Experts Solve Horrifying Secret After Excavating Skeletons In England
Sometime in 2004, England’s Cliffs End Farm was marked for luxury housing, but things quickly took a sinister turn when Wessex Archaeology, who were requested to excavate the site by Millwood Designer Homes, found an age-old mass grave with skeletons waiting to reveal a horrifying secret.
I truly respect archaeologists and morticians, so much so that I think they’re superheroes. They don’t mind going down dark pits, digging the ground to find mass graves, discovering real human skeletons and working with the dead just so they could help the world understand it’s past. I could never be an archaeologist, let alone a mortician. Okay so back in the Bronze Age it was common to lay adults and children to rest in mass graves, but something about this mass grave creeped everyone out. The bodies were arranged in a certain way like they were part of some eerie ritual.
In the mass grave, experts discovered the remains of 23 individuals, all positioned in a certain way. While some of the skeletons were intact, others were divided into separate piles of bones. Apart from human bones, archaeologists discovered partial or entire carcasses of cows, lambs, and horses, which meant that animals were also buried in the mass grave. As if that wasn’t enough, archaeologists found shields, spears, beads, brooches and other fancy items buried alongside humans and animals.
Research suggests that the people who were buried in the mass grave were subjected to torture and abuse. For example, organs and flesh of the deceased were carved out before they were buried. Of the 23 individuals, the oldest was over 55 years old and the youngest was just six years old, but that’s not what makes this weird. With the help of a charity called English Heritage researchers found out that out of the 23 people, eight people buried in the mass grave had traveled more than 1,000 miles to reach Cliffs End Farm and five came from different parts of the world. According to experts, the eight people may have come from modern-day Sweden and Norway, while the five could have come from Spain or North Africa.
According to paleontologist Tori Herridge, all 23 people buried in the mass grave were females and the oldest female was likely slaughtered with a sword before her body was arranged in a manner that no one, to date, can understand. Her left hand held a piece of chalk close to her mouth while her right hand pointed in a southwest direction. Experts believe that the mass slaughter of 23 females and animals was nothing but a sacrifice. But what was the purpose of this sacrifice? According to osteoarcheologist Dr. Jackie McKinley and Herridge, this could have been a fertility ritual.
Then again, if it was a fertility ritual, why sacrifice women and children? Herridge stated that these women and children may have been important in that community, so they were chosen to be sacrificed. To date, no one knows for sure if the women were chosen and sacrificed intentionally and why the older woman was pointing in a certain direction. We hope experts would soon be able to reveal as much as they can about this eerie fertility ritual.
Do you believe in rituals and rites? What do you know about them? Let us know in the comments below. Don’t forget to share this article with your friends!
