British tombs reveal Stone Age massacre
Gruesome evidence found in ancient burial chambers reveals a period of violence and instability in Stone Age Britain, according to archaeologists.
Signs of bloody massacres and fractured societies are emerging from research that used new dating techniques to age prehistoric skeletons and burial sites in southern England.
The sites include Wayland's Smithy in Oxfordshire, where the remains of 14 people show evidence of an ancient massacre, according to a team led by the U.K. government body English Heritage.
Eleven of the skeletons were of adult males, at least three of whom were likely killed by arrows, the team reported. One man still had the tip of a flint arrowhead embedded in his pelvic bone...
Analysis using radiocarbon dating and other archaeological clues placed the age of all the bones at around 3570 B.C., some 800 years before Stonehenge was built in the same region.
Read entire article at National Geographic News
Signs of bloody massacres and fractured societies are emerging from research that used new dating techniques to age prehistoric skeletons and burial sites in southern England.
The sites include Wayland's Smithy in Oxfordshire, where the remains of 14 people show evidence of an ancient massacre, according to a team led by the U.K. government body English Heritage.
Eleven of the skeletons were of adult males, at least three of whom were likely killed by arrows, the team reported. One man still had the tip of a flint arrowhead embedded in his pelvic bone...
Analysis using radiocarbon dating and other archaeological clues placed the age of all the bones at around 3570 B.C., some 800 years before Stonehenge was built in the same region.