{"id":11557,"date":"2020-06-29T14:52:22","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T20:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11557"},"modified":"2020-06-29T14:52:42","modified_gmt":"2020-06-29T20:52:42","slug":"another-strange-old-time-pagan-burial-custom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11557","title":{"rendered":"Another Strange Old-Time Pagan Burial Custom"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In this reconstruction, the Mesolithic man, who died in his 50s, wears a wild boar skin. (Image credit: Oscar Nilsson)<\/p><\/div>\n

If you read something about “a head on a stake,” you probably imagine someone’s head \u2014 on a stake \u2014 outside the camp of the colorful but violent ancestors. This is different.<\/p>\n

About eight thousand years ago in southern Sweden, several people were “buried,” that is to say, placed underwater and their bodies staked down \u2014 yet this was done respectfully?<\/a><\/p>\n

Archaeologists discovered the man’s skull, as well as the remains of at least 10 other Stone Age<\/u><\/a> adults and an infant, in 2012 at the bottom of what used to be a small lake in what is now Motala, a municipality in eastern-central Sweden. However, only one of the adults had a jaw; the rest were jawless, and two of the skulls had been placed on stakes sticking out from the lake’s surface.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The skulls of the dead showed wounds, but also signs of healing. And there were lots of animal bones in with them.<\/a><\/p>\n

The discovery of a burial containing 8,000-year-old battered human skulls, including two that still have pointed wooden stakes through them, has left archaeologists baffled, according to a new study from Sweden.<\/p>\n

It’s hard to make heads or tails of the finding: During the Stone Age, the grave would have sat at the bottom of a small lake, meaning that the skulls would have been placed underwater. Moreover, of the remains of at least 11 adults placed on top of the grave, only one had a jawbone, the researchers said.<\/p>\n