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New Evidence of Ancient Child Sacrifice Found in Turkey

posted by martyb on Sunday July 01 2018, @11:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the Ancient-Children dept.

takyon writes:

New evidence of ancient child sacrifice found in Turkey

Remains of young people who were ritually sacrificed have been found from Bronze Age Mesopotamia. Led by Museum scientific associate Dr Brenna Hassett, a team examined burial practices at Başur Höyük, a Bronze Age cemetery in Turkey. It contains a series of individuals who were buried between 3100 and 2800 BCE. The site dates to 500 years before the famous Royal Cemetery of Ur, a luxurious series of tombs that form the resting place of Mesopotamian rulers.

An excavation of Başur Höyük [DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2018.63] [DX] uncovered a large, coffin-like stone tomb that contained multiple burials, with an unprecedented number of high-status grave goods for the period and region.

In three graves were found the remains of at least 11 people, male and female, ranging from age 11 to young adults. Several people were buried outside the tomb with elaborate ornaments and grave goods. Brenna says, 'The burials are remarkable because of the youth of the individuals, the number that were buried and the large wealth of objects that were buried with them.

Also at Live Science and Newsweek.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 01 2018, @01:36PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 01 2018, @01:36PM (#700965)

    Mesopotamia is in modern day Iraq, and Sumerian/Mesopotamian "empires" didn't extend hundreds of miles away to Anatolia, the modern day Turkey.

    Either TFS is crap, or perhaps the whole paper.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 01 2018, @02:57PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 01 2018, @02:57PM (#700978)
    "Mesopotamia" means “the land between the rivers”, the Tigris and the Euphrates, and doesn’t just refer to the Sumerians. Nothing was said about the tombs being a Sumerian site, just a mention that these tombs at Başur Höyük are even older than the Sumerian royal tombs at Ur. The term Mesopotamia is generally used to denote the river basin of the Tigris and Euphrates, which consists not just of not just what is today Iraq and Kuwait, but also much of south-eastern Turkey (up to where the two rivers have their sources), parts of eastern Syria, portions near the border of Iran and Iraq, and some parts of northern Saudi Arabia. Başur Höyük is in the Siirt province of south-eastern Turkey, near the Botan river where it joins with the Tigris, so it is very much within the bounds of Mesopotamia. TFS and the paper are correct, it is your knowledge of ancient geography that is crap. Read the following for your edification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Mesopotamia [wikipedia.org]

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 01 2018, @06:52PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 01 2018, @06:52PM (#701019)

      Crap.

  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:57AM

    by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:57AM (#701790) Homepage
    These finds are in Siirt, therefore in the historical Diyār Bakr, which was the northernmost province in Al Jazira, and are therefore in Upper Mesopotamia.
    --
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