Several of the smashed skulls, all of young men.
Evidence that some Stone Age cultures may have
considered dead young men to be threatening to living people could be the
reason groups of newly discovered skulls were buried with smashed-in faces.
The 10,000-year-old skulls were found in Syria. They appear
to have been dug up several years after being buried with their bodies,
separated, then reburied. No one knows why Neolithic societies buried clusters
of skulls - often near or underneath settlements.
Like those found in other caches, they have been
cleanly separated from their spines, suggesting they were collected from dead
bodies that had already begun to decompose. Patterns on the bone indicate that
some had been decomposing for longer than others, making it likely that they
were all gathered together for a specific purpose.
Most of the skulls belonged to adult males between 18
and 30 years old.
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