Ancient Graves Suggest Human Sacrifice

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June 18, 2007 — Physically disabled people may have been ritually sacrificed by European hunter-gatherer tribes as early as 24,000 years ago, according to an investigation into burials from the Upper Paleolithic period.

Well known in large, stratified ancient societies, ritual human sacrifice has never been apparent in the archaeological data of Upper Paleolithic Europe (about 26,000 to 8,000 B.C.).

But, according to lead study author Vincenzo Formicola of the University of Pisa in Italy, several of these burials suggest that human sacrifices may have been an important ritual activity in this period.

"Our findings show that the Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers developed a complex system of beliefs, symbols and rituals that are unknown in small groups of modern foragers," Formicola told Discovery News.

Analysis of the European record revealed an "intriguing high frequency of multiple burials."

Commonly attributed to simultaneous death due to natural disaster or disease, the multiple graves show a composition by age and sex and include severely deformed individuals, indicating that the burials may have been selective.

The researcher focused his investigation on three previously discovered sites in Russia, the Czech Republic and Italy. None of the remains buried at the three burials show signs of a violent death or sacrificial killing.

Nevertheless, the three graves share intriguing similarities: they all feature rich funerary decorations and include the remains of physically disabled people.

"The Sunghir double burial in Russia is probably the most spectacular and elaborate funerary example. A boy and a girl were placed head to head in a long, narrow, shallow grave. They were covered with red ochre and ornamented with extraordinarily rich and unique grave goods," Formicola wrote in the June issue of Current Anthropology.

The skeleton of the girl showed abnormal thigh bones that were bowed and shortened — most likely the result of a disease linked to a diabetic condition of the mother.

The grave goods included about 5,000 perforated ivory beads which had probably been sown into caps and clothing.

"Each ivory bead would have required the work of a specialist and would have taken more than a hour to make. This implies that the grave goods were ready when the two children died, raising the question of whether this ceremony was foreseen long in advance," Formicola said.

Another elaborately decorated, multiple burial was found at Dolni Vestonice in Moravia, Czech Republic. It contained the remains of three individuals, their age ranging from 16 to 25 years.

One was a teenager — thought to have been female — whose skeleton showed evidence of severe deformity, likely the result of a rare genetic disorder.

The teenager was lying between two adolescent males, with the hands of one male placed on her ochre-covered pelvic region.

The third burial, at Romito Cave in Calabria in southern Italy, featured the skeleton of an adolescent male dwarf, buried resting on the chest of an adult female. The bodies lay beneath a large stone with a beautiful engraving of a bull.

"These findings point to the possibility that human sacrifices were part of the ritual activity of these populations. Disabled may have been feared, hated or revered . . . we do not know whether this adolescent received special burial treatment in spite of being a dwarf or precisely because he was a dwarf," Formicola said.

Anthropologist David Frayer of the University of Kansas agrees that Upper Paleolithic multiple burials may point to ritual human sacrifices.

"There is no evidence – such as unhealed head wounds or flint projectiles — that any of the individuals in the Upper Paleolithic graves were sacrificed. However, it is also unlikely that multiple, simultaneous deaths were all accidental in the Upper Paleolithic," Frayer told Discovery News.