Violent conflicts in Neolithic Europe were held more brutally than has been known so far. This emerges from a recent anthropological analysis of the roughly 7000-year-old mass grave of Schöneck-Kilianstädten by researcher of the Universities of Basel and Mainz. The findings, published in the journal PNAS, show that victims were murdered and deliberately mutilated.
It was during the time when Europeans first began to farm. To what degree conflicts and wars featured in the early Neolithic (5600 to 4900 B.C.), and especially in the so-called Linear Pottery culture (in German, Linearbandkeramik, LBK), is a disputed theme in research. It is particularly unclear whether social tensions were responsible for the termination of this era. So far two mass graves from this period were known to stem from armed conflicts (Talheim, Germany, and Asparn/Schletz, Austria).
...
Besides various types of (bone) injuries caused by arrows, they also found many cases of massive damage to the head, face and teeth, some inflicted on the victims shorty before or after their death. In addition, the attackers systematically broke their victims' legs, pointing to torture and deliberate mutilation. Only few female remains were found, which further indicates that women were not actively involved in the fighting and that they were possibly abducted by the attackers.
The abstract from the original study can be found at pnas.org.
From Schöneck-Kilianstädten to Rwanda, it seems like humanity hasn't come very far.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @02:49AM
How about we rename that period the "Cheneylithic".
(Score: 4, Funny) by albert on Thursday August 20 2015, @03:20AM
You're denying evolution.
Human behavior makes sense when you put aside your oh-so-cultured and privileged feelings to figure out why hacking up different people could be beneficial. View it from the point of your DNA. Your DNA is a much better match for the DNA in your family than elsewhere in your tribe, and a much better match to that in your tribe than to the funny-looking wrong-worshipping people you might meet.
We've come far. Now we can wipe out whole nations with the press of a button. We can even directly test DNA, allowing us to correctly determine who must DIE DIE DIE!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @03:27AM
So what you are saying is incest is best. Have fun fucking your twin brother.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @03:50AM
As far as the selfish gene is concerned, yeah, producing offspring as close to you as possible is the meaning of life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @04:50AM
Non-sentient beings don't have concerns. Biology doesn't have goals. Evolution doesn't have goals. There is no objective meaning to life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @06:59AM
Way to miss the point entirely. There are no objective goals. There is no absolute objective anything. Everything, yes everything, we call objective is merely a comparison of one thing to another. There is nothing outside judgement. Given that millennia old logic, genes merely reproduce themselves and have no concern about outcomes, therefore inbreeding is an optimal path.
Is that thorough enough or must you continue to be as obtuse as you are ignorant?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @08:32AM
Way to miss the point entirely.
Is that thorough enough or must you continue to be as obtuse as you are ignorant?
Don't blame me that you yourself said something incorrect. The selfish gene isn't "concerned" about anything.
There are no objective goals.
Yes.
There is no absolute objective anything.
Is that so?
therefore inbreeding is an optimal path.
That depends on what you mean by "optimal".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @07:03AM
Oh, and what makes you think the ability to feel makes matter special? You probably meant sapience, but it is still just matter floating around in space.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @08:34AM
I don't remember saying anything was special.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by albert on Thursday August 20 2015, @06:08AM
Maybe it's better to let him do the reproducing. He shares lots of my DNA. I'll instead go wipe out people who compete for resources and who might be tempted to wipe out people (like my brother!) who compete with them. If I end up dead but first wipe out a dozen competitors while they sleep, that helps my brother and thus helps ensure my DNA lives on via his descendants.
War wouldn't be so enticing and satisfying if it didn't serve an evolutionary purpose. We're made to kill, at least when the benefits outweigh the risks for our DNA.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday August 20 2015, @03:46PM
You're misunderstanding evolution (purposely for the grins, I assume). The more different your DNA is from your mate's, the healthier your offspring will be.
And whoever you responded to (I didn't see the comment) is both young and not a student of history. Just a few hundred years ago there was no nation on Earth without a death penalty. A hundred years ago they used mustard gas in war, only the crazies like ISIL do now. "War crimes" is a relatively new concept.
