Scientists have uncovered the aftermath of an “exceptionally violent” attack about 4,000 years ago in Somerset when at least 37 people appear to have been butchered and likely eaten.
It is the largest case of violence between humans identified in early Bronze Age England, which had been considered a peaceful time.
The victims’ bones were found by cavers in the 1970s. Experts believe they were thrown into a 15m shaft by the prehistoric attackers.
The massacre was probably driven by a furious “desire for revenge” and its effects likely “echoed through generations”, says Professor Rick Schulting at Oxford university.
He says the victims may have been eaten as a ritual to “dehumanise” them and to send a message by “insulting the remains”.
Around 3,000 fragments of bones found at a cave system called Charterhouse Warren in the Mendip Hills, Somerset, were analysed by a team of archaeologists.
They believe that at least 37 people died, including men, woman and children. Teenagers and older children made up about half of the victims.
Villages in early Bronze Age Britain were made up of around 50 to 100 people, so the experts think this could have equated to wiping-out almost one entire community.
The Bronze Age in Britain lasted from about 2500–2000 BC until 800BC, and was a time when bronze replaced stone for making tools and weapons. People developed new agricultural methods, creating large and permanent farms.
In the newly-identified attack there was no evidence of a fight back, suggesting the victims were taken by surprise.
Scrape and cut marks on the bones indicate that the attackers systematically dismembered their victims using stone tools and likely consumed them.
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