In most human cultures, "cruel and unusual" punishments have mostly been reserved for people who have committed crimes against the beliefs of that society. Ritual sacrifice has usually been simply the offering of a person's life to the deities/nature spirits for a specific purpose. I cannot reconcile that form of killing with anything other than a punishment.
The point is the speed of death has usually been quick in cases of sacrifice. Suffering by a lingering death was not the objective. It’s only the death of Christ which introduced the concept of suffering to cleanse the sins of man but it’s possible the idea was around earlier. Remember, punishment in medieval society sometimes took the form of painful death (hang, drawn, quartered). It could be incapo. was a recognised capital punishment across Europe at that time for major crimes?
@@ChrisShortyAllen If a person was offering the life of their newborn child to avoid, say, crop failure, they would surely try to make the child's suffering as short as possible? These people cannot have been SO different from us - despite the passage of time - except they firmly believed that ritual sacrifice was necessary to ensure the favor of their gods and the continuation of their existence.
I agree. In a world that lacks a distinction between science and religion is going to enact justice within the context of their religious worldview. Justice, with a divine authority.
I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that there are a lot of assumptions being made. I'd like to know the reasoning behind quite a few ideas here... First, the sacrifice, what evidence do we have that suggests that sacrifice is the motive rather than some other cultural influence? We're also assuming that the place and position of burial had significance and meaning, but as discussed there was an ordinary burial involved too. And some cultures buried there deceased beneath their homes. Also, we assume that self strangulation is horrific but that is based on our cultural perspective and our value given to the desire to live. It is possible that they considered the practice to be humane and without bloodshed. *On a side note, I know someone who has suffered strangulation with the intention to kill, and they said it was relatively painless and easy to succumb to, healing from it afterwards was painful. I point these things out because I think it's important to keep an open mind in our attempts to project and ascribe meaning to long dead cultures.
Not sure about strangulation could ever be considered humane, but you are very right in many points: Its so difficult to come to definite conclusions with only physical remains of such distant cultures. Without written text it's almost impossible to know anything about these people believes and culture.
Agree with you about the speculation and also an attempt to unfairly and pointlessly compare these deaths by strangulation on the European continent thousands of years ago with the Aztec ritual sacrifices which were relatively recent historically. It seems an amateurish attempt to sensationalize two very different cultures which happened on different continents at different times in history.
This actually reminds me of the punishments meted out by the Romans to Vestal Virgins who were suspected of breaking their vow of chastity. Priestesses who did so were condemned to death, but because it was considered taboo to shed their blood, they were buried alive, believing that it spared the city culpability for their deaths. The fact that this happened much later, in exactly the same area as some of the 'sacrifices' in this paper is probably a coincidence, but it also might not be entirely. Like these 'sacrifices' seem to have been, executions of Vestal Virgins were exceedingly rare events. It makes more sense to me that an exceedingly rare form of homicide be a ritualised punishment than a routine form of human sacrifice. There's a pretty thin line culturally between human sacrifice and ritualised punishment. Historically many forms of capital punishment contained a symbolic element, e.g. executed criminals were usually denied burial on consecrated ground. Furthermore, superstitions meant that negative events affecting a community could sometimes be interpreted as divine punishment for sins committed by its members, and killings of offenders were done in a way intended to ritually cleanse the community (e.g. the burning of 'heretics' during the Reformation). It's possible these killings weren't so much human sacrifices as symbolic executions of people who had transgressed against their societies' laws, done in a way intended to expurgate their sins in the eyes of the gods. The fact that so many are women doesn't necessarily discount this idea- although women commit far fewer violent crimes than men, they are punished much more harshly for breaking moral taboos (e.g. adultery) in a great many cultures.
If these were indeed sacrifices for the sake of agricultural fertility, maybe these particular women were infertile or had 'failed' somehow in their reproductive capacity. Equating the reproductive capability of women to the fertility of the fields is not such a leap. If the crops were bad and these women were somehow believed to be at fault, that might explain their murder.
The first thing I thought was, remove the "ritual", or "religious" aspects of situations, and just stick with the basics of a hunter/gatherer, borderline agricultural group of people, and imagine summary judgements against someone by a hierarchy. Keep to the simple facts, and don't let the imaginations create gods and goddesses to "sacrifice" to. As in immediately calling a simple site as a religious site, with no evidence defining it.
@@Pipsqwak Maybe... but the combination of it being a very rare and noteworthy punishment and it being conducted at a sacred site (at least some of the time) really makes me think it was some kind of extreme punishment for a 'crime' considered extreme and needing divine intercession to forgive. Just being infertile wouldn't seem to meet that qualification. But all of this is pure speculation, obviously.
I was thinking along similar lines, apart from the person/people tying the cord, no one kills them, that this method of killing someone, is that they kill themselves, they are responsible for their own deaths? Who knows they could be drugged up, they could have volunteered to take messages to the land of the dead, or their diety?
I was quite surprised to find out that the oldest murder case in Europe was documented in my country. On the other hand there are other intriguing finds from the Czech Republic suggesting Neolithic people were no hippies. Like one case interpreted as execution by shooting as the buried had some flint arrowheads still in his/her bones. I can look up more info on this if you like. (I hope I'm not making this up, it's quite some time since my university time).
I'm going to revisit this and have a good think, but I have some doubts about the theories. People who live in the kind of societies which don't have refrigeration, or embalming, would be intimate with death in all its disgusting stages, so why would anyone place "sacrificial bodies" inside a grain store? Dead bodies decompose in horrible, smelly, leaky ways, they also contaminate the ground, surrounding earth (grain) and anything (even ground water) they're in contact with as they go through the process! Ancient peoples were not stupid, so could there be anything else at play in these sites? As I said, I will revisit this over the weekend, I'm way too tired to think everything through now. Thanks again for the thought provoking content!
My thought exactly. Why would any society that stores its grain harvest, place any bodies in their community's grain store as sacrifice? Unless, could it have been done by an enemy society? Perhaps to contaminate the communal food surplus with the bodies of a defeated enemy's leaders? That perhaps would make more sense. Loving the work you do guys.
Have scholars established a threshold of what it would take to persuade them to think ritual sacrifice was a widespread cultural practice? I appreciate what you guys are doing?
Let’s use the KISS approach. How many multiple burials are found each decade at households around the world? Let’s imagine these random killings were the work of individuals simply commuting murder rather than rituals. Bury the bodies in a pit inside a house, still being done today. Method of murder, still being done. Men praying on women as victims, still being done. Alignment of structure it equinox, coincidence or maybe a custom for many buildings. It’s just to far apart in time and distance to have any statistical significance as you pointed out.
I just discovered your RUclips channel. When we talk about human sacrifice I immediately refer to the analyzes of René Girard who considers that sacrifice is the foundation of all human culture. I believe that his analysis greatly explains our most distant history.
I sure appreciate your debunking hyperbolic statements. I'm always annoyed by papers or reporters stating that "cannibalism" was present, when actually there is only evidence of bones being de-fleshed. The assumption that that flesh was eaten is a leap of the imagination.
Animals don’t do these things to each other….what has gone so wrong with us as a species? Who, thousands and thousands of years ago, thought this rather complicated torture/killing method up? Who does that? Whoever thought that killing fellow human beings would change the weather, bring rain? Bartering with imaginary beings? You’d think that, after the umpteenth time the harvest did fail, even though sacrifices happened to prevent them….made them stop and think after a while. This part of our history is so difficult to understand….just as difficult to understand why we still allow our political Elite to engage in war and terror.
Fascinating. Re the (only) 20 examples, that is necessarily found to date and one assumes there are others which have yet to been found, have been lost to the ravages of time, or simply never will be.
