A 4,000-year-old cannibalism massacre has been discovered in southwestern England, where at least 37 people were killed with brutal force including men, women, and children. The bodies were discovered in a shaft that stands 50 feet deep within Charterhouse Warren Farm, near Bristol. Experts found that the bodies have features of a violent event-which includes broken femurs, crushed skulls, and deep slicing marks. According to experts, this was a large-scale slaughter and possibly included cannibalism.
According to Antiquity, the journal where it was published, the massacre was dated between 2210 and 2010 BC. The site, when first discovered in 1970, was initially considered a typical Bronze Age burial. Now, the discovery is proof of extreme violence. Researchers say that probably, the victims were either captives or ambushed, as there are no signs of defensive wounds or weapons.
Archaeologists discover 4,000 year-old massacre in Southwestern England, crushed skulls, and fractured bones depict cannibalism
Nearly half of the skulls show blunt-force trauma consistent with blows from wooden clubs. Leg bones exhibit tool marks suggesting flesh stripping, and long bones are fractured, implying marrow extraction, both associated with cannibalism. Animal remains, butchered similarly to human remains, were found strewn around the human bones, which could suggest a ceremonial killing ritual.
“This was completely unexpected and unlike anything we’ve seen from British prehistory,” said Rick Schulting, an archaeology professor at Oxford University and lead author of the study. The scale and brutality of the violence, as well as the postmortem treatment of the victims, are unprecedented for this period in Britain.
The reasons for the massacre remain unclear. Analysts advance the theory that cycles of revenge killings between the next-door communities might have incited the massacre. On the other hand, Schulting even implies the killings may have been part of a process of intimidating or dehumanizing victims.
Contrary to Britain’s Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, its relatively peaceful archaeological record, Charterhouse Warren now finds a place with just a small group of prehistoric sites in Europe to document large-scale violence and systematic body processing. Such a discovery offers unique insights into some of the darkest chapters of early human history.
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