Last week in Oxfordshire, England uncovered a stark reminder of our animalistic past. A team of Thames Water Engineers who were working to lay water pipes in a chalk stream was shocked to uncover a hidden pit filled with dozens of human skeletons. Most of the skeletons showed signs of having been brutally massacred for sacrifice in some 3,000 years ago.
Ancient death pit discovered
The Thames Water engineers notify archeologists who soon began excavating items that then turned out to be artifacts from an Iron Age Settlement. There were various ancient tools including animal parts as well a horse's skull that was discovered together with body parts from 26 people that dates back to the British Iron Age and Roman periods. At least one person was found with the skull placed at the feet. A woman's skeleton was also found with her feet chopped off and her hands tied behind her head.
The remains were then removed from the site by the archeologists who took them for in-depth investigation. The archeologists hope to get to learn more about the way in which people were sacrificed in ancient times. Of course, this will help lead the archeologists to a clear understanding of why the sacrifices were made. Just in the year 2015, an Ancient Origins article titled, "the practice of sacrifice in Iron Age Britain" asked, "How often were sacrifices made, for what reasons and what - or more interestingly, who were sacrificed?"
During ancient times all over the world, agricultural and fishing-based communities made human sacrifices after floods, plagues, earthquakes, famines, and landslides. This was done supposedly to appease their gods to get favor, ask for forgiveness or foresight or to apologize for something the community might have done to anger the gods. In other cases, the sacrifices might have been made to assure the community of bountiful harvests or success in impending territorial wars and battles.
Even more evidence for ritualized murder
Even though the bodies that were discovered recently date back to about 3,000 years ago, there is lots of evidence for ritualized murder in Britain that happened as far back as over 5,000 years ago. A feature that appeared in 2015 Daily Mail discussed findings in Wiltshire, the home of the famous Stonehenge stone circle. Here, archeologists discovered a case where thousands of ancient people stood along great earthen walls surrounding an oval-shaped arena situated in Salisbury Plain. Beneath the mounds were thousands of animal bones which are suspected to have been sacrificed and eaten in massive feasts.
