skull.

It's really a lot, like a murderous frenzy.

Other details are intriguing.

The anthropologist, for example, noted, in comments reported by National Geographic, that the victims had no injuries on the front of the face and on the forearms.

“They weren't defending themselves

,” he explains.

I would say it was a mass execution organized in advance. ”

Read also: The oldest battlefield in the world discovered in Kenya

The Potočani mass grave is far from being the first to attest to prehistoric massacres.

The necropolis, now inundated, of Jebel Sahaba, in northern Sudan is one of the oldest sites that bears witness to a collective massacre that was apparently indiscriminate, around 11,000 BC.

AD, recall the researchers who participated in the study.

In Neolithic Europe, archaeological sites of the same temple have been identified in Germany (site of Talheim, c. 5000 BC), Austria (site of Asparn / Schletz, c. 5000 BC), Austria (site of Asparn / Schletz, c. 5000 BC). AD), in France (Achenheim site, c. 4300 BC),… Mario Novak does not hide it, it is difficult - if not impossible - to determine today ' This is the motive behind the Potočani massacre.

The executioners, whoever they are, left no trace.

The family conflict is ruled out, the ritual motive is not supported by any clue;

remains the combined factor of

"unfavorable climatic conditions associated with a very strong demographic growth"

, propose the scientists, with all the usual precautions.

Despite its macabre character, the study of these Neolithic killings has become a real subject of study coupled with a scientific enigma. What role should we attribute to climate change? Were these crises primarily economic or demographic?

“It is a subject very under-studied,

affirmed Mario Novak in an interview with Ars Technica.

We may get new information in the near future.

Asked by Live Science, the anthropologist even confided a form of surprising optimism about this field of study.

"By studying these ancient massacres, we could try to identify the psychology of these people, and perhaps try to prevent similar events today," he

recalls, before realizing the logical - ambivalent - conclusion of this thought. .

I don't think nature or human psychology has changed much. ”

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-03-22

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