Neolithic Muggings

[ithildin]

Muggings were rife in New Stone Age:

If you are worried about being attacked or killed by a violent criminal, just be glad you are not living in Neolithic Britain. From 4000 to 3200 BC, Britons had a 1 in 14 chance of being bashed on the head, and a 1 in 50 chance of dying from their injuries....

[...]

The injuries were mostly caused by blunt objects, although some of the skulls seem to have been hacked by stone axes and there is some evidence that ears were chopped off.

(emphasis mine)

Fanfic, anyone?

Comments

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

Okay, maybe I put *way* too much thought into this...

Hey, I love knowing stuff like this! So thought away. :)

When I went to Orkney, one of the places I went to was the Tomb of the Eagles, which was on a privately owned farm. The couple that owned must have been in their late 60s. The husband took the group walking out to the back of beyond to the various sites on the property, but his wife greeted everyone. They had an impromptu museum on their porch and one of the things was a skull of a Neolithic woman. She wanted us all to hold it, and she said that 'this was your granny'. It was very important to her that we saw the people that had lived in the same place so long ago as real people, just like us. Not remote figures in books and museums.

Boy, I wish I could go back.

[jinxed-wood.livejournal.com]

LOL! Living in Ireland, I think I may take that kind of thing too much for granted - oh, what's that? Oh that's just a 5,000 year old burial site clogging up the landscape...

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

I can see that. I've just always wondered what people from different eras were really like. What were their hopes and fears? When I worked in old downtown Monterey, I used to sit in one of the walled gardens that were built back during the orignal Spanish settlement. There's wisteria hanging all over one end and a fountain int the center. Anyway, I'd sit there on my lunch and imagine people from that period in the garden. Conversations, how they were dressed, their histories.

Okay, now everyone knows I'm really odd...

[jinxed-wood.livejournal.com]

Not that odd, really! I tend to on the occasional meandering of my own - I live in an area in Dublin called the Blackpitts. It got it's name from the first black death in the 1300's, when the entire area was one mass grave - weird, and slightly creepy, but interesting.