Discovery of skulls with their faces smashed in posthumously
suggests Neolithic people believed the dead posed a threat to the living.
Written by Bryan Nelson, Mother Nature Network, August 20, 2012
The zombie apocalypse may be much more than a plot device
exploited by modern horror movies. In fact, fears about the walking dead may go
back all the way to the Stone Age.
Archaeologists working in Europe and the Middle East have
recently unearthed evidence of a mysterious Stone Age
"skull-smashing" culture, according to New Scientist. Human skulls
buried underneath an ancient settlement in Syria were found detached from their
bodies with their faces smashed in. Eerily, it appears that the skulls were
exhumed and detached from their bodies several years after originally being
buried. It was then that they were smashed in and reburied separate from their
bodies.
According to Juan José Ibañez of the Spanish National
Research Council in Barcelona, the finding could suggest that these Stone Age
"skull-smashers" believed the living were under some kind of threat
from the dead. Perhaps they believed that the only way of protecting themselves
was to smash in the corpses' faces, detach their heads and rebury them apart
from their bodies.
But here's the creepy thing: many of the 10,000-year-old
skulls appear to have been separated from their spines long after their bodies
had already begun to decompose. Why would this skull-smashing ritual be
performed so long after individuals had died? Did they only pose a threat to
the living long after their original burial and death?
If it was a ritualistic exercise, it also raises questions
about why only select corpses were chosen. All of the smashed skulls were from
adult males between the ages of 18 and 30. Furthermore, there was no trace of
delicate cutting. It appears that the skulls' faces were simply smashed in
using brute force with a stone tool.
Of course, there's almost certain to be a rational
explanation for all of this. Then again, it's also fun to consider the
possibility that these findings represent evidence for a Stone Age zombie
uprising.
Let's consider a few key facets of zombie mythology.
Zombies, as we know, are hungry for the flesh of the living, and the only way
to stop them is with a head shot. In many zombie movies, this involves shooting
them in the cranium. One might surmise that the Stone Age equivalent of this
would be to instead smash in their faces with a big rock. Perhaps the lopping
off of their heads was then performed to ensure that the job was done.
Perhaps the reason the original dead bodies seemed to be
exhumed before their heads were properly smashed in was because the dead had
risen from their own graves, under their own power.
Maybe, just maybe, Stone Age Syrians battled against and
saved the world from an imminent zombie apocalypse some 10,000 years ago. The
theory may not make great fodder for a scientific thesis, but it sets up the
plotline for a B-grade horror movie to perfection.
Ibañez, not biting, operates with a cooler head. Being ever
the sound researcher, he has proposed more tempered theories to explain the
findings. For instance, it's possible that Stone Age people simply believed
that they could absorb the strength of the dead young men by performing the
ritual. This would help explain why all the skulls were from young men. It
would also help to explain why the heads were buried directly underneath a
thriving settlement. He also suggested the head-smashing could have been an act
of revenge or spite.
Liv Nilsson Stutz at Emory University in Atlanta suggested
the act could also have been a way of dealing with grief: "Taking away
facial identity could be a way of separating the dead from the living,"
she said.
