Until now, Neolithic Europeans were only expected to engage in skirmishes and raids. The actual wars occurred 1,000 years earlier than expected.
There may be a sad truth in the biblical myth of Cain and Abel: violence has existed as long as humans have existed. And we know that prehistory was much more dangerous in this aspect than our present. This was demonstrated by the horrific discoveries at Schletz, near Asparn, in the Weinviertel: 7,000 years ago, an entire village was decimated in an attack, around 200 residents were massacred and their bodies were thrown into the defensive ditch.
But war is more than that: it lasts longer and requires an organizational and logistical effort that historians previously only attributed to Bronze Age Europeans, around 2000 BC.
The idea is that before that, in the Neolithic, our ancestors had just settled down; Their settlements did not yet reach the surplus of material resources that would make war possible. Archaeological finds seemed to confirm this. Until now. Now, a team of archaeologists led by Teresa Fernández-Crespo of the University of Oxford has once again taken a close look at a mass grave that has been known for some time in the Rioja region of northern Spain (Scientific Reports, November 2). .
Many arrow wounds healed
They discovered a number of things in the remains, which are between 5,000 and 5,400 years old, under the rocky ledge of San Juan ante Portam Latinam, that point to a “real” war. Among the victims of violence, adult men and young men predominate – unlike massacres, where women and children were killed proportionally. The victims were not beaten to death with clubs (as in Schletz), but rather shot with arrows. But most of all: an impressive number of skeletal remains show healed arrow wounds. This suggests a protracted armed conflict that lasted months, if not years.
The more the analysis goes into detail, the scarier it gets. A disproportionate number of people who died violently were young people. They probably served as a last reserve, used when many adult warriors had already fallen.
Among those who do not appear to have died violently, there are many signs of malnutrition and severe stressors. This suggests that opponents plundered the area and destroyed resources. After all: the rocky ledge was a cemetery, albeit a disorganized one. Thus, enough people survived the attacks and battles to be able to bury relatives.
The type of burial is also the only indication of the cause of the enmity. Within a relatively small area, it varied greatly across the region, from caves to funerary monuments. Perhaps this cultural diversity reflects an alienation from which hatred grew.