Iron Age grave site discovered in northern Serbia reveals evidence of a 2,800-year-old mass killing; 40 of more than 77 victims were younger than 12 years old

Comments

• podian@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Dang, how long have the Balkans been the balkans?

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• yeahiknow3@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  The amount of education and multigenerational cultural effort required to get our species not to behave like the dumb grotesque animals we are by default is frankly insane.

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• lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  This is puzzling me:

  • Why were victims gathered from multiple settlements?
  • Why is there such a sex disparity; or, what happened to the men?
  • Why were they buried with food and belongings, if the deaths were all violent and some victims show signs of trying to run away or fight back?

  I couldn’t find a single good explanation for all three things. Specially the last one, it seems contradictory.

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  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    My guess would be that there was a large regional conflict, and refugees from many areas gathered in one camp (maybe a sanctuary or a neutral area). They maybe whoever killed them realized afterward that not all of them were from their intended enemies.

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  • fizzle@quokk.au ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    There’s more detail and analysis in the academic paper:

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02399-9

    I didn’t read all of it, but one part suggests that the unrelated genetics could mean that the dead are from a larger settlement rather than a small village.

    Suppose there was an uprising or rebellion in a region, the men fought, but lost and many were killed in battle and the remainder were in hiding. As punishment a woman from each family was slaughtered.

    This might explain why they were killed violently but buried with reverence.

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• wieson@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  My unsorted thoughts:

  Maybe it was a slave revolt.

  • pro: people from different settlements. Stolen at some point and brought to the same place where they revolted and were beaten down.
  • contra: who would give them offerings and bury them with respect?

  Maybe it was the supply train of an army that was also killed after the defeat of said army.

  • pro: mostly women
  • contra: why the tribal diversity? Was it a battle of the five armies style train?

  Maybe a treck of refugees as someone else commented.

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