4 ms·
The article says that heads and heads alone were found: > They've uncovered large numbers of cattle, goat and wild gazelle skulls and horns in small chambers i
by NateEag 4y ago
The article says that heads and heads alone were found:
> They've uncovered large numbers of cattle, goat and wild gazelle skulls and horns in small chambers in the heads of the mustatil, but found no indication that these were kept for domestic use. Since no other animal's body parts were found, it led the team to deduce that these were sacrificial. It further suggested that the animals were sacrificed elsewhere.
Whatever it was, that doesn't sound like an abattoir.
- conorcleary 4y agoBones were valuable primitive tools but the skulls might have been used as representive forms of currency or wealth tokens such as the stones on Easter Island. Or tributes to the animals' sacrifice.
- NateEag 4y agoGood points.
- IncRnd 4y agoThat's sort of what I was describing, that the first guess regularly seems to be that something unknown today served a religious purpose then. Eight thousand years later we don't know why those bones are in a chamber. What is said in the article is a non-sequitur, "Since no other animal's body parts were found, it led the team to deduce that these were sacrificial."
- aquaduck 4y agoMy first thought is that perhaps they chop the head off, butcher the animal, and all body parts containing meat would be removed and end up deposited somewhere else. The heads, presumably having no useful meat, get dumped near the abattoir.
- revertmean 4y agoBut heads do have useful meat. You might have heard of smoked tongue? Or sheep's head soup?
- bergenty 4y agoThere have been other huge bone boards found in Saudi Arabia and those have been attributed to multi generation bone dumping grounds by hyena.