Archaeologists have discovered a pattern of ritual killing during the Neolithic Age (or Stone Age) after analysing skeletons of women found in a tomb in France's Rhone Valley. The skeletons were found with their necks tied to their legs behind their back, so that they effectively strangled themselves. The practice was called incaprettamento and was prevalent in Europe more than 2,000 years ago, according to Live Science. The study, published on April 10 in Science Advances, identified more than dozen such killings.
The tom that was analysed is situated in Saint-Paul-Trois-Chateaux near Avignon, in southern France, and was discovered more than 20 years ago.
The tomb mimics a silo, or pit where grain was stored, and it held the remains of three women who were buried there about 5,500 years ago.
The women were buried when they were still alive, the team of researchers that analysed the skeletons said.
Talking about the discovery, Eric Crubrezy, a biological anthropologist at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, said the killing was related to agriculture.
"You have the alignment, you have the silo, you have the broken stones - so it seems that it was a rite related to agriculture," Mr Crubrezy told Live Science, pointing to a wooden structure and broken stones found near the tomb.
His team has analysed similar tombs all across Europe, of sites dating to between 5400 and 3500 BC. Mr Crubezy said it appears incaprettamento originated as a sacrificial custom in the Mesolithic period, before agriculture, and later came to be used for human sacrifices associated with agriculture in the Neolithic period.
"The idea that there are fertility rituals that may have fed into human sacrifice seems very likely," University of York archaeologist Penny Bickle, who has studied burial practices, told Science.
