Enlarge image
Exhibition "Tatort Talheim": This is how one of the fatalities could have looked like during his lifetime (middle of the picture)
Photo: Bernd Weißbrod / picture alliance / dpa
The place of horror measures just one and a half by two and a half meters: the remains of 34 people - men, women, children - were apparently thrown in carelessly and buried in a pit of this size.
The traces on the bones are evidence of a crime that dates back about 7700 years: several skulls are broken, arrows have left telltale indentations.
The bones were accidentally discovered while gardening in 1983.
The find from Talheim near Heilbronn in Baden-Württemberg is regarded as evidence of the violence that prevailed in the Neolithic period.
A time when people in Europe began farming and raising livestock and gradually gave up their nomadic life as hunters and gatherers.
"Evidence of Past Hostilities"
The mass grave at Talheim is not an isolated case, as a new analysis published in the journal »PNAS« shows.
An international research team has evaluated Stone Age bone finds belonging to more than 2,300 people from that time.
The remains are 8000 to 4000 years old and come from 180 sites in what is now Germany, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Spain and Sweden.
The result: traces of violence were found in more than ten percent of the cases.
Because not all injuries to the bone are visible, significantly more of the Stone Age men examined could have died violently.
"Human bones are direct evidence of past hostilities," says study author Linda Fibiger of Scotland's University of Edinburgh.
Archaeologists can now reliably distinguish between fatal injuries and broken bones that occur after death.
Antler tip in the skull
Particularly gruesome: the murder weapons are still in some of the bones.
The arrowhead is still protruding from a vertebra found in a gravel pit near Naumburg in Saxony-Anhalt in 2005.
A skull from what is now Tygelsjö in Sweden is pierced by a point of antler.
"Our study raises the question of why violence appears to have been so widespread during this period," says study author Martin Smith of Bournemouth University in England.
The victims from today's Talheim were apparently defenseless when they were attacked.
The attackers probably approached from behind, armed with bows, arrows, and axes.
Why do archaeologists think they know this so well?
The wounds on the skeletons are mostly found on the back of the body of the dead, especially on the back of the head.
The victims may have been struck down trying to flee.
Among the dead were nine men, seven women and 16 children.
The remaining two skeletons could not be clearly assigned to a sex.
Most died from blows to the back of the head.
An entire community was likely wiped out in one attack.
Were robbers at work?
There is speculation as to why the attackers stole women and killed other family members.
Smith believes another explanation.
With the beginning of agriculture, the economic basis changed completely and with it the way of life.
"With agriculture came inequality," says Smith.
"And those who were less successful may have sometimes engaged in raids and collective violence as an alternative strategy for success."
However, there are also indications that the people of the Stone Age were not only bloodthirsty, but lived together peacefully.
Much of the bones analyzed in the study come from mass graves like the one at Talheim, where victims of massacres were likely buried.
It is not surprising that there are signs of violence on their bones.
It was also more peaceful
Very close to Talheim, at the so-called Viesenhäuser Hof, archaeologists came across remains of settlements and more than 200 graves, also from the Neolithic Age.
The people buried there mostly lay on their sides, as was customary at the time, with their legs bent; several graves contained grave goods.
Apparently, people were not just buried carelessly here, but carried to their graves with some effort.
The composition of the recovered teeth revealed where the people buried there came from.
Some had therefore grown up in the area, others had immigrated and had apparently joined the existing community.
There was no evidence of unusual violence or targeted deadly attacks.
koe