Incaprettamento

A team of archaeologists affiliated with several institutions in France and one in Germany has found that ritualized human sacrifice was common across Europe during the Neolithic.

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1449240174198-2’); });

As they report in the journal Science Advances, the group studied the remains of three women found in a tomb in France who appeared to have been ritually brutalized sometime between 4000 and 3500 BCE and compared the remains with others like them found at sites in Europe.

The work began with the study of the remains of three women found in a tomb in Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux—two of the bodies showed the women were buried in unusual positions, one on her back with her legs bent upward, the other in a prone position with her neck on the torso of the other woman—characteristics associated with incaprettamento, a murder technique used by organized criminals as a means of intimidation in modern times.