The world is a far less violent place than it used to be. Look at Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot. Wars are always fought over resources, even though those waging the wars claim other things. War is the result of greed and selfishness, always.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @05:24PM
You can help spread your DNA by removing competition for resources. Even if you die in the process, and thus leave no offspring, you will have helped those who are more closely related to yourself. They share more of your DNA than the outsiders/foreigners/weirdos that you've slaughtered.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @03:24AM
Now we can massacre, torture, and mutilate WITH DRONES. Achievement unlocked, motherfucker! We gonna kill us some ragheads and sleep easy tonite, cuz them dead
shiteaters are allllll the way over there in a designated war zone overseas. God Bless American cognitive dissonance.
(Score: 3, Funny) by RedBear on Thursday August 20 2015, @03:36AM
Unfortunately Homo sapiens sapiens has been virtually unchanged for the last 99,000 to 200,000 years [wikipedia.org]. What humans have been observed doing throughout recorded history is obviously exactly the same thing humans have been doing for as long as humans have been humans. There's no reason to believe otherwise. We have a thin veneer of civilized behavior nowadays in most places simply because we've developed legal and social systems that usually let us live together without resorting to mass murder to obtain basic resources.
I've come to the conclusion in recent years that we won't actually have any chance of behaving any better (as a species) until we evolve into a genetically distinct species. Since we still don't know exactly how to trigger such significant genetic evolution, we're in for quite a long period of bad behavior from Homo sapiens sapiens. Many species don't change much for millions of years. Of course there's also no guarantee that when we evolve we'll actually be any better behaved. The only guarantee is that we'll be different.
Ah, humans. Can't live with 'em...
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @03:49AM
We have a thin veneer of civilized behavior nowadays in most places simply because we've developed legal and social systems that usually let us live together without resorting to mass murder to obtain basic resources.
Have we now. In our modern society, people need jobs to earn money to buy basic resources, yet not only does one need to have a job to get a job, the successful applicant needs to be already employed in the very same job for which the applicant is applying. It doesn't take a superior species to realize that the current social situation is untenable, and there will be massive unrest very soon as the dwindling numbers of the employed inevitably join the ever growing masses of the permanently unemployed. You can thank Human Resources for the downfall of Homo sapiens sapiens into violent behavior, this time around.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @03:53AM
We are by far the most dominant large species this planet has ever seen. I think that is quite good.
And the old, cold logic still applies: if it weren't for our newly civilized ways, organized war beyond town-size and overpopulation would never have been a problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @03:58AM
usually let us live together without resorting to mass murder to obtain basic resources
The keyword being "usually", right? Because in the last 15 years we have been doing just that...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @04:03AM
We haven't been living together because the enemy is on a different continent. We don't care to know where our troops have been or what they're been doing, and that's the way we likes it. For freedoms.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 20 2015, @02:20PM
"usually let us live together without resorting to mass murder"
I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace an interlude during war.
Georges Clemenceau
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday August 20 2015, @03:51PM
I believe wikipedia may be incorrect there. Europeans evolved the ability to drink cow's milk only tens of thousands of years ago. Humans in extreme northern part of the world evolved pale skin, which helps in the production of vitamin D.
And society has certainly evolved, and within my lifetime (I'm old).
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday August 20 2015, @07:29PM
Unfortunately Homo sapiens sapiens has been virtually unchanged for the last 99,000 to 200,000 years ....
That's because we wiped out all the human subspecies (homo sapiens floresiensis, homo sapiens neanderthalensis, homo sapiens ???) with which we used to interbreed and widen the gene pool. We are stuck now, unless some natural or human devised mutations show up in enough numbers to alter that.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TrumpetPower! on Thursday August 20 2015, @03:55AM
Steven Pinker addresses this in The Better Angels of our Nature [stevenpinker.com]. We have come a long ways, as a matter of fact. That should be both inspiring and terrifying; inspiring that we've come so far, but terrifying to think of how awful it was where we came from.
Even just since a bit over a century ago, the United States has gone from a nation where slavery most brutal was commonplace to one where the mere notion that your skin color says anything of significance about your character or capabilities is rightfully regarded as absurdly, primitively, evil.
But, if you really want to get a taste for how far we've come...read the Bible. Casual and horrific violence is the unremarkable norm; YHWH drowns the entire planet and, soon thereafter, tortures all of Egypt and slaughters all the boys. But the piece de la resistence has to be Numbers 31 [biblegateway.com], wherein Moses and his merry men murder all the Midianite adults; enslave all the boys; and turn all the pre-pubescent girls (virgins in an era when girls were married off at puberty) into sex slaves. It's hard to think of anything, even the Holocaust, as revolting and evil as this (purely fictional, it should be noted) story...yet it's all done by and with the blessing of the ultimate paragons of Biblical goodness and morality.
