Even prehistoric men killed 'love rivals'

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

Washington, Jun 3: It's not just the men of today who get involved in drunken brawls or verbal spats over women, for in prehistoric times too, fists used to fly when love rivals fell out over ladies, suggests new findings. Durham University-led researchers have investigated a mass grave of skeletons, which were found buried in the village of Talheim in the south-west of Germany.

The research suggests that neighboring tribes from prehistoric times were prepared to brutally kill their male rivals to secure their women. The research, described in the academic journal Antiquity, focused on thirty four skeletons. Genetic evidence inferred from the skeletons' teeth suggests they were of people killed in an attack between rival tribes around 5000 BC.

The researchers found that, although there were adult females among the immigrant skeletons, within the local group of skeletons there were men and children only.

The team concludes the absence of local females, which indicates that they were spared execution and captured instead which may have indeed been the primary motivation for the attack.

Lead author Dr Alex Bentley from Durham University's Anthropology Department said: "It seems this community was specifically targeted, as could happen in a cycle of revenge between rival groups. Although resources and population were undoubtedly factors in central Europe around that time, women appear to be the immediate reason for the attack.

"Our analysis points to the local women being regarded as somehow special and were therefore kept alive."

The Durham University-led team, with researchers from University College London, University of Wisconsin and a German government body, came to their conclusions after analysing the strontium, carbon and oxygen isotopes signatures of the skeletons' teeth. These give vital information about the skeletons' geological origin and diet.

The skeletons from the mass grave in Talheim, which were excavated in the 1980s, were all buried in a single pit of three metres long.

The deliberateness of the prehistoric attack was first realised when German skeletal experts determined that the majority had been killed by a blow to the left side of the head, suggesting the victims were bound and killed, probably with a stone axe.

Others may have been killed from arrow-wounds from behind as if the victims had tried to flee.

ANI

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