How do we know it's not some from of punishment for breaking a 'law' or other cultural taboo.... after all it isn't that long ago that witches were burned.... to each cultural a law is a law whether we would agree of otherwise recognize it as valid?
I agree with the position that 20 instances isn't a custom. It seems more likely to be a rare thing, locally invented by someone with some reason for extreme hatred against the women, or a particularly nasty streak of cruelty, and/or desperate to get across to the gods that the community was starving, by creating a ritual so extreme it couldn't fail to be heard. Another possible reason I can imagine is that the women failed (or were thought to have failed) to carry out important rituals, where the failure was percieved as having brought down on the community a major crop failure, and so they had to be excruciatingly executed to atone for the failure. I think the more different possible reasons you can come up with is the best approach, because we can't know, so we're better off not picking one and favoring it and thereby convincing ourselves that must be what it was. Finding bugs in software is a very similar situation. There are an embarrassingly large number of times when I've convinced myself the bug was because of one thing, and then when I finally ran it down to the exact line of code out of thousands of possiblities, it turned out to be something totally different from what I was so sure of, sometimes something exotic and unexpected, other times something so obvious, familiar and predictable that I was left kicking myself for not having thought of that. At times, I have walked through the code line by line, right past the line that introduced the error, and simply not seen that I'd written "=" where I needed to have written "==". So when people try to guess what happened back then... I think extreme caution is the right approach. I also think coming up with lots of possibilities is a very good thing, because they might inspire the researcher to look again at something they'd overlooked, that might rule out some of the ideas, or suggest an entirely new approach.
yes, the ages varied, a few children, some men above 50, o around 15, , women in their 20s. and 40s.. , a couple seemingly killed and buried together... some single burials, some buried with others who were not killed in the way, some where several people buried were killed this way, all over the place www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11006212/
I'm not a specialist, but when I look at the map, it seems the oldest burials are north-east of the Alps, the latest south-west. Would it be possible that these sacrifices correlate with the slow migration of a special group of people, or with a kind of "cultural" diffusion of an old custom from the east? As few as 20 or as much as 20 would also mean different things and conclusion... Finally, all burials where oriented to the sollstices. I would easily think that these murders were simply hidden under a normal death. But what kind of fault these women would have made to be tortured like this?
All I can say is the first person that killed someone this way was a "sick" person. And for it to be done in what we consider modern times by the "Mafia" is worse.
There is an interesting article about this on line. Apparently the silos were used for food stirage then used for rubbish disposal. Also, a similar situation with bodies in a silo was found elsewhere but from same period. One in Achenheim one in Bergheim. Still looks more like punishment to me. Chopping off the left hand for stealing for example. I seem to recall Rome had a punishment involving beating the guilty party to death, as did the Chinese. I find it hard to imagine sacrificial victims being essentially thrown into the bin. In societies without prison systems, other options are necessary and often pretty brutal.
Mmm... I'm not sure "incaprettamento" can be like pyramids in the sense that it can be reinvented by different peoples-cultures at different times without contact. It seems "incaprettamento" is much more elaborate and specific.
Surely this practice went on for so long that there must have been a continuity of such sacrifices (otherwise the method would have been forgotten) indicating that there were many, many more that are not preserved in the archaeological record therefore indicating that this must have been an intrinsic cultural practice.
I'm half way through reading 'The Golden Bough' by J.G. Frazer (Edwardian, Colonial and certainly not a modern anthropological text) which endeavours to connect human beliefs and practices across the ages. The mass of anecdotal 'evidence' simply re-enforces that human behaviour is not logical or sequential. Ultimately, trying to untangle the reasoning behind any behaviours back in the mists of time, or even today, are at best and always will be hypothetical if not totally contingent on guesswork ... algorithm or no algorithm. To sum up, using a Yorkshire phrase 'There's nowt as strange as folk !'
@@nodarkthings There's a few Yorkshire phrases that have 'altered' so as not to be misunderstood by those not from 'God's County'. Call it PC if you wish, but words are just semantics, the meaning's the important thing.
If only 14 sites are involved across 2k years, this killing technique may well be something usual, otherwise how to explain that people kept the knowledge of how to do it for such a long time?
Weeell, all my illusions about neolithic Europe have long been blown away: Jungfernhöhle in Tiefenellern (Headcollection), Asparn, Schletz, Eulau, Halberstadt, Wiederstedt, Thalheim, Herxheim, Kilianstädten, the similar finds on the French side of the Rhine, the place in Poland I can't spell from my head, though that was late NL Globular Amphoras... - A really odd collection of... let's call it burial rites, because dead is dead, however it happened...
I still think those were more "executions" , maybe there was a taboo against killing tribe members directly or shedding blood of relatives, so maybe that was a way around this if a capital punishment was considered necessary - how can we exclude that the two young women killed the granny under their care because she got on their nerves, and as a punishment were buried with her? And she got a great burial because e.g. she was the beloved mother of the group's leader and he wanted to makes sure she gets resurrected properly in the afterlife - as such the solstice alignment for her?
Are we sure all the burials happened at the same time? Could the murders be a later thing, say, a later sacrifice to an older burial (or a punishment for defiling it)? A few years' difference wouldn't necessarily be seen in the record, if the grave was otherwise undisturbed, would it?
I was with the Boys when they pointed out the problem of extrapolating from 14 examples, to cover 2k years of a practice being widespread. However, if you only had 14 examples of a practice from today, back to Rome you might be on more solid ground because of the use of written records, ie many more possible data points available. If you span 7000-5000 B.C. you'd have far fewer opportunities for data, making 14 a more significant number. Or am I just whistlin' Dixie?
Saying it was “widespread” isn’t responsible, however, the percentage of examples of a given custom or practice that are actually discovered in archaeological digs is a very small fraction of the total number. For every example of incaprettomento (or any burial custom or practice, etc) found, there has to be much, much larger number that aren’t found or are unfindable due to decomposition/deterioration. No?
Brutal human killings, whether murder or sacrifice, are indeed 'widespread" in prehistory. The famous bog bodies of Northern Europe all bore signs of violent, intentional death - even to the point of overkill (one body had been strangles, bludgeoned, and stabbed). There is much evidence of intentional killing and even cannibalism dating far back even into the mesolithic. Some ancient settlements had child burials under hearths or thresholds and at ritual sites; these were probably not accidental deaths or deaths from childhood illness. The Aztec of Mexico were famous for their brutal, bloodthirsty mass sacrifices. The Inca performed human sacrifices by abandoning children on mountain tops to die. I don't know why we're so horrified that ancient humans would do something that we still do today - kill other human beings for the most incomprehensible and unjust reasons.
@@Pipsqwak yes, but one can kill another in many various and far less sophisticated ways than something as characteristic and elaborated in its cruelty as "incaprettamento".
@@Pipsqwak I was referring to the specific method (I don’t wanna try and spell it again..🥱) in the paper and video. I realize I wasn’t very clear about that. But in general, yes, I’d have to agree with you.
You know, over 2k years you're going to get so many psychopaths too. I'm not dismissing sacrifice, I'm just pointing out the tiny frequency is more straight out serial killer.
Possibly not executions for some transgression. There would be thousands of such discoveries. More like a chosen sacrifice for some special purpose. Some unusual event, maybe. Just a thought. Unless there are countless more such burial discovered the idea that these were executions should be discounted.
Of course that not only human sacrifice was common, but the cannibalism also. As a historian I have been discovering this fact gradually, through research of archaeological excavations ... Today there is no one single human on this planet whose ancestors didn't eat other humans ... Maori on New Zealand, Mexico and central America (due to the lack of large animals for meat), in Indonesia they were eating there own dead in middle and in early New Ages, in Germany was found ditch with more than 1000 skeletons with traces of cutting on bones, so called Anasazi in south-west of USA from 8th to 12th century ... on Eastern island, in the palace of Knossos archaeologists found mixed with bones of sheep and goats there were bones of human child with obvious cut marks ...in the end, Iliad says that Agamemnon did make the sacrifice of his own daughter... and Akhilleus made sacrifice of certain number of Trojan captives to the pyre of Patrokles ... etc.
Interesting you question if such evidence would be admissible to a court of law. In the Netherlands, there actually was someone that got convicted solely based on statistics and suspicion. Later the data was looked at again, and she was released, but only after this had caused her damage from all the stress. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucia_de_Berk_case Every once in a while, we are shocked by the discoveries of men holding their wives, children or kidnapped children in captivity, and brutally murder them. But to think of this as a ritual, means it is normalized and rationalized, while society invariably look at such behavior with disgust. Genetically we are not so far removed from the mesolithic people, looking at old rock art and cave paintings, I do not believe we are emotionally different in a relevant way. So what I would think is that we can see that through out our history, we have had a small fraction persons, who do indescribable harm to others. But to think of this as widely accepted ritual is not something that is logical to me. After all, the maffia practices aren't common behavior either, and the maffiosi are outliers in the dominant society.
Statistics. Sampling does not need everyone to answer a question. The fact that the same activity was found covering 2000 years means you have a sample. It means there are many more that you haven't found.
Is there any possibility that the "victims" were drugged? I'm sure I heard this was so when a bogman was strangled. Apologies that my memory fails once again, and no source is provided.
What if they weren’t sacrifices; what if they were people convicted of stealing grain? Based on the description, it does seem like more of a punishment than a sacrifice.
Interesting question about whether an algorithm would be accepted as evidence in a court of law. I don't believe it would be but I'm not an expert. My follow up then is how long until it is accepted as evidence. Which is scary.
The extreme suffering implied in the method suggests an execution rather than a sacrifice. Either way, the real point is what you identified-we're reaching very broad conclusions from tiny sets of data, with the points widely scattered in space and time.
Perhaps we are looking at it from a more modern perspective. Life was much harder and rougher then. It was a common thing to see animals slaughtered so there is a certain level of built in callousness. Additionally, it may have been believed that the sacrificed person should go willingly or at least seem to go willingly. The women would have been able to prevent their death for a short time while their muscles held out or they could have hastened the process by using their legs to choke themselves to death. Would the inevitability of the situation have made the self sacrifice the kindest thing? What alternative would have provided the victim with a way out so surely.
I would look at these killings as both murders, and sacrifice. Imagine being a young witness to such sacrifice, perhaps a less valued member within it too. A seed was planted one way or another. Even a cave drawing could affect an unsettled mind theoretically.
A method of applying terrible pain, at least at times leading to the victims dead or maybe just a way to make sure that problematic dead people with suspected supernatural powers stayed in their grave for good or a ritualistic sacrifice or maybe just very sadistic murders ( dont think this is a modern invention) or maybe somekind of ancient eksorsism ment to cure some psychic or physical ailment belived to be caused by some kind of dangerous power of nature ? hmm thoughts wandering, we cant help trying to make sense of things, i came to think about where the bodies were placed which let me to speculate of something i some times think of when i try to put myself i ancients peoples place understaning the world, there is a fungus that attacks grasses and korn named Claviceps purpurea it gives hallucinations and leads to dead by gangrene - could it somehow be related to something like that ? did the ancients somehow suspect a connection between the korn and the hallucinations and terrible deads by people in contact with the korn and associated it with dangerous powers having "possesed" the korn and the storrage pit and simply placed everything and everyone that had been in contact with the polluted korn back in the pit and closed it of, may be ritually which makes the victims an offering or maybe even a punishment if one asssume that they in someway had a form of responsibility for the korn not being touched or inhabbited by said powers. lol ockhams razor is coming for me i better stop this assuming this and that about what we annoyinngly or maybe luckely can never know.
Maybe it was a sacrifice, maybe it was a form of punishment, such as crucification, maybe it was some type of trial, we'll never understand the motivation behind it. I don't think we can assume anything.
I do not think that was random, this is a very specific way of killing someone which has to taught and learned, one does not simply invent it over and over again.
I’d like to know if these researchers tested the DNA of these individuals to see if they were related and if there’s any relation to individuals currently in the databases plus I wonder if their hyoid bones were broken?
If everyone is starving, it makes sense to suppose that the gods wish the people to suffer. Thus a sacrifice that creates enormous suffering might be the most likely to get the gods off your back.
20 corpses. What proportion of graves of the same epoch that have been discovered does that make? Crubezy is using bad maths. He can surmise, ok... But: maybe you will find more tombs of that era....and not one such burial among them. And as you rightly pointed out, it has not really ended. The basics of religious practice is patterns of repetition, especially in farming societies which saw everything as cycles.
Human sacrifice has been a constant in human history. War. Not ritual sacrifice? What do you call combat? The WWI poet and victim of that war, Winfred Owen in his *The Parable of the Old Man and the Young* cites the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac - a story often interpreted as a prohibition on human sacrifice for god or gods. Yet he likens it to the war itself, with a twist. It strikes me as strange that we view human sacrifice as some bygone practice of ancient and savage people. Fascinating video though. Full text of Owen's poem follows for those who want click read more. So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went, And took the fire with him, and a knife. And as they sojourned both of them together, Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father, Behold the preparations, fire and iron, But where the lamb for this burnt-offering? Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps, and builded parapets and trenches there, And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son. When lo! an angel called him out of heaven, Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad, Neither do anything to him. Behold, A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns; Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him. But the old man would not so, but slew his son, And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
So far I've seen two references to novels. The murder sounds like "One Corpse Too Many" and the "frequentist interpretation" is from "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" I dont have the stomach to get past that.
Can they really tell from remains that old whether or not the person was alive when they were tied up? It doesn't seem likely they could tell that. I also don't think rock art should count as an example of that means of torture. Maybe that's not what the artist was going for. It's all a matter of interpretation of course.
Well, the main author is a forensic expert. And in the case of some of the Czech samples it is obvious. You see that the body moved in the grave when the person struggled to get a breath. It is Frozen in a position trying to get relief given the constrains.. Corpses don't do that.
Since we can't get in the minds of the people involved I don't think we can make any assumptions. Even if they are agricultural sacrifices there might be a belief that the victims were in some way responsible for a misfortune (such as a failed crop) that leads to seeking to appease the gods through a sacrifice of the "guilty parties" - so it's a mixture of judicial and ritual killing (just as the Romans in times of calamity would check up on the status of the Vestal Virgins and find that gosh, wouldn't you know, all was not as it should be). That might explain the cruelty. Or it might be something else altogether, or something different in every case. Based on this part of the world (the South Pacific) I suspect the Neolithic in Europe holds horrors that we'd rather not face - I wouldn't be surprised if at certain times there was widespread cannibalism for example. And not just for ritual purposes but because human beings provide a ready source of plentiful meat.
Yes, the prolonged suffering hints at sthg personal, an attack on the person, not an offering to the gods. The Maya did do prolonged suffering, but people were not killed. They healed and lived to put another thorn through their tongues and bleed for the gods.
At the first... seeing this fore the 1st time... wath a cool way to do this... and talk about the world history... n Now... as a way too ask you al about this... Is it just one rock art picture... that is a porhaps quiz... of showing this... and is it 20 persons that is ending there lives this way on 14 sites. More women then man... but howe meny? If there is any one home wants too start this diolog whit me frome this... RUclips film... Pleas answering me...
a question? how do we know this was a sacrifice instead of punishment for foul deeds these people have committed , (whether they’re innocent or not, of course), or run away slaves. if it is all women, maybe horrifically they were accused of not being faithful. why only rituals?? are there artifacts that tend that way? because that certainly is a very cruel way to die. (and i hate to say it, but even now humans do do these kinds of things. 🫣😧 we need help from Dostoyevski, but in a different way. :P
Interesting, but you should have told us the bare facts about those burials, before any interpretation. Is indeed certain that those two women were buried alive, and that they were executed in that manner? If they were indeed bound that way, perhaps it was only to make it easier to fit the corpses into that cramped "silo"?
