ARCHAEOLOGISTS have uncovered surprising new details at an ancient burial where a huge pit of around 80 skulls were found.
Experts were left gob-smacked after figuring out a key detail about the vast majority of victims who met a grizzly end in a sacrifice ritual.
Most of them were men, contrary to previous assumptions.
Unfortunate blokes had their the heads mercilessly chopped off and thrown into a pit.
And the sheer number and placement suggests a mass ritual beheading took place.
The huge site – named Dongmen – is located in the northern Shaanxi Province of China, outside the gate of a 4,000-year-old stone-walled city called Shimao.
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New DNA research has revealed a difference between the sexes sacrificed in this Neolithic society.
It turns out nine out of ten people killed were actually men.
This stunned archaeologists as others around the region have been the opposite, mostly women.
“These patterns of mostly female sacrifices starkly contrast with Dongmen, in which decapitation and mass burial involved mostly sampled men,” they wrote in a study for the Nature journal.
Two different types of human sacrifice were unearthed.
One filled with skulls close to the city gate is where people were brutally decapitated.
Meanwhile female sacrifices were carried out in elite cemeteries – it’s not clear how they met their end but their skeletons were fully intact.
“This suggests Shimao’s sacrificial practices were highly structured, with gender-specific roles tied to distinct ritual purposes and locations,” researchers added.
They haven’t figured out why there were sex-specific sacrifice customs.
But the female sacrifices may have something to do with honouring elite nobles or rulers.
And the male skulls were “probably connected to a construction ritual” of the walls or gate, which has been seen at other sites around China.
WHO WHERE THE NEOLITHIC PEOPLE?
Here’s what you need to know…
- The Neolithic period is the final division of the Stone Age
- It began around 12,000 years ago, lasting right up until 1200 BC in some parts of the world
- It’s marked by the first developments of farming in the Near East, and then later in other areas of the world
- Neolithic people made large cultural changes, including using wild and domestic crops
- There is also evidence of domesticated animals in Neolithic culture
- Most Neolithic people lived in small tribes, taking shelter in rudimentary permanent houses
- They would typically wear animal skins, although wool cloth and linen may have been available later in the period
- In Northern Europe, the Neolithic period ended around 1700 BC
