21 January 2025 The Future is the Product of the Past

Largest Headhunting Massacre of Women and Children in Neolithic China

A new study discovers that ancient headless skeletons discovered in mass graves in China are the remains of victims who were massacred around 4,100 years ago in headhunting events.

In China, researchers discovered a mass grave containing 41 headless skeletons. The Honghe site grave contains the largest known Neolithic Chinese headhunting massacre. Thrity-two individuals appear to have been killed during the same event.

Since its initial discovery in the 1990s, the gruesome site has been the subject of six different excavations. In the most recent, researchers discovered 68 skeletons in two houses and three tombs, including 41 without heads. The bodies are 4,100 to 4,400 years old. In addition, the team also found the skulls of four men in a pit outside the house and several bone tools buried alongside the skeletons.

Unusually, all the victims were women or children. Every skeleton has cut marks across the neck vertebrae and several have V- and U-shaped cuts on the second vertebra. The assailants used bone-handled knives with stone blades. The similarity of these markings suggests that the killings were part of the same attack.

These cutting tools were likely bone-handled instruments with stone blades, consistent with findings in the Honghe area, paralleling the same technique across the board in the perpetrator’s techniques and weapons. They indicate “the presence of a conscious head-hunting behavior”.

An aerial view of the burial site. Photo: Qian Wang/Texas A&M
An aerial view of the burial site. Photo: Qian Wang/Texas A&M

The study, published in the Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences journal, employed visual inspections and imaging techniques to identify signs of decapitation. The researchers found that 32 of the 41 beheadings had occurred in a single event!

Headhunting was a common practice in many Asian countries, particularly in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. Headhunting was frequently motivated in this context by a combination of ritualistic, social, and territorial factors. Tribes and indigenous groups used headhunting to gain spiritual power, demonstrate dominance over rival communities, and appease ancestral spirits.

The study speculates on two possibilities for the beheadings. Their first theory is that it was a ritual.

It’s possible that when rivals attacked the settlement, they targeted women and children, resulting in an “interpersonal conflict with a high level of cruelty,” the researchers wrote in the study. It’s also possible that interlopers used a “ritual of selective decapitation” when choosing their victims, the team wrote.

“Heads of enemy tribes were sought after for a specific ritual meaning, to conquer and/or possess the soul and energy of the enemies,” Qian Wang, co-author of the recent study, told LiveScience. This specific ritual might have required the heads of women and children.

The second theory involved settlement rivalry. The site had three defensive trenches around it, suggesting there was a conflict between the Honghe people and other communities.

Four skulls in a pit outside the burial house. Photo: Qian Wang/Texas A&M University School of Dentistry
Four skulls in a pit outside the burial house. Photo: Qian Wang/Texas A&M University School of Dentistry

The vast majority of those living at Honghe would have been farmers, fishers, and hunters. By choosing women and children as victims, a rival group would have caused the most outrage because of the “high level of cruelty.” In this scenario, the attackers took the heads as trophies.

The researchers suggest that the men may have been away working during the attack and returned to find the massacred bodies of their loved ones. They then chose to bury them in the houses before abandoning the settlement.

Meanwhile, researchers believe that the four skulls found in the pit may be “trophies” brought by members of the Honghe settlement from another enemy tribe.

Cover Photo: Part of the burial site. Photo: Qian Wang/Texas A&M University School of Dentistry

Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences

Related Articles

Tombs rich in artifacts discovered by Swedish archaeologists in Cyprus

7 July 2023

7 July 2023

A Swedish archaeological expedition made the extraordinary discovery of tombs outside the Bronze Age trading metropolis of Hala Sultan Tekke...

Exciting Discovery of oldest English coin in Canada

16 November 2022

16 November 2022

A gold coin found on the south coast of Newfoundland, Canada’s easternmost province, may be the oldest known English coin...

Scientists unlock the ‘Cosmos’ on the Antikythera Mechanism

13 March 2021

13 March 2021

Scientists may have finally made a complete digital model of the 2000-year-old Cosmos panel of a mechanical device called the...

Two statuettes of Demeter discovered in Aigai, the ‘city of goats’ of the Aeolians in western Türkiye

20 November 2023

20 November 2023

Two statuettes of Demeter, the Greek goddess of earth and fertility, were discovered in a cistern in the ancient city...

New Archaeological Discoveries in Abu Dhabi shed light on Umm an-Nar Bronze Age culture (2700-2000 BCE)

1 February 2024

1 February 2024

New findings demonstrate the resilience and inventiveness of local Bronze Age societies (Umm an-Nar Bronze Age culture), as well as...

A new temple was discovered in the ancient Thracian city of Perperikon

17 August 2022

17 August 2022

Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) reports that archaeologists have discovered a new temple at Perperikon. Perperikon, an archaeological complex located at...

Researchers decipher enigmatic ancient ‘Unknown Kushan Script’

13 July 2023

13 July 2023

A research team at the University of Cologne’s Department of Linguistics deciphered a writing system belonging to the Kushan Empire,...

New suspect in greatest act of vandalism in the history of dinosaur study

29 May 2023

29 May 2023

Researchers from the University of Bristol are rewriting the history of paleontology’s darkest and most bizarre event. Vandals with sledgehammers...

5,700-Year-old Ancient “Chewing Gum” Gives Information About People and Bacteria of the Past

4 April 2021

4 April 2021

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have successfully extracted the complete human genome from “chewing gum” thousands of years ago....

An inscription containing the Turk name was discovered for the first time in Anatolia

3 September 2022

3 September 2022

For the first time in the pre-Islamic Early period Turkish history, an inscription bearing the inscription expression “Turk” and written...

New Evidence could Change the Date People First Arrived in North America

2 June 2021

2 June 2021

While investigating the origins of agriculture, researchers made an unexpected discovery. According to an unexpected finding made by an Iowa...

The unknown importance of Göllü Dağ on the route of the first humans’ Transition from Africa to Europe

4 October 2021

4 October 2021

The researches conducted in Göllü Dağ and its surroundings, located within the borders of Niğde province in Central Anatolia, and...

Tens of Thousands of Ancient Bronze Coins Dating from the 4th Century Discovered Off Sardinia

4 November 2023

4 November 2023 1

A diver spotted something metallic at the bottom of the sea off the town of Arzachena in the Sassari province...

Egypt dig unearths 41 mln-year-old Whale in desert -Tutcetus rayanensis-

12 August 2023

12 August 2023

Paleontologists in Egypt announced the discovery of a new species of extinct whale that inhabited the sea covering present-day Egypt...

1,600-year-old steelyard weight found in Turkey’s ancient city of Hadrianopolis

1 December 2021

1 December 2021

Archeologists have discovered a 1,600-year-old steelyard weight during excavations in the ancient city of Hadrianopolis, located in the Eskipazar district...