It's always a problem when you attempt to interpret something like this, because you are looking at it from a completely different point of view to what would have been the case back then. I'd have to agree that twenty instances like this over two thousand years in Europe could hardly be called a "widespread practice".
well, it must have been "widespread" enough for the method not to have been forgotten - even if it was rarely applied, is had to have been "widespread" as a concept - e.g. the possession of atomic bombs in the world today is far greater than their actual usage.
@@Chociewitka Point taken, if you defer to the dictionary definition of the word, "widespread", which is "happens or is evident over a wide area or number of people". Perhaps I should have said "It is not possible to infer that such a practice was commonplace". Semantics, eh?
Perhaps the two women shoved out of the way in burial were members of another group, as scapegoats. If the harvest had been bad, the 'other group' could have been blamed, and the women paid the price.
a question? how do we this was a sacrifice instead of foul deeds these people have done? (whether they’re innocent or not, of course. if it is all women, maybe horrifically they were accused of not being faithful, or run away slaves. why only rituals?? are there artifacts that tend that way? because that certainly is a very cruel way to die. (and i hate to say it, but even now humans do do these kinds of things. 🫣😧 we need help from Dostoyevski, but in a different way. 😶
Whats the difference between a nasty murder by your standard nasty murderer who enjoys the kill & human sacrifice ?....you can't tell...nobody can.. so trying to sort this out by joining the dots & using maths on such a small sample of the dearly departed from thousands of years ago is bat shit crazy...it stretches credulity to braking point. We will never be able to prove motivation for these murders...ever.
not only women were affected, and for those buried with the older lady, imho far more likely they were her servants and have killed her (or were assumed to be responsible for her death) e.g. because she was difficult mistress, and that as such they were buried alive with her.
The place is solar aligned, so clearly the burials are ritual. Except... Most Christian churches are East West aligned with the altar being at the East end. Churches have barrels in them and outside of them. So are Christian burials solar aligned? Of course not! They typically involve some sort of ritual but the alignment with the sun or E West makes no difference at all. I am not sure we can assume the burials in a solar aligned building have anything to do with solar alignment.
The victim would kill her/him-self. Thus there was no other one who did the murder. I.e. it was guiltless for the community. The "self strangulation" could lead to involuntary urination or defacation and watery eyes, drooling and coughing. Such moisture shedding could be seen as a symbol for rain. Poop could be symbolic dunging. From a mother into Mother Earth. Combined with the granary Silo's it seems indeed to point at an agricultural offering. Burying people alive might well be understood in more shamanic terms as a offer to the Netherworld, which in many cultures has its entrance in holes in the floor of a dwelling and/or cavemouths. This lower world symbolizes the direct needs (sexual, eating, drinking) of humans. In that sense the living burial victim might be a messenger to that realm, to plead for the people and their needs.
Actually, we are still doing it even at a proportionately much higher rate. We are hiding the fact of these human sacrifices to our gods of prosperity under the euphemism of "the cost of mobility" in all the people dying in traffic accidents. There is also "collateral damage" like in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are many more institutionalized form of murder we have blinded yourself to. Chances are that people then had similar ways of thinking around their own responsibility. As a postwar German I was thoroughly taught about how this works and how to resist it. However, my teachers typically fell silent when I pointed out the human sacrifice aspect of traffic deaths.
Just started watching this episode on the TV, and I’ve had to pause it to congratulate you for bringing up this truly appalling subject, which is very hard for people to grasp just how large and widespread a problem this was, and which continues to this day . Thankfully we are seeing the destruction of Ritual Child Sacrifice Sites like the Georgia Guidestones all around the World, and even of Baby Farms for providing the victims of child Trafficking. So many of our children meet a dreadful tortured end for the creation of the drug called Adrenochrome, which has even been openly on sale. There even continues to be a complete misunderstanding of the Roman “Games” with them being called Bread and Circuses and entertainment, when they were deadly serious Religious Human Sacrifice Rituals ? Even Kings and Tribal Leaders captured in Wars, ended up being Taken to the Temples of specific gods for the blessings from which had the captives executed there. It’s all well documented in the Records of A Rome that welcomed the Blessings of the gods on Rome and its people from the rites performed. Only now do things at last appear to be heading in the right direction, with a very real War being waged against these Evils, with a lot more about this War being revealed to the Public which people are going to find really shocking, as the Cult responsible, has infiltrated and taken over most of the main religions? It seems King Henry 8th understood all too well just how evil the Roman Church had become, which is the real reason he broke with Rome, but the resulting Protestantism then got infiltrated after. The only branch of Christianity which remained actively at War with the Cult, was the Eastern Orthodox Church- Why the Bolsheviks were so determined to eliminate them . Could be the real reason why there is so much hatred for Vladimir Putin ? As he is a devout Eastern Orthodox Christian 🤔and as Nazis are footsoldiers for the Cult, an interesting insight came from a Russian General, when a journalist asked him when they would be leaving Ukraine he replied - “When We have Freed All of the Children” yes there were are Children Farms in Ukraine, and it is still one of the largest sources of the resulting Adrenochrome Child extract. 😡😡😡 Bob.
Big suprise, you think that humans haven't always thought of cruel ways to kill each other. I think that we humans are both our evil and our good. We don't know why these women were chosen for this death. It might have been because they were scolds or maybe they were caught in some kind of conspiracy against the tribe they were a part of. Who knows and we will never know. Cheers
Imagine there's no countries. And no religion, too. Imagine a world without laws or police or prisons. Imagine there is no punishment or even cultural prohibitions against casual killing, it's easy if you try. No authorities above us, below us only fear and superstition. Imagine all the people sacrificing people for the people.
Given the number of instances known, it does sound like some of the inferences being drawn are a trifle exaggerated.
In most human cultures, "cruel and unusual" punishments have mostly been reserved for people who have committed crimes against the beliefs of that society. Ritual sacrifice has usually been simply the offering of a person's life to the deities/nature spirits for a specific purpose. I cannot reconcile that form of killing with anything other than a punishment.
Not so.
Tell us how people are killed nicely within your imaginary cultures.
The point is the speed of death has usually been quick in cases of sacrifice. Suffering by a lingering death was not the objective. It’s only the death of Christ which introduced the concept of suffering to cleanse the sins of man but it’s possible the idea was around earlier. Remember, punishment in medieval society sometimes took the form of painful death (hang, drawn, quartered). It could be incapo. was a recognised capital punishment across Europe at that time for major crimes?
@@ChrisShortyAllen If a person was offering the life of their newborn child to avoid, say, crop failure, they would surely try to make the child's suffering as short as possible? These people cannot have been SO different from us - despite the passage of time - except they firmly believed that ritual sacrifice was necessary to ensure the favor of their gods and the continuation of their existence.
I agree. In a world that lacks a distinction between science and religion is going to enact justice within the context of their religious worldview. Justice, with a divine authority.
Me too and as a deterrent
Although this is a dark subject, I have to say that you brothers are always so chill and funny and interesting at the same time.
Great work!
I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that there are a lot of assumptions being made. I'd like to know the reasoning behind quite a few ideas here... First, the sacrifice, what evidence do we have that suggests that sacrifice is the motive rather than some other cultural influence? We're also assuming that the place and position of burial had significance and meaning, but as discussed there was an ordinary burial involved too. And some cultures buried there deceased beneath their homes. Also, we assume that self strangulation is horrific but that is based on our cultural perspective and our value given to the desire to live. It is possible that they considered the practice to be humane and without bloodshed. *On a side note, I know someone who has suffered strangulation with the intention to kill, and they said it was relatively painless and easy to succumb to, healing from it afterwards was painful. I point these things out because I think it's important to keep an open mind in our attempts to project and ascribe meaning to long dead cultures.
Not sure about strangulation could ever be considered humane, but you are very right in many points: Its so difficult to come to definite conclusions with only physical remains of such distant cultures. Without written text it's almost impossible to know anything about these people believes and culture.
Agree with you about the speculation and also an attempt to unfairly and pointlessly compare these deaths by strangulation on the European continent thousands of years ago with the Aztec ritual sacrifices which were relatively recent historically. It seems an amateurish attempt to sensationalize two very different cultures which happened on different continents at different times in history.
This creeped me out even more than the Bog People killing! And yet, could the reasons for both be similar?
This actually reminds me of the punishments meted out by the Romans to Vestal Virgins who were suspected of breaking their vow of chastity. Priestesses who did so were condemned to death, but because it was considered taboo to shed their blood, they were buried alive, believing that it spared the city culpability for their deaths. The fact that this happened much later, in exactly the same area as some of the 'sacrifices' in this paper is probably a coincidence, but it also might not be entirely. Like these 'sacrifices' seem to have been, executions of Vestal Virgins were exceedingly rare events. It makes more sense to me that an exceedingly rare form of homicide be a ritualised punishment than a routine form of human sacrifice.
There's a pretty thin line culturally between human sacrifice and ritualised punishment. Historically many forms of capital punishment contained a symbolic element, e.g. executed criminals were usually denied burial on consecrated ground. Furthermore, superstitions meant that negative events affecting a community could sometimes be interpreted as divine punishment for sins committed by its members, and killings of offenders were done in a way intended to ritually cleanse the community (e.g. the burning of 'heretics' during the Reformation). It's possible these killings weren't so much human sacrifices as symbolic executions of people who had transgressed against their societies' laws, done in a way intended to expurgate their sins in the eyes of the gods. The fact that so many are women doesn't necessarily discount this idea- although women commit far fewer violent crimes than men, they are punished much more harshly for breaking moral taboos (e.g. adultery) in a great many cultures.
If these were indeed sacrifices for the sake of agricultural fertility, maybe these particular women were infertile or had 'failed' somehow in their reproductive capacity. Equating the reproductive capability of women to the fertility of the fields is not such a leap. If the crops were bad and these women were somehow believed to be at fault, that might explain their murder.
The first thing I thought was, remove the "ritual", or "religious" aspects of situations, and just stick with the basics of a hunter/gatherer, borderline agricultural group of people, and imagine summary judgements against someone by a hierarchy. Keep to the simple facts, and don't let the imaginations create gods and goddesses to "sacrifice" to. As in immediately calling a simple site as a religious site, with no evidence defining it.
I was thinking along the same lines, people don't like to take the blame ...
@@Pipsqwak Maybe... but the combination of it being a very rare and noteworthy punishment and it being conducted at a sacred site (at least some of the time) really makes me think it was some kind of extreme punishment for a 'crime' considered extreme and needing divine intercession to forgive. Just being infertile wouldn't seem to meet that qualification. But all of this is pure speculation, obviously.
I was thinking along similar lines, apart from the person/people tying the cord, no one kills them, that this method of killing someone, is that they kill themselves, they are responsible for their own deaths? Who knows they could be drugged up, they could have volunteered to take messages to the land of the dead, or their diety?
I was quite surprised to find out that the oldest murder case in Europe was documented in my country. On the other hand there are other intriguing finds from the Czech Republic suggesting Neolithic people were no hippies. Like one case interpreted as execution by shooting as the buried had some flint arrowheads still in his/her bones. I can look up more info on this if you like. (I hope I'm not making this up, it's quite some time since my university time).
the 'Tumulus' culture or the natives? or either did it to other?
I'm going to revisit this and have a good think, but I have some doubts about the theories. People who live in the kind of societies which don't have refrigeration, or embalming, would be intimate with death in all its disgusting stages, so why would anyone place "sacrificial bodies" inside a grain store? Dead bodies decompose in horrible, smelly, leaky ways, they also contaminate the ground, surrounding earth (grain) and anything (even ground water) they're in contact with as they go through the process! Ancient peoples were not stupid, so could there be anything else at play in these sites?
As I said, I will revisit this over the weekend, I'm way too tired to think everything through now. Thanks again for the thought provoking content!
My thought exactly. Why would any society that stores its grain harvest, place any bodies in their community's grain store as sacrifice? Unless, could it have been done by an enemy society? Perhaps to contaminate the communal food surplus with the bodies of a defeated enemy's leaders? That perhaps would make more sense. Loving the work you do guys.
The tomb mimicked a grain store, not an actual store that was used.
Have scholars established a threshold of what it would take to persuade them to think ritual sacrifice was a widespread cultural practice?
I appreciate what you guys are doing?
Let’s use the KISS approach.
How many multiple burials are found each decade at households around the world?
Let’s imagine these random killings were the work of individuals simply commuting murder rather than rituals. Bury the bodies in a pit inside a house, still being done today. Method of murder, still being done. Men praying on women as victims, still being done.
Alignment of structure it equinox, coincidence or maybe a custom for many buildings.
It’s just to far apart in time and distance to have any statistical significance as you pointed out.
I just discovered your RUclips channel. When we talk about human sacrifice I immediately refer to the analyzes of René Girard who considers that sacrifice is the foundation of all human culture. I believe that his analysis greatly explains our most distant history.
I wonder if the myth of Persephone being dragged into the underworld is somehow related to the sacrifice of women in these silos?
looks like we both had the same idea!!
I sure appreciate your debunking hyperbolic statements. I'm always annoyed by papers or reporters stating that "cannibalism" was present, when actually there is only evidence of bones being de-fleshed. The assumption that that flesh was eaten is a leap of the imagination.
That may be. However it did indeed happen.
Yep - such as the recent reports of ritual neolithic cannibalism of a whole village in Somerset.
Animals don’t do these things to each other….what has gone so wrong with us as a species?
Who, thousands and thousands of years ago, thought this rather complicated torture/killing method up?
Who does that?
Whoever thought that killing fellow human beings would change the weather, bring rain? Bartering with imaginary beings?
You’d think that, after the umpteenth time the harvest did fail, even though sacrifices happened to prevent them….made them stop and think after a while.
This part of our history is so difficult to understand….just as difficult to understand why we still allow our political Elite to engage in war and terror.
? have you seen chimps ripping itself apart? ruclips.net/video/4XP6T1CMgBQ/видео.html
Fascinating. Re the (only) 20 examples, that is necessarily found to date and one assumes there are others which have yet to been found, have been lost to the ravages of time, or simply never will be.
How do we know it's not some from of punishment for breaking a 'law' or other cultural taboo.... after all it isn't that long ago that witches were burned.... to each cultural a law is a law whether we would agree of otherwise recognize it as valid?
I agree with the position that 20 instances isn't a custom. It seems more likely to be a rare thing, locally invented by someone with some reason for extreme hatred against the women, or a particularly nasty streak of cruelty, and/or desperate to get across to the gods that the community was starving, by creating a ritual so extreme it couldn't fail to be heard. Another possible reason I can imagine is that the women failed (or were thought to have failed) to carry out important rituals, where the failure was percieved as having brought down on the community a major crop failure, and so they had to be excruciatingly executed to atone for the failure. I think the more different possible reasons you can come up with is the best approach, because we can't know, so we're better off not picking one and favoring it and thereby convincing ourselves that must be what it was. Finding bugs in software is a very similar situation. There are an embarrassingly large number of times when I've convinced myself the bug was because of one thing, and then when I finally ran it down to the exact line of code out of thousands of possiblities, it turned out to be something totally different from what I was so sure of, sometimes something exotic and unexpected, other times something so obvious, familiar and predictable that I was left kicking myself for not having thought of that. At times, I have walked through the code line by line, right past the line that introduced the error, and simply not seen that I'd written "=" where I needed to have written "==". So when people try to guess what happened back then... I think extreme caution is the right approach. I also think coming up with lots of possibilities is a very good thing, because they might inspire the researcher to look again at something they'd overlooked, that might rule out some of the ideas, or suggest an entirely new approach.
Do we hve any details about age and health of the victims?
yes, the ages varied, a few children, some men above 50, o around 15, , women in their 20s. and 40s.. , a couple seemingly killed and buried together... some single burials, some buried with others who were not killed in the way, some where several people buried were killed this way, all over the place www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11006212/
I'm not a specialist, but when I look at the map, it seems the oldest burials are north-east of the Alps, the latest south-west. Would it be possible that these sacrifices correlate with the slow migration of a special group of people, or with a kind of "cultural" diffusion of an old custom from the east?
As few as 20 or as much as 20 would also mean different things and conclusion...
Finally, all burials where oriented to the sollstices. I would easily think that these murders were simply hidden under a normal death. But what kind of fault these women would have made to be tortured like this?
All I can say is the first person that killed someone this way was a "sick" person. And for it to be done in what we consider modern times by the "Mafia" is worse.
There is an interesting article about this on line. Apparently the silos were used for food stirage then used for rubbish disposal. Also, a similar situation with bodies in a silo was found elsewhere but from same period. One in Achenheim one in Bergheim. Still looks more like punishment to me. Chopping off the left hand for stealing for example. I seem to recall Rome had a punishment involving beating the guilty party to death, as did the Chinese. I find it hard to imagine sacrificial victims being essentially thrown into the bin. In societies without prison systems, other options are necessary and often pretty brutal.
Mmm... I'm not sure "incaprettamento" can be like pyramids in the sense that it can be reinvented by different peoples-cultures at different times without contact. It seems "incaprettamento" is much more elaborate and specific.
Surely this practice went on for so long that there must have been a continuity of such sacrifices (otherwise the method would have been forgotten) indicating that there were many, many more that are not preserved in the archaeological record therefore indicating that this must have been an intrinsic cultural practice.
Human sacrifice or capital punishment in the newly established class system that the Neolithic ushered in?
I'm half way through reading 'The Golden Bough' by J.G. Frazer (Edwardian, Colonial and certainly not a modern anthropological text) which endeavours to connect human beliefs and practices across the ages. The mass of anecdotal 'evidence' simply re-enforces that human behaviour is not logical or sequential. Ultimately, trying to untangle the reasoning behind any behaviours back in the mists of time, or even today, are at best and always will be hypothetical if not totally contingent on guesswork ... algorithm or no algorithm.
To sum up, using a Yorkshire phrase 'There's nowt as strange as folk !'
I thought it was nowt as queer as folk!
@@nodarkthings There's a few Yorkshire phrases that have 'altered' so as not to be misunderstood by those not from 'God's County'. Call it PC if you wish, but words are just semantics, the meaning's the important thing.
If only 14 sites are involved across 2k years, this killing technique may well be something usual, otherwise how to explain that people kept the knowledge of how to do it for such a long time?
May have been a punishment for a particular crime. People have an extensive history of horrific punishments.
Weeell, all my illusions about neolithic Europe have long been blown away: Jungfernhöhle in Tiefenellern (Headcollection), Asparn, Schletz, Eulau, Halberstadt, Wiederstedt, Thalheim, Herxheim, Kilianstädten, the similar finds on the French side of the Rhine, the place in Poland I can't spell from my head, though that was late NL Globular Amphoras... - A really odd collection of... let's call it burial rites, because dead is dead, however it happened...
Could also have been execution?
You guys read my mind! Or I read yours! So glad critical thinking comes so quickly to you both!
Didn't the Aztecs flay people alive to inflict maximum pain for the god/goddess of corn?
I still think those were more "executions" , maybe there was a taboo against killing tribe members directly or shedding blood of relatives, so maybe that was a way around this if a capital punishment was considered necessary - how can we exclude that the two young women killed the granny under their care because she got on their nerves, and as a punishment were buried with her? And she got a great burial because e.g. she was the beloved mother of the group's leader and he wanted to makes sure she gets resurrected properly in the afterlife - as such the solstice alignment for her?
These days we'd just blame a serial killer.
must have been an immortal one then
To quote my grandfather, "Some folks just can't be figured."
Are we sure all the burials happened at the same time? Could the murders be a later thing, say, a later sacrifice to an older burial (or a punishment for defiling it)? A few years' difference wouldn't necessarily be seen in the record, if the grave was otherwise undisturbed, would it?
Maybe the victims were the slaves of the main burial woman and killed as grave goods, and the way of killing reflects their very low status.
I was with the Boys when they pointed out the problem of extrapolating from 14 examples, to cover 2k years of a practice being widespread. However, if you only had 14 examples of a practice from today, back to Rome you might be on more solid ground because of the use of written records, ie many more possible data points available. If you span 7000-5000 B.C. you'd have far fewer opportunities for data, making 14 a more significant number. Or am I just whistlin' Dixie?
Saying it was “widespread” isn’t responsible, however, the percentage of examples of a given custom or practice that are actually discovered in archaeological digs is a very small fraction of the total number. For every example of incaprettomento (or any burial custom or practice, etc) found, there has to be much, much larger number that aren’t found or are unfindable due to decomposition/deterioration. No?
Brutal human killings, whether murder or sacrifice, are indeed 'widespread" in prehistory. The famous bog bodies of Northern Europe all bore signs of violent, intentional death - even to the point of overkill (one body had been strangles, bludgeoned, and stabbed). There is much evidence of intentional killing and even cannibalism dating far back even into the mesolithic. Some ancient settlements had child burials under hearths or thresholds and at ritual sites; these were probably not accidental deaths or deaths from childhood illness. The Aztec of Mexico were famous for their brutal, bloodthirsty mass sacrifices. The Inca performed human sacrifices by abandoning children on mountain tops to die. I don't know why we're so horrified that ancient humans would do something that we still do today - kill other human beings for the most incomprehensible and unjust reasons.
@@Pipsqwak yes, but one can kill another in many various and far less sophisticated ways than something as characteristic and elaborated in its cruelty as "incaprettamento".
@@Pipsqwak
I was referring to the specific method (I don’t wanna try and spell it again..🥱) in the paper and video. I realize I wasn’t very clear about that. But in general, yes, I’d have to agree with you.
Was it a belief system or a punishment system?
Fascinating, nonetheless.
Thank you for sharing.
You know, over 2k years you're going to get so many psychopaths too. I'm not dismissing sacrifice, I'm just pointing out the tiny frequency is more straight out serial killer.
but there were no books nor internet where you could learn the method, you had to be taught it...
Good point well made - and such people may have personal ritualistic behaviours attached to their murderous actions.
En lascaux....creo.....hay una pintura rupestre representando una escena similar.....junto a otra de un hombre danzando.....
We do love our traditions, don't we?
Possibly not executions for some transgression. There would be thousands of such discoveries. More like a chosen sacrifice for some special purpose. Some unusual event, maybe. Just a thought. Unless there are countless more such burial discovered the idea that these were executions should be discounted.
Of course that not only human sacrifice was common, but the cannibalism also. As a historian I have been discovering this fact gradually, through research of archaeological excavations ... Today there is no one single human on this planet whose ancestors didn't eat other humans ... Maori on New Zealand, Mexico and central America (due to the lack of large animals for meat), in Indonesia they were eating there own dead in middle and in early New Ages, in Germany was found ditch with more than 1000 skeletons with traces of cutting on bones, so called Anasazi in south-west of USA from 8th to 12th century ... on Eastern island, in the palace of Knossos archaeologists found mixed with bones of sheep and goats there were bones of human child with obvious cut marks ...in the end, Iliad says that Agamemnon did make the sacrifice of his own daughter... and Akhilleus made sacrifice of certain number of Trojan captives to the pyre of Patrokles ... etc.
Interesting you question if such evidence would be admissible to a court of law. In the Netherlands, there actually was someone that got convicted solely based on statistics and suspicion. Later the data was looked at again, and she was released, but only after this had caused her damage from all the stress. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucia_de_Berk_case
Every once in a while, we are shocked by the discoveries of men holding their wives, children or kidnapped children in captivity, and brutally murder them. But to think of this as a ritual, means it is normalized and rationalized, while society invariably look at such behavior with disgust. Genetically we are not so far removed from the mesolithic people, looking at old rock art and cave paintings, I do not believe we are emotionally different in a relevant way.
So what I would think is that we can see that through out our history, we have had a small fraction persons, who do indescribable harm to others. But to think of this as widely accepted ritual is not something that is logical to me. After all, the maffia practices aren't common behavior either, and the maffiosi are outliers in the dominant society.
Very interesting, thanks 😀
Statistics. Sampling does not need everyone to answer a question. The fact that the same activity was found covering 2000 years means you have a sample. It means there are many more that you haven't found.
or that were not documented as well as those that have been included...
Is there any possibility that the "victims" were drugged?
I'm sure I heard this was so when a bogman was strangled. Apologies that my memory fails once again, and no source is provided.
Has a profiler ever worked on a archaeological murder scene? 🤔
paralells with persephone - forcibly taken under the earth, ensuring plenty in the spring?
What if they weren’t sacrifices; what if they were people convicted of stealing grain? Based on the description, it does seem like more of a punishment than a sacrifice.
Interesting question about whether an algorithm would be accepted as evidence in a court of law. I don't believe it would be but I'm not an expert. My follow up then is how long until it is accepted as evidence. Which is scary.
The extreme suffering implied in the method suggests an execution rather than a sacrifice. Either way, the real point is what you identified-we're reaching very broad conclusions from tiny sets of data, with the points widely scattered in space and time.
Perhaps we are looking at it from a more modern perspective. Life was much harder and rougher then. It was a common thing to see animals slaughtered so there is a certain level of built in callousness. Additionally, it may have been believed that the sacrificed person should go willingly or at least seem to go willingly. The women would have been able to prevent their death for a short time while their muscles held out or they could have hastened the process by using their legs to choke themselves to death. Would the inevitability of the situation have made the self sacrifice the kindest thing? What alternative would have provided the victim with a way out so surely.
....So how old is the mafia?!?😅
No blood to contaminate the site?
Good stuff!
I would look at these killings as both murders, and sacrifice. Imagine being a young witness to such sacrifice, perhaps a less valued member within it too. A seed was planted one way or another. Even a cave drawing could affect an unsettled mind theoretically.
A method of applying terrible pain, at least at times leading to the victims dead or maybe just a way to make sure that problematic dead people with suspected supernatural powers stayed in their grave for good or a ritualistic sacrifice or maybe just very sadistic murders ( dont think this is a modern invention) or maybe somekind of ancient eksorsism ment to cure some psychic or physical ailment belived to be caused by some kind of dangerous power of nature ?
hmm thoughts wandering, we cant help trying to make sense of things, i came to think about where the bodies were placed which let me to speculate of something i some times think of when i try to put myself i ancients peoples place understaning the world, there is a fungus that attacks grasses and korn named Claviceps purpurea it gives hallucinations and leads to dead by gangrene - could it somehow be related to something like that ? did the ancients somehow suspect a connection between the korn and the hallucinations and terrible deads by people in contact with the korn and associated it with dangerous powers having "possesed" the korn and the storrage pit and simply placed everything and everyone that had been in contact with the polluted korn back in the pit and closed it of, may be ritually which makes the victims an offering or maybe even a punishment if one asssume that they in someway had a form of responsibility for the korn not being touched or inhabbited by said powers. lol ockhams razor is coming for me i better stop this assuming this and that about what we annoyinngly or maybe luckely can never know.
Maybe it was a sacrifice, maybe it was a form of punishment, such as crucification, maybe it was some type of trial, we'll never understand the motivation behind it. I don't think we can assume anything.
I do not think that was random, this is a very specific way of killing someone which has to taught and learned, one does not simply invent it over and over again.
People stressed out by starvation will act out
But this sort of act, including the burial takes a lot more energy than most starving people have...?
Starvation affects the brain resulting in erratic behavior
I’d like to know if these researchers tested the DNA of these individuals to see if they were related and if there’s any relation to individuals currently in the databases plus I wonder if their hyoid bones were broken?
If everyone is starving, it makes sense to suppose that the gods wish the people to suffer. Thus a sacrifice that creates enormous suffering might be the most likely to get the gods off your back.
20 corpses. What proportion of graves of the same epoch that have been discovered does that make? Crubezy is using bad maths. He can surmise, ok... But: maybe you will find more tombs of that era....and not one such burial among them. And as you rightly pointed out, it has not really ended. The basics of religious practice is patterns of repetition, especially in farming societies which saw everything as cycles.
Human sacrifice has been a constant in human history. War. Not ritual sacrifice? What do you call combat? The WWI poet and victim of that war, Winfred Owen in his *The Parable of the Old Man and the Young* cites the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac - a story often interpreted as a prohibition on human sacrifice for god or gods. Yet he likens it to the war itself, with a twist. It strikes me as strange that we view human sacrifice as some bygone practice of ancient and savage people. Fascinating video though. Full text of Owen's poem follows for those who want click read more.
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
So far I've seen two references to novels. The murder sounds like "One Corpse Too Many" and the "frequentist interpretation" is from "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
I dont have the stomach to get past that.
“Bloodiest races” might just really be those most well-documented by adversaries.
Can they really tell from remains that old whether or not the person was alive when they were tied up? It doesn't seem likely they could tell that. I also don't think rock art should count as an example of that means of torture. Maybe that's not what the artist was going for. It's all a matter of interpretation of course.
Well, the main author is a forensic expert. And in the case of some of the Czech samples it is obvious. You see that the body moved in the grave when the person struggled to get a breath. It is Frozen in a position trying to get relief given the constrains.. Corpses don't do that.
Since we can't get in the minds of the people involved I don't think we can make any assumptions.
Even if they are agricultural sacrifices there might be a belief that the victims were in some way responsible for a misfortune (such as a failed crop) that leads to seeking to appease the gods through a sacrifice of the "guilty parties" - so it's a mixture of judicial and ritual killing (just as the Romans in times of calamity would check up on the status of the Vestal Virgins and find that gosh, wouldn't you know, all was not as it should be). That might explain the cruelty. Or it might be something else altogether, or something different in every case.
Based on this part of the world (the South Pacific) I suspect the Neolithic in Europe holds horrors that we'd rather not face - I wouldn't be surprised if at certain times there was widespread cannibalism for example. And not just for ritual purposes but because human beings provide a ready source of plentiful meat.
"The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe."
Why would it be ritualistic and not that these women were accused of something and punished like witches were? Doesn’t seem like an offering.
Yes, the prolonged suffering hints at sthg personal, an attack on the person, not an offering to the gods. The Maya did do prolonged suffering, but people were not killed. They healed and lived to put another thorn through their tongues and bleed for the gods.
