Mysterious Woman Buried With Wild Animals Was a Shaman, Study Says

HUMANS
10 August 2024
By CARLY CASSELLA

Archaeologists think they have hit upon the ancient burial site of a female 'shaman' in southeast Türkiye.

In life, as in death, scientists suspect the early Neolithic woman was 'one with' the animals that used to roam the banks of the Tigris River.

In 2019, her remains were unearthed at a roughly 12,000-year-old settlement, called Çemka Höyük.

Her grave is a veritable menagerie of local fauna.

Buried under the limestone slab of what was once an ancient roundhouse, the woman's bones were found carefully sealed away with those of a partridge, a weasel-like mammal, a sheep or goat, a dog-like carnivore, and an extinct species of cattle, known as an aurochs.

More:
https://www.sciencealert.com/mysterious-woman-buried-with-wild-animals-was-a-shaman-study-says