(Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz)
Skeletons from thousands of years ago excavated in China had amputated limbs. According to the researchers, it supported the historical records of horrible punishment in the Asian country.
Skeletons With Amputated Legs Excavated in China
Two skeletons were excavated in a site close to Sanmenxia, a city in Henan Province, China. The skeletons were between 2,300 and 2,500 years old and were reportedly from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. Paleontologists were surprised that both were maimed in the same way, suggesting that they suffered amputation as a punitive form of punishment at the time.
Paleoanthropologist Qian Wang of Texas A&M University and associates analyzed the first skeleton that was probably male and lacking its left foot as well as roughly one-fifth of its lower left leg, which was 8 centimeters (3 inches) shorter than its right leg.
The second skeleton, likewise thought to be male, had a similar length of bone removed from its right leg, albeit less severely. The men's dismembered limbs are missing in comparable lengths, separated by only a centimeter.
It is impossible to determine what these two guys were charged with based on the bones. However, Wang speculates that one man may have had a more severe sentence than the other based on historical records because right leg amputations were saved for more serious crimes.
"Punitive amputation of both feet was reserved for even higher serious felonies," Wang explained.
The skeletal remains, according to Wang and colleagues, are proof of a skillful amputation that included nursing to aid in the men's recovery, even though it was done as a kind of punishment. Given that their leg bones exhibited clear indications of healing bone neatly fusing where it had been, the two amputees most likely lived for years following their amputations.
Wang claims that since amputation as a punishment was not an unusual occurrence, individuals may have resumed their regular social lives and were correctly buried after passing away.
Based on the researchers' study, the men most likely had a high social rank, which allowed for their rehabilitation.
The two-layered casket where each skeleton was discovered was buried facing north-south, an orientation usually associated with the elite classes. Conversely, commoners were restricted to smaller, east-west-facing graves.
Grave goods and isotopes in the bones reveal that the individuals had a diet high in protein, which implies that the males were aristocrats, probably lower-level officials.
Brutal Prehistoric Ritual Sacrifice
In another study, researchers declared they had found evidence of a barbaric practice of ritualized human sacrifice that appears to have been practiced for at least two millennia in prehistoric periods. The tomb is located at Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux, in the nation's southern region in the Rhône Valley.
The women who were sacrificed, the researchers found, died between roughly 4000 and 3500 B.C., most likely from "forced positional asphyxia," a sort of death caused by being pushed into a posture that stops breathing and from which the victim is unable to escape.
Two of the three women's bodies were found in peculiar positions when they were discovered by Bertrand Ludes and colleagues from the French Research Institute on East Asia (IFRAE). Based on the placement of the bones, the researchers deduce that a ritualized kind of asphyxiation slew the women. This may have involved the use of a method known as "homicidal ligature strangulation," which consists of wrapping a rope around the victim's neck and ankles while they are in a prone position.
The researchers claim that this kind of torture, called incaprettamento, is connected to the Italian Mafia and is occasionally employed to punish those who are thought to be traitors.
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