Incidentally, my citation of Numbers 31 serves a dual purpose. Not only does it demonstrate just how truly awful things were not that long ago; it also demonstrates how far we still have to go. It's highly likely that some Christian apologist will reply to this note attempting to explain away the horror, even telling us that it was an act of livingkindness and moral righteousness that we should praise. And, even if none here are so depraved and abased as to do that publicly, I can point to a most respected Christian theologian, William Lane Craig:
Yes, that's right...don't worry about the victims of these atrocities; have a thought for the poor perpetrators.
Now, if you'll pardon me, I need to go clean myself....
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @03:59AM
Nazi nigger loving jihadist Godwin shitter son of an ass!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @04:10AM
How very Christian of you!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Ken_g6 on Thursday August 20 2015, @04:26AM
Apparently you haven't been following the news about ISIS lately. [torontosun.com]
So, with this news, I guess we can officially call ISIS fighters "cave men".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Thursday August 20 2015, @05:33AM
More like, they're downright Biblical.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @12:01PM
the mere notion that your skin color says anything of significance about your character or capabilities is rightfully regarded as absurdly, primitively, evil.
and still common place.
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Thursday August 20 2015, @02:24PM
> I can point to a most respected Christian theologian, William Lane Craig
Tells you the circles we travel in. When I hear that name all I think of are shitty arguments ending in a fallback of "The witness of the Holy Spirit overrules you." (i.e. what I want is more important than what you prove). I mean, the only good thing I can say about the guy is that he's never (as far as I know) used the following arguments:
1) Pascal's wager.
2) Even single-celled organisms have brains. Humans have no idea how to make thinking devices that small. Therefore God exists.
3) God made logic. By using logic to disprove my argument you admit God exists. Therefore I win the argument and am better than you. Oh, and God exists.
4) The reason rocks and the fossils therein are arranged in organized strata is because God made the Flood waters do that.
5) Life on other planets can't exist because without sharing blood with Jesus they'll all go to Hell anyway.
6) God exists because if God doesn't exist everyone you love who died before you is really dead and only a psychopath would wish their loved ones dead.
7) Bananas show conclusive signs of design. Therefore God exists.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday August 20 2015, @04:03PM
5) Life on other planets can't exist because without sharing blood with Jesus they'll all go to Hell anyway.
That's just silly, there are plenty of atheists right here on Earth. As to whether there is life elsewhere, I remain agnostic. I think it's highly probable there is, but we have no idea how life started here so we have no idea what exact conditions are necessary.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @04:47PM
This clearly shows a lack of faith: How could it be that Jesus were not able to visit all those other planets, too? Of course in the form of the local intelligent species!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 20 2015, @02:25PM
"slavery most brutal was commonplace to one where the mere notion that your skin"
I hope you realize that slavery, as practiced in the US, was an aberration? I am not aware of any other nation that institutionalized slavery in the manner that the US did. In most cultures and civilizations, slaves could either work their way out of bondage, or fight their way out. Only here, was slavery bonded to race and skin color. I'm pretty sure that the most brutal cultures in history eventually freed or assimilated their slaves. Only here in the US was an entire race judged to be subhuman, and therefore not fit for any higher station than slavery.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday August 20 2015, @03:58PM
this (purely fictional, it should be noted) story
It's Jewish history, as seen by the Jews. Do you also think the holocaust was fiction?
As to "how can God do such a thing," well, if I write a computer program, I'm within my rights to do anything to it that I want. If I build a battlebot, am I cold hearted to send it in competetion with another battlebot?
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @04:50PM
If you give that battlebot the ability to suffer, then you are.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Thursday August 20 2015, @07:45PM
Thank you for proving my point, of demonstrating the profound evil of Biblical "morality." You make it plain that, to you, humans are the created property of your gods and your gods have the right to do with us as they will.
First of all, I wouldn't even abuse a car the way your gods abuse humans in the stories told of them. But the suggestion that it's within anybody's rights to do anything so horrific to a sentient being....
I just hope you don't have children. That exact same "I brought you into this world, so it's well within my rights to do anything I want to you" mentality has been used by far too many parents, overwhelmingly religious parents, to justify the most heinous forms of parental abuse of children.
