Remains from skull cult discovered at worlds oldest stone monuments [View all]

At Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, a 11,500 year-old monumental construction was decorated with human skulls.

ANNALEE NEWITZ - 6/28/2017, 5:45 PM


The monumental rock pillars of Göbekli Tepe date back over 11,000 years, and tower over a small hill in Turkey. Excavated just a couple of decades ago, these mysterious structures are part of the world's oldest known monumental religious complex. Each pillar is covered in hundreds of images, including carvings of humans and dangerous animals like snakes and scorpions. Surrounded by nested, winding walls, these pillars suggest a complex spiritual worldview shared by hunter-gatherers in the region who added to it for roughly 1,600 years. Now, a team of archaeologists have revealed that decorated human skulls were part of the Göbekli Tepe rituals. 

German Archaeological Institute paleopathologist Julia Gresky and her colleagues write in in Science Advances about excavating bone fragments that suggest an ancient "skull cult" at the site. Though it sounds like something out of a pirate movie, a skull cult is simply an archaeological term that describes the ritualistic or religious alteration of multiple skulls.

Gresky and her colleagues found three skulls scored with deep cuts made by sharpened stones. The carvings bisect the center of the face, continuing up the forehead and all the way around to the back of the skull. One skull, painted with red ochre, also had a hole drilled in the top. A likely explanation is that the skull cultists were tying the skulls with cords, then threading another cord through holes in the skull, in order to suspend them from the stones.

None of these individuals died from their skull carvings. Evidence suggests the skulls were defleshed and carved shortly after the individuals died. There's no telling whether the skulls belonged to venerated ancestors, or were trophies from defeated enemies.

More:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/06/remains-from-skull-cult-discovered-at-worlds-oldest-stone-monuments/