Bronze Age Human Sacrifice: Not So Common?

Cuts on skulls and other bones have led archaeologists to believe that a fair amount of ritual human sacrifice might have gone on during the Bronze Age - but that view is being challenged.

Anna Salleh writes for ABC Science:

[German anthropologist Dr Susanne] Hummel and team analysed the bones and found no signs of violence. She also found the age of death, indicated by the bones, did not fit the expected pattern for human sacrifice. "Usually just one gender and one age class, let's say all juvenile girls, are sacrificed, because they are the most valuable persons to the society," she said. "[But] we found that we had all age classes. We had the baby, we had the young people, the young adults, older adults and people who were really old, like 70 years old."

To settle the question of whether this site was indeed a burial site rather than a site of ritual sacrifice, the researchers analysed DNA from the leg bones to see if the people they once belonged to were related. "If they formed a family clan then it is absolutely unlikely this was a sacrificial site," Hummel said. She and her team extracted DNA and analysed the genetic fingerprints, patterns on the Y-chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA to establish who was related.

To their excitement the researchers found a family tree complete with fathers, mothers, children and grandparents. "It was fascinating to think that you have just these tiny bone pieces and you can tell who is mum, who's dad and who are the kids, 3000 years ago," said Hummel, adding this was the first prehistoric family tree to have been identified.

Imagine that, several generations of the same family. They lived together, died among loved ones, and were buried in the same place — and only now are they being rediscovered for who and what they really were (to a degree, at least). I wonder what the cut marks are, though? If they aren’t signs of sacrifice, what caused them?

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