And I hope you don't have pets or other animals, either. If you do, though they might legally be your property, you most emphatically have no right to abuse them, either.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday August 21 2015, @04:03PM
My children are not my creations, and neither is my cat, who owns me as much as I own her. As to the harm done to the folks in the Old Testament, they were forewarned what was going to happen. It's like mountain climbing, or carrying a weapon -- you know it's dangerous, and if you wind up in the hospital in severe pain or dead, it's nobody's fault but your own.
By the way, that mosquito you slapped feels fear and pain, or rather did before you killed it.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by Locust-Of-Control on Thursday August 20 2015, @04:49AM
...on the modern Cannibal Warlords of Liberia! [youtube.com]
Nope, we haven't come very far, if detached, streamlined, designer violence isn't an improvement. Our collective id ever awaits a fury.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @01:09PM
Oh shut up with your racist banter. The whole world knows that it's white Europeans who have caused all of the world's problems by their savage, dishonest, and quite brutal behavior. From slavery to invading the wrong country over 9/11 and then following that mistake by exporting radicalized jihadists from the west and giving them weapons and tanks to do unspeakable violence. Africa was ravaged by whites, as was most of Asia. Funny how the farther away you get from White Europe, the more stable and civilized the countries are...
This article shows that Europeans evolved in a different, more brutal nature than the rest of humanity. Even today the west is a sick, perverted society that would celebrate a white man becoming a woman rather than admit police brutality towards minorities. Luckily, whites will be the minority shortly.
(Score: 2) by zugedneb on Thursday August 20 2015, @01:20PM
Funny how the farther away you get from White Europe, the more stable and civilized the countries are...
Speaking of people in these "stable" countries, I have made the observation, that they put/have a lot more emotion in what they believe/religion that white.
Where they have emotion, the white man has zeal...
Seems to me, the white "race" in general is less susceptible to religion in terms of actual honest belief. Instead reality has a bigger chance of just "crashing in", thus the white man is simpler and more brutal then others.
Emo believers might not have more pronounced fear of death and authority than zealots...
Then again, who knows...
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 2) by zugedneb on Thursday August 20 2015, @01:22PM
Emo believers might HAVE more pronounced fear of death and authority than zealots...
Since the opposite of emotional tends to have more distanced relation the self, does not feel fear, sorrow, and loss that hard...
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 20 2015, @02:27PM
Yeah. Japan. China. Remember Pol Pot? But, yeah, all the evil in the world flows from white Europe. Keep telling yourself that. If it helps you to sleep at night, who am I to disillusion you?
(Score: 1) by Locust-Of-Control on Thursday August 20 2015, @04:16PM
Very odd deductions have been made, apparently. The subject of violence and madness can hardly be covered in a single comment post, but if it eases your tender conscience, I'd not relegate it to any specific nation or people. The status of both peace and violence, I fear, is conditional. And as stated, the human id ever awaits a fury. Perhaps analyze the replies to the parent post for evidence.
(Score: 1) by Post-Nihilist on Thursday August 20 2015, @05:46AM
Where evil dwells
Asparn, L.I.
Mutilation Murder
Grisly sacrificial slaughter
Knights of the black circle
Stabbed him in the woods
At the sound of crow-call
He said, "I love thee, Satin"
Half burnt body found
Buried in a shallow grave
Stabbed him in the THROAT
STAB!
TALHEIM KILLER... LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH
Where evil dwells
Schletz, Austria
Mutilation Moider
Grisly Sacrificial Slaughter
FORSAKE YOUR HOMOSEXUALITY
HALF BURNT BODY FOUND
TALHEIM KILLER... LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH, TALHEIM KILLER... LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH
TALHEIM KILLER... LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH, TALHEIM KILLER... LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH
Be like us, be different, be a nihilist!!!
(Score: 5, Funny) by Gravis on Thursday August 20 2015, @11:33AM
Mutilation Murder
Grisly sacrificial slaughter
Knights of the black circle
Stabbed him in the woods
At the sound of crow-call
He said, "I love thee, Satin"
Half burnt body found
Buried in a shallow grave
Stabbed him in the THROAT
STAB!
wow... some people are really devoted to their favorite fabric. i mean, satin is nice and smooth and all but damn bro... i mean, it's no silk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 22 2015, @07:13PM
i mean, satin is nice and smooth and all but damn bro... i mean, it's no silk.
Them trailer trash babes can't tell the difference!