Prehistoric Ritual Sacrifice Practiced for at Least 2,000 Years Revealed

Researchers say they have uncovered evidence of a brutal tradition of ritualized human sacrifice that appears to have been practiced for at least two millennia in prehistoric times.

The findings, described in a study published in the journal Science Advances, stem from the excavation of an unusual Neolithic (or New Stone Age) burial in France that was first uncovered in 1985.

The burial is located at the Middle Neolithic gathering site of Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, located in the Rhône Valley in the south of the country. It was found to contain the remains of three women, two of whom were in unusual positions.

While re-examining the tomb around three years ago, study first author Bertrand Ludes—with the French Institute for Research on East Asia (IFRAE)—and colleagues realized that two of the women had likely died from suffocation.

The eldest of the three, designated as woman 1, is centrally positioned within the tomb pit, reclining on her left side. The other two individuals, dubbed woman 2 and 3 respectively, are situated beneath an overhang.

Woman 2 was found on her back with her lower limbs bent and a fragment of grindstone positioned on her skull. Woman 3 is in a prone position with her neck resting on the thorax of woman 2. The position of one of the women even suggested that she may have been buried while still alive.

The positioning of the remains suggests that women 2 and 3 were murdered via a ritualized form of asphyxiation, according to the researchers. This could have involved a method known as "homicidal ligature strangulation," which is characterized by the victim being bound in a prone position at the throat and ankles with a rope.

"It is a cruel and peculiar sacrifice; a rope is tied around the subject's neck and another around their ankles, with their knees bent. They are placed face down, and as their knees relax, they will suffocate. It is cruel and prolonged, but there are no officiants and no blood is shed," Eric Crubézy, an author of the Science Advances study and biological anthropologist at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, told Newsweek.

"Self-strangulation becomes inevitable due to the forced position of the legs," the researchers wrote in the paper. "Currently, this torture, known as incaprettamento, is associated with the Italian Mafia and is sometimes used to punish persons perceived as traitors."

The researchers determined that the sacrificed women were killed between around 4000 and 3500 B.C., likely dying from "forced positional asphyxia." This is a cause of death that occurs when a victim is placed in a position that interferes with their breathing that they cannot move out of.

But while Ludes and colleagues could see that the deaths of the women were certainly violent, they needed to find more evidence before they could determine whether or not the way in which they were killed was related to a more widespread Neolithic tradition.

To do this, the researchers examined the existing anthropological and archaeological literature, finding 20 cases—from sites spread out across an area extending from Eastern Europe to the Catalonia region in northeastern Spain—that bore similarities to the Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux women.

The earliest example of this treatment that the researchers found was dated to 5400-4800 B.C., suggesting that forced positional asphyxia persisted as a sacrificial tradition for more than 2,000 years in this region, long before the French burial.

"This cultural phenomenon could have diversified in Central Europe and structured itself at different rates for almost two millennia before culminating in the late Middle Neolithic," the authors said in a press release.

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Update 05/10/24, 8:10 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include comments from Eric Crubézy of Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France.