Bronze age victims cannibalised

[Imperial Dave]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crl3jn3elz3o

Pretty extreme...I mean most cultures make do with decapitation and parading of the head after battle. These guys really went to town on their enemies...

[DBS]

The usual "Bronze Age people did not normally go round killing each other" thesis trotted out again...

[Jim Webster]

"There is no evidence of weapons like swords or of fortifications that would suggest communities needed to protect themselves."

I would have thought 37 people killed and eaten suggested communities needed to protect themselves.

I heard it on the radio this morning and I'm afraid my first thought was, "It's the BBC. It happened 4000 years ago but it was outside London so they've only just noticed."

[Imperial Dave]

 

[DBS]

Also, the usual dodgy assumption that the Bronze Age (especially in western Europe) suddenly saw warriors running around with bronze swords and spear/arrow heads, as opposed to good old pointy wooden sticks, bone and flint heads, which were prefectly good for recreational raiding if one was not trying to take on Pharoah or the Great King of Hatti.  And even in the Near East, arrow heads were the last to shift to bronze given arrows have to be expendable.  So, a lack of swords surviving is not evidence of a lack of violence.

[Cantabrigian]

I guess if you have a largely peaceful society without laws, then you need the occasional act of extreme violence to act as a cautionary tale of what happens if you don't stay largely peaceful...

The canabalism story isn't entirely convincing.  In a society where they weren't habituated to it, it's going to be very difficult to get your group to give it a try.  Could it be that the dismemberment was the revenge in itself?

I wonder if any of the archeologists have considered that it might be ritual?

[Imperial Dave]

Or a quick snack because it would be over 4000 years until McDonalds would be built in the area...

[Duncan Head]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/dec/16/something-horrible-somerset-pit-reveals-bronze-age-cannibalism

Slightly better write-up. The original's in Antiquity at
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/darker-angels-of-our-nature-early-bronze-age-butchered-human-remains-from-charterhouse-warren-somerset-uk/93EBB135C857C7B7992FC80A4ED927AF
if anyone's that interested.

[RichT]

I wonder if any of the archeologists have considered that it might be ritual?

That's a bit like saying "I wonder if the sun rose this morning"

[Imperial Dave]

indeed