Human
remains are welcome as these are often missing. Otherwise we appear
to have a society populous enough to produce huge barrow mounds for
their dead. This coincides with the early Bronze Age and coincident
agricultural expansion throughout all Europe.
Thus
it is clear that early Bronze Age traders did have viable
destinations to visit and establish trade factories with. Nothing
depended on the advent of available metal as was true on the Pacific
niorthwest as well. Metal is a bonus that allows certain tasks to
simply become easier.
The
actual villages need to also be available and they may also be robust
as well as grain culture should be well established.
Archaeologists
discover 20 monumental tombs dating back 6,500 years in France
13 SEPTEMBER, 2014 -
03:19 APRILHOLLOWAY
A team of
archaeologists in France have unearthed a Neolithic necropolis
containing at least twenty monuments and some intact burials,
according to a report in Past Horizons. The monumental
constructions, some of which are several hundred metres long, are the
first tombs of their kind to be found in the region.
The discovery was made
on an area of land in Fleury-sur-Orne in northwestern France, which
currently has planning permission for the construction of a
residential development with up to 1,800 houses.
The necropolis, which
dates back to the Middle Neolithic (c 4,500 BC), consists of
elongated structures made from earth and wood, ranging in size from
12 metres to 300 metres in length. The monuments are surrounded by
ditches, which range from 20 cm in width to up to 15 metres, and
which may have once held wooden fences. The fact that the
tombs range in size from small, simple burials to large and more
elaborate constructions, suggest that their society had a
hierarchical structure.
Archaeological
evidence suggests that the 6,500-year-old tombs were once covered
with mounds of earth, which have since been destroyed by agricultural
practices over the centuries. Reports suggest that at least some of
the mounds were still visible until WW2.
One of the tombs
remained exceptionally well-preserved and was found to have the
original walls of stacked grass turves still intact, and many of the
graves were found to contain preserved arrow heads.
One grave contained
the skeletal remains of a man with an arrow still embedded in his
pelvic bone.
Archaeologists will
now undertake extensive testing on the human remains uncovered at the
site in an attempt to learn about their origins, their diet, and
causes of death.
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