Find in Spain reveals war that took place 5,000 years ago – 11/06/2023 – Science

A new analysis of one of the most impressive archaeological sites in prehistoric Europe indicates that the site served as a burial place for the victims of the continent’s oldest war, fought around 5,000 years ago. Most of the hundreds of people buried in the collective tomb were injured by arrows, clubs and other weapons and appear to bear the marks of battles that may have lasted months.

The archaeological site, known as San Juan ante Portam Latinam (or SJAPL for short), is in the Spanish region of Rioja Alavesa, in the Basque country. Accidentally discovered when a backhoe was widening a road at the site in 1985, the communal grave is an area of ​​20 m.^twoinside a rock shelter, in which the remains of at least 338 individuals were discovered.

Such an accumulation of bodies in such a small area could indicate some type of natural catastrophe, such as waves of famine or epidemics, or a massacre — a rival group invading the location and killing its inhabitants indiscriminately, for example.

However, studies carried out since then on the deposit, now complemented by new analyses, which have just been published in the specialized journal Scientific Reports, suggest that the massacre hypothesis does not explain the distribution of individuals buried there. Although it is not possible to determine the sex of all the people in the tomb, the skeletons in which this is feasible (corresponding to 153 of the dead) are, in the vast majority (70% of cases), of adult men and adolescent males.

This proportion is what is expected in archaeological contexts of war, because the female presence in combat was extremely rare in the past. Furthermore, the male predominance in skeletons with detectable signs of injury is even higher. Men account for 81.7% of cases of injuries that had healed at the time of death — and an impressive 97.6% of injuries that had not healed at the time of death. This does not mean that women and children did not also suffer this type of injury among the dead at the site, but their presence is much less frequent.

Dozens of these injuries that left marks on the bones reached the skull, in the region known as “above the brim of the hat”. It is a term used by scholars of violence in archaeological contexts, which designates precisely the areas of the head that are unlikely to suffer fractures due to accidents, but are most likely the main target of clashes between humans who are holding blunt objects — clubs, batons, etc. — and want to knock out or kill their opponent. Another interesting detail is the occasional presence of so-called “parry fractures” — which usually affect the arms of someone trying to parry a blow given by their opponent.

There are also arrow marks on different parts of the body and more than 50 arrowheads preserved inside the mass grave — made of stone, as the deaths occurred during the Neolithic period (popularly known as the “Polished Stone Age”), between 3400 BC and 3000 BC The time is slightly before the start of the Bronze Age in Europe.

“It is not possible to determine how long it took to reach the accumulation of bodies in SJAPL because we have an irregularity in radiocarbon dating precisely at that time, which prevents us from determining the date more precisely”, he explained to Sheet the study coordinator, Teresa Fernández-Crespo, from the University of Valladolid. “Despite this, the fact that some individuals show both healed and unhealed wounds tells us that the violence may have lasted for months.”

It is these elements, taken together, that lead the team to suggest that the region may have been the scene of a conflict of a scale and duration much greater than what is expected for the European Neolithic at that time, potentially leading to hundreds of deaths and multiple combats that dragged on for weeks on end. Although cases of violence between groups already existed in the archaeological record of the continent in the period, practically nothing compares to the Spanish case, which seems more typical of the wars that would appear only in the Bronze Age.

The skeletons also exhibit high rates of bone and tooth enamel problems that suggest nutritional problems. “We have climate data for the region at the time, but they do not indicate a worsening of the climate”, says the Spanish researcher. “It appears that, in this case, violence may be related to competition for resources, due to high demographic pressure [populações muito numerosas] and the high social complexity observed there.” In other words, it is possible that groups have organized themselves to try to take control of these resources by force.