A study published Wednesday suggested that women in the ancient world were sometimes subjected to a horrific form of torture that eventually led to an agonizing death.
Research conducted on Neolithic remains across Europe suggest dozens of women were brutally murdered via the practice of “incaprettamento” over the course of around 2,000 years, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances. Reassessed data of a tomb in Saint-Paul-Trois-Chateaux in Avignon, France, revealed the positions of two women inside the burial suggest they were deliberately killed.
The horrendous practice on “incaprettamento” involves tying a person’s neck to their bent legs behind their backs so they slowly strangle themselves to death, the study revealed. This seems to have been the preferred method of murder against women as far back as 7,400 years ago, Live Science reported.
A #ritualmurder shaped the Early and Middle #Neolithic across Central and Southern #Europe#Psychohistory📃https://t.co/VdUbfSu1nr
— GIP.UNIOVI (@gipUniovi) April 10, 2024
The women appeared to have then been buried when they were still alive, which could have been some type of ritual as the site also contained a wooden structure built to the alignment of the solstices, the study’s senior author, Eric Crubezy, told Live Science. (RELATED: Croatian Archaeologists Find 7,000-Year-Old Preserved Road Under Water)
“You have the alignment, you have the silo, you have the broken stones — so it seems that it was a rite related to agriculture,” Crubezy told the outlet.
Further research suggested at least 20 other similar murders across the European continent, the study found. There is even reference to the practice dating back as far as the Mesolithic (14,000 to 11,000 B.C.) which is before Big Archaeology says we did anything meaningful or of note.