Macabre discovery: Bronze Age Britons engaged in cannibalism

Macabre discovery: Bronze Age Britons engaged in cannibalism
Macabre discovery: Bronze Age Britons engaged in cannibalism

Fifty years ago, human bones dating from the Bronze Age were discovered in a natural well in Charterhouse Warren, England. They constitute evidence of one of the bloodiest massacres in Britain's prehistory: between 2,200 and 2,000 BC, at least thirty-seven people (men, women and children) were killed. killed there.

The bones were discovered by cavers at the bottom of a 15-metre natural well in the 1970s. They were then placed in boxes and largely ignored for five decades, until now. Indeed, the most important scientific study carried out on these bones since their discovery has just revealed that the bodies of the victims would have been dismembered, massacred and – for some – eaten, reports the Guardian.

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Skulls found at the site appear to have been broken by blows. Also, it seems that leg and arm bones were cut after death to extract bone marrow. Hand and foot bones bear traces of gnawing by human molars.

According to Professor Rick Schulting, lead author of the study, never before has a scene of such violence been discovered in Bronze Age Britain, or indeed in any other period of British prehistory. This probably makes this massacre an exceptional event, even for its time.

An act of terror?

Cannibalism on this scale was not common, however, according to Rick Schulting: “If this had been 'normal' for the time, one would expect to find evidence of this phenomenon at other sites. However, we have hundreds of skeletons from this period and we don’t see this kind of thing.” Nearly half of the bones are those of children, suggesting that an entire community was wiped out in a single, extremely brutal event.

The exact circumstances of the latter are not known, but Rick Schulting and his co-authors speculate that it may have been an example of “performance violence”that is, with the intention of terrifying and warning the wider community.

«Whoever did this must have been feared, imagine Rick Schulting. It must have resonated, I think, across time and space in this region, probably for generations, as something horrible that happened here.” It may also have been retaliation for an earlier mass killing and/or may have provoked subsequent acts of revenge – events for which there would then not yet be evidence.

Rick Schulting concludes: “Charterhouse Warren is one of those rare archaeological sites that challenges the way we think about the past. “It’s a stark reminder that prehistoric people could commit atrocities and highlights a dark side of human behavior.”

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