A mass grave was discovered in Schöneck-Kilianstädten, a site located 12 miles north-east of Frankfurt, Germany. Remains have now been identified and they highlight the violence that early farming communities were subjected to.

Road builders chanced upon the mass grave in 2006 but, according to archaeologists, the remains are 7,000 years old. They belong to a group of farmers from the Linear Pottery culture and were made up of 26 children and adults. All were killed by arrow wounds or devastating head strikes, with the skull fractures showing classic signs of injuries incurred from blunt force dealt by basic weapons from the stone age.

Aside from recording injuries due to close-quarter fighting and bows and arrows though, the archaeologists also found that over half of the remains had their legs broken, in what appears to be posthumous mutilation or torture. Regardless of the reason, this kind of violence has never been reported before and so represents new insight as to what people from the Linear Pottery culture were capable of and subjected to.

Christian Meyer led the study that identified the remains. He believes that the degree of violence found in the mass grave may have meant as a means of terrorizing other farming communities in the area, demonstrating the perpetrators' ability to annihilate.

In the 1980s, similar mass graves were also found in Asparn in Austria and Talheim in Germany. The latest discovery in Schöneck-Kilianstädten offers supporting evidence to the kind of fighting that the Linear Pottery culture's last years saw.

According to archaeologists, fights at the time probably broke out because of limited resources. Communities relied on these resources for survival so when competition rose for them, farming groups turned to fighting to claim more land they can use. It also didn't help that droughts may have also occurred, straining the situation even more.

Lawrence Keeley from the University of Illinois agrees that the mass grave and the injuries sustained by the affected individuals fits the kind of fighting that people from the Linear Pottery culture experienced. However, he doesn't think that the broken legs were because of torture, saying if that was so, injuries should be directed at the feet, where a lot of nerve ending are, causing the most pain.

Instead, the injuries may have been done to prevent revenge from being exacted out of a belief that spirits can follow people home. That, or it may have been a symbolic crippling meant to maim spirits in the afterlife.

Photo: Daniel Arauz | Flickr