‘It’s really a horror.’ Bones from across Europe suggest Stone Age ritual killings

In 1984, in France’s Rhône Valley, forensic anthropologist Eric Crubézy found the skeletons of three women in a Stone Age structure built to resemble a grain silo. At the 5600-year-old site, called Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, one woman was lying on her side, her knees slightly bent. The other two were contorted into unnatural positions and hidden beneath a rocky overhang, broken grindstones piled on their bodies. The 25-year-old researcher, just out of medical school, didn’t know what to make of the odd arrangement of bones. “I thought it was unique,” Crubézy recalls. It wasn’t until 40 years later, reading an article in a forensics journal about a method of killing used by the Italian Mafia, that he had a flash of recognition. Called incaprettamento , “it’s done to make an example of the person,” says forensic anthropologist Bertrand Ludes of Paris City University, “and an impression on others.” Victims are placed on their stomachs with a rope around their ankles and neck, and the weight of their legs slowly strangles them. “It’s really a horror,” says Crubézy, now at Paul Sabatier University. “It’s very cruel—you’re forcing people to strangle themselves.” In a paper published today in Science Advances , Crubézy, Ludes, and their co-authors argue that two of the women in the pit at Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux were killed by incaprettamento —and that the kil...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research