Rituals of human sacrifice by asphyxiation were part of the European Neolithic tradition for at least 2,000 years. The practice was cross-cultural, according to a study published this Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, and traveled from end to end of the European continent. The first records date back 7,400 years and were found in the Czech Republic; The most recent, the last of which is 5,500 years old, have been found in Catalonia and the south of France, in the continental southwest.
“It is the first time that it has been demonstrated that a very specific type of sacrifice has been shared by people who live thousands of kilometers apart,” Eric Crubézy, the researcher at the Center for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse, explains in an email to La Vanguardia. France, who led the study. Answering how these different cultures arrived at such similar ritual forms is something that scientists have not been able to answer, and that they leave for future work.
The discovery is part of an archaeological investigation at the site of Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, in France, on the banks of the Rhône River and at the foot of the Alps. There, in what looked like a silo intended to store food, researchers have unearthed the bodies of two women in unconventional positions: lying on their backs or sides, with their legs drawn up and their ankles behind their hips.
This position suggests that they died from asphyxiation, victims of a practice called noose strangulation, in which a rope is tied to the victim’s ankles and neck so that they suffocate to death when they relax their legs. The technique is characterized by its cruelty, the researchers explain, to the point that the mafia uses it today to punish those it considers traitors. In the silo were the remains of a third woman, located between the other two, who researchers hypothesize was buried alive.
These violent deaths occurred under the shelter of an architectural structure oriented towards the winter and summer solstices, which symbolizes the agricultural cycle. The location, together with the anatomical position of the remains, led the researchers to think that what they had found was not a normal and ordinary tomb, but a human sacrifice post with which the Neolithic inhabitants of the valley venerated food security and agricultural success.
To give some context to their discovery, they looked to see if other investigations of similar sites—Neolithic agricultural societies settled on the banks of a river—had found any remains with similar characteristics. The review of the scientific literature revealed at least 18 other similar cases (9 men, 4 women, an individual without a defined gender and 4 children), distributed in thirteen sites throughout the European continent, from the Czech Republic to Catalonia.
The figure could, however, be much higher. “The position of the subjects is the only thing that suggests this type of sacrifice, which implies that we could only rely on sites that were duly excavated and well documented in the literature,” says Crubézy. “There are surely more than 20 cases in Europe, and there is no doubt that archaeologists will find new ones soon,” she concludes.
In addition to the position, scientists have analyzed, in cases where the evidence was sufficiently detailed, the archaeological context of the site. This has revealed that twelve of the bodies were found in silos that, as in the French case, also seemed intended to store food. And in at least ten of the excavations the tomb was far from the usual ones of the time. These details add evidence in favor that these individuals died as part of a ritual.
The geographical diversity in which researchers have found these remains and the broad period of time from which they date reveal that rituals of human sacrifice by asphyxiation were a “cross-cultural phenomenon,” they point out. That is to say, the sacrifices took place in Neolithic communities of diverse cultures, previously characterized based on the ceramic remains found at each site.
Understanding in greater detail the appearance, proliferation and distribution of these rituals, in some ways religious, will require interdisciplinary studies, the authors state in the manuscript, including anthropologists, Neolithic experts and forensics. Doing so is key to better understanding the societies of the past, and their relationship with power, agriculture and religion.