At the first... seeing this fore the 1st time... wath a cool way to do this... and talk about the world history... n
Now... as a way too ask you al about this... Is it just one rock art picture... that is a porhaps quiz... of showing this... and is it 20 persons that is ending there lives this way on 14 sites. More women then man... but howe meny?
If there is any one home wants too start this diolog whit me frome this... RUclips film...
Pleas answering me...
im slightly dubious about their conclusions as well, not enough evidence to make such grand claims
This was a punishment and sacrifice.
So... I think it's obvious, the mafia has been around a lot longer than we thought 🤔
a question? how do we know this was a sacrifice instead of punishment for foul deeds these people have committed ,
(whether they’re innocent or not, of course), or run away slaves. if it is all women, maybe horrifically they were accused of not being faithful. why only rituals?? are there artifacts that tend that way? because that certainly is a very cruel way to die. (and i hate to say it, but even now humans do do these kinds of things. 🫣😧
we need help from Dostoyevski, but in a different way. :P
Interesting, but you should have told us the bare facts about those burials, before any interpretation. Is indeed certain that those two women were buried alive, and that they were executed in that manner? If they were indeed bound that way, perhaps it was only to make it easier to fit the corpses into that cramped "silo"?
It's always a problem when you attempt to interpret something like this, because you are looking at it from a completely different point of view to what would have been the case back then. I'd have to agree that twenty instances like this over two thousand years in Europe could hardly be called a "widespread practice".
well, it must have been "widespread" enough for the method not to have been forgotten - even if it was rarely applied, is had to have been "widespread" as a concept - e.g. the possession of atomic bombs in the world today is far greater than their actual usage.
@@Chociewitka Point taken, if you defer to the dictionary definition of the word, "widespread", which is "happens or is evident over a wide area or number of people". Perhaps I should have said "It is not possible to infer that such a practice was commonplace". Semantics, eh?
Perhaps the two women shoved out of the way in burial were members of another group, as scapegoats. If the harvest had been bad, the 'other group' could have been blamed, and the women paid the price.
a question? how do we this was a sacrifice instead of foul deeds these people have done? (whether they’re innocent or not, of course. if it is all women, maybe horrifically they were accused of not being faithful, or run away slaves. why only rituals?? are there artifacts that tend that way? because that certainly is a very cruel way to die. (and i hate to say it, but even now humans do do these kinds of things. 🫣😧
we need help from Dostoyevski, but in a different way. 😶
Humans cab endlessly horrible but are we sure this wasn't just a variation on bound burial.
Why label it ‘sacrifice’? Surely it’s simply murder/execution?
Rupert, what's in your tank?
Whats the difference between a nasty murder by your standard nasty murderer who enjoys the kill & human sacrifice ?....you can't tell...nobody can.. so trying to sort this out by joining the dots & using maths on such a small sample of the dearly departed from thousands of years ago is bat shit crazy...it stretches credulity to braking point. We will never be able to prove motivation for these murders...ever.
Energy harvest and transfer.
Why sacrifice? My first thought was punishment, perhaps for adultery. Women have been subject to that for millennia
not only women were affected, and for those buried with the older lady, imho far more likely they were her servants and have killed her (or were assumed to be responsible for her death) e.g. because she was difficult mistress, and that as such they were buried alive with her.
You guys have way too much faith in human nature but I love the show
The place is solar aligned, so clearly the burials are ritual. Except... Most Christian churches are East West aligned with the altar being at the East end. Churches have barrels in them and outside of them. So are Christian burials solar aligned? Of course not! They typically involve some sort of ritual but the alignment with the sun or E West makes no difference at all. I am not sure we can assume the burials in a solar aligned building have anything to do with solar alignment.
The victim would kill her/him-self. Thus there was no other one who did the murder. I.e. it was guiltless for the community. The "self strangulation" could lead to involuntary urination or defacation and watery eyes, drooling and coughing. Such moisture shedding could be seen as a symbol for rain. Poop could be symbolic dunging. From a mother into Mother Earth. Combined with the granary Silo's it seems indeed to point at an agricultural offering. Burying people alive might well be understood in more shamanic terms as a offer to the Netherworld, which in many cultures has its entrance in holes in the floor of a dwelling and/or cavemouths. This lower world symbolizes the direct needs (sexual, eating, drinking) of humans. In that sense the living burial victim might be a messenger to that realm, to plead for the people and their needs.
Actually, we are still doing it even at a proportionately much higher rate. We are hiding the fact of these human sacrifices to our gods of prosperity under the euphemism of "the cost of mobility" in all the people dying in traffic accidents. There is also "collateral damage" like in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are many more institutionalized form of murder we have blinded yourself to. Chances are that people then had similar ways of thinking around their own responsibility. As a postwar German I was thoroughly taught about how this works and how to resist it. However, my teachers typically fell silent when I pointed out the human sacrifice aspect of traffic deaths.
Not sure this settles the question but it's a plausible hypothesis!
Just started watching this episode on the TV, and I’ve had to pause it to congratulate you for bringing up this truly appalling subject, which is very hard for people to grasp just how large and widespread a problem this was, and which continues to this day . Thankfully we are seeing the destruction of Ritual Child Sacrifice Sites like the Georgia Guidestones all around the World, and even of Baby Farms for providing the victims of child Trafficking. So many of our children meet a dreadful tortured end for the creation of the drug called Adrenochrome, which has even been openly on sale. There even continues to be a complete misunderstanding of the Roman “Games” with them being called Bread and Circuses and entertainment, when they were deadly serious Religious Human Sacrifice Rituals ? Even Kings and Tribal Leaders captured in Wars, ended up being Taken to the Temples of specific gods for the blessings from which had the captives executed there. It’s all well documented in the Records of A Rome that welcomed the Blessings of the gods on Rome and its people from the rites performed. Only now do things at last appear to be heading in the right direction, with a very real War being waged against these Evils, with a lot more about this War being revealed to the Public which people are going to find really shocking, as the Cult responsible, has infiltrated and taken over most of the main religions? It seems King Henry 8th understood all too well just how evil the Roman Church had become, which is the real reason he broke with Rome, but the resulting Protestantism then got infiltrated after. The only branch of Christianity which remained actively at War with the Cult, was the Eastern Orthodox Church- Why the Bolsheviks were so determined to eliminate them . Could be the real reason why there is so much hatred for Vladimir Putin ? As he is a devout Eastern Orthodox Christian 🤔and as Nazis are footsoldiers for the Cult, an interesting insight came from a Russian General, when a journalist asked him when they would be leaving Ukraine he replied - “When We have Freed All of the Children” yes there were are Children Farms in Ukraine, and it is still one of the largest sources of the resulting Adrenochrome Child extract. 😡😡😡 Bob.
What a horrible way to die
Maybe the two were killed to serve the third woman for eternity in the afterlife. Maybe the two caused the death of the third. Who knows? Cheers
😸😺😼😻
Women…because they were easy targets? Why not men? 😡
Big suprise, you think that humans haven't always thought of cruel ways to kill each other. I think that we humans are both our evil and our good. We don't know why these women were chosen for this death. It might have been because they were scolds or maybe they were caught in some kind of conspiracy against the tribe they were a part of. Who knows and we will never know. Cheers
cruel neanderthals😢
Imagine there's no countries. And no religion, too. Imagine a world without laws or police or prisons. Imagine there is no punishment or even cultural prohibitions against casual killing, it's easy if you try. No authorities above us, below us only fear and superstition. Imagine all the people sacrificing people for the people.
I also engage in the satirical rewriting of trite and worn out lyrics. You do good work.
Isn't Bayesian analysis a rationalisation of superstition?
Nerthus worship...