A Site Of Great Neolithic Violence Shows Us the Dangers Of Misusing Technology
Remains of our ancestors remind us that innovation can lead to both wonder and destruction
Humanity has always had an innate curiosity about the future. It led ancient Greeks on the long treks to the Oracle of Delphi to hear prophesies. Today we do it a bit differently.
We consult Silicon Valley oracles like tech maven and founder Naval Ravikant. However, in an interview on the After-On Podcast, he gave a sobering view of humanity’s future developments. Ravikant quipped:
“Technology is a coin. One side of it is immortality, the other side is annihilation.”
Namely, the wonderful inventions that awe and captivate us are just as likely to be used for destruction as creation. In fact, it’s often easier to do the former. I couldn’t help thinking of this as I read a story about a Neolithic mass grave from 3000 BC found in modern Spain.
In 1985, a bulldozer on a construction project unearthed the collective remains of three hundred and thirty-eight individuals, many of whom died by violent means. The site is causing some to rethink the capabilities of ancient people.
Particularly, they might have had greater capacity than just small raids and inter-community bouts of violence. Long-term conflicts dragging on for years may have occurred. The well-developed hunting technology that advanced humans of their era took center stage in the conflicts.
The first physical evidence of spears and throwing sticks occurred four hundred thousand years ago. This demonstrated a unique capacity for organization, hunting, and toolmaking.
The first bow appeared about sixty-two thousand years ago marking higher-level brain function and human behavior.
All these cognitive functions that made our ancestors great hunters appear leveraged into another modern activity: war.
Another Interpretation Of An Ancient Grave Site
“The site was originally interpreted as a massacre (i.e., the indiscriminate killing of helpless or unresisting people) based on the haphazard and interwoven deposition of many bodies in a single mass with minimal soil separating them…”
— Fernández-Crespo, T., Ordoño, J., Etxeberria, F. et al. Large-scale violence in Late Neolithic Western Europe based on expanded skeletal evidence from San Juan ante Portam Latinam. Sci Rep 13, 17103 (2023).
Dr. Teresa Fernández-Crespo and her associates noted something odd as they researched a bone pit found in San Juan ante Portam Latinam (SJAPL), wounds were overly represented on identified male bodies. This site was originally thought to be a mass slaughter.
And a large one. The team says usual examples of this type of Neolithic violence contain thirty to forty remains, not the seventy-eight found in the grave.
However, a massacre’s victims — at least examples of this in the Neolithic context— are more indiscriminate mixtures of men, women, and children. In SJAPL, men comprise almost one hundred percent of unhealed injuries and over eighty percent of healed ones.
And that’s the other odd thing — healed injuries. So, the conflict looks like it went on for more than a brief period. The site itself has been dated between 3380–3000 BC, but it can’t be said for certain if all the bodies or most were interred at one time.
Much of the original area had stone on top of it from a possible collapse, which had to be removed. So, that may have added to the dispersion of bones, complicating things. However, the researchers believe it’s possible that “war layers” of the dead were placed in the burial area.
While the many present cranial injuries were likely from blunt force trauma, another thing became apparent digging through the bones. At least fifty-two arrowheads were found. Most of them studied showed “striations and fractures consistent with impacts.”
Dr. Fernández-Crespo and her colleagues explain generally one in three arrow wounds show impact on bones. The team believes most — if not all — of the arrowheads found were present in the flesh of the victims upon burial. They also hint that others may have been removed and not buried.
So, while seventy-eight out of the three hundred thirty-eight show bone trauma, there’s reason to believe it could be more widespread. Not all wounds may be shown on bones. Moreover, this goes beyond arrows, just think, spears and clubs can damage organs and soft tissue as well.
But these weren’t the only interesting stories told by the remains at SJAPL, they held another secret.
Malnutrition And Evidence From Other Burial Sites
The researchers found evidence of cribra orbitalia, which are lesions on the skull that anthropologists look to as a sign of malnutrition. Over a third of the remains had these lesions, while it’s usually found in about three percent of Iberian Neolithic remains. But this wasn’t all.
Six of the infants’ remains showed signs of scurvy (caused by prolonged deficiency of vitamin C).
More than half the population showed evidence of Linear enamel hypoplasia, or bands of reduced enamel on the teeth, which can also be an indication of malnutrition. It’s usually under ten percent in Iberian sites.
Dr. Fernández-Crespo and her team also explain another interesting finding from the region around SJAPL:
“The Rioja Alavesa region of north-central Iberia, where SJAPL is located, is the area of Europe with the highest absolute number of Neolithic skeletons affected by arrowhead injuries, and those which have been dated are concentrated around 3380–3000 cal. BC, i.e., the same chronology attributed to SJAPL.”
So, it appears there was “the likelihood of widespread conflict affecting the region at this time.”
Therefore, you have evidence of many male victims of violence with both healed and unhealed wounds, indicators of malnutrition affecting a population over time, and near communities with many arrow wounds.
While sites of this age can never be one hundred percent understood, it appears organized populations were in conflict for lengthy periods of time. At least long enough for severe wounds to heal and economic repercussions to appear in the production of food.
This seems more like war than just simple raiding. Moreover, the planning originally used for hunting and toolmaking to enable greater food production, was transformed for use in larger-scale community-based violence with other groups.
The research team thinks these engagements might have gone on for months, maybe years. It also got me seriously thinking about Naval Ravikant’s comment earlier about technology.
Our Present-Day Oracle’s Prediction About The Future
Our ancestors at SJAPL used their technology for hunting game, such as organization, archery, and toolmaking for destructive as well as constructive purposes. This sounds familiar.
We have plenty of examples of this in modern times. In his book Six-Legged Soldiers, Professor Jeffrey Lockwood explains that European powers prior to WWI created gas to kill insects so crops could be protected. Inadvertently, they discovered the invisible tool worked better at killing people.
Hence, the protection of food developed into poison gas. This continued in WWII. Zyklon B, the gas that was used to kill so many in the Holocaust, was originally used as a tool to de-louse clothing in the prison camps.
Likewise, Douglas Brunt in The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel, explains the inventor of the diesel engine not only revolutionized the world of transportation and industry but created the means to send warships and submarines across the globe quickly and efficiently.
With all this in mind, do you want to know the future? I’ll go out on a limb and say the amazing technology we’re witnessing today — AI, space travel, virtual reality, the Metaverse, and biotechnology — will be a two-sided coin.
As Naval Ravikant points out and our ancestors at SJAPL show us, we’ll have to accept a bit of annihilation with the wonderous benefits.
-Originally posted on Medium 